OU Assessment Forum

CONTEXTUAL ASSESSMENET OF STUDENT LEARNING THROUGH REFLECTION ON DOING (PDF)

by Farrokh Mistree and Janet Allen

Observations: “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” (Former Secretary of Education Richard Riley).

“Rather than focusing on specific technologies or specific problems, we need to equip students with those concepts that are common to all problems, all technologies, all skills, ranging from workplace engineering to ethics to entrepreneurship.” (The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works by Steve Gunderson, Roberts Jones, and Kathryn Scanland, 2004).

The Challenge:  How can we, in our courses, empower our students with the competency to learn throughout their careers by reflecting on doing?

Invitation:  If the answer to the preceding question is of interest to you let us start to dialog.

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THE MANTRA OF GRADUATE EDUCATION REFORM: WHY THE PRAYERS AREN’T ANSWERED (PDF)
by Michael Ashby

The regular drumbeat of similar recommendations to advance graduate education by a constant stream of national studies over the past two decades has failed to prompt action. An important reason why the studies have not gained traction is the fact the target recipients of the studies—and especially graduate students—have not been asked whether they agree with the studies’ recommendations. To develop a consensus path forward to reform graduate education, there is need for further conversations that include the entire community of stakeholders, and especially with our junior collogues, the graduate students. This session will focus on 1) Assessing the pains and needs of graduate students and 2) Assessing whether our graduate programs meet those needs.

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ASSESSING TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING (PDF)
by Jenel Cavazos and Ben Heddy

Transforming students is a laudable, yet lofty goal for teachers. Of course, our goal is to have a lasting impact on students, but can we really transform them? This presentation will describe a construct called transformative experience (TE). TE occurs when students apply classroom content to their everyday lives in a way that facilitates an expanded perception and value for the content. We will focus on learning the concept, discussing pedagogical methods for its facilitation, and describing how to measure student transformation.

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EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF INDEPENDENT RESEARCH SKILLS: CASE STUDY OF CAPSTONE EXPERIENCE IN METEOROLOGY
by Michael Richman

For undergraduate students, selecting a scientific research project, understanding the professional literature, analyzing data and communicating the details and importance of a project in the timeframe of a semester or two is a challenging task. Our Senior Capstone class attempts to integrate the research experience in a rubric with multiple checkpoints, in which each student obtains feedback that help guide them to a successful outcome. 

A statistical analysis measuring each student’s growth and the effects of assessment in changing aspects of the class will be presented.  The significance the students’ growth will be discussed, as well as a two-year longitudinal analysis of the data. 

The presentation will be an open discussion of (1) creating useful assessment checkpoints, (2) some ideas of providing helpful feedback to students and (3) how the assessor can statistically analyze the data arising from the checkpoints (and for multiple years) to gain useful insight and to improve the class.

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IDENTIFYING AND USING ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN CANVAS (PDF)
by Kevin Buck and Ben Lewis

How do you track mastery in a course? This session will explore two tools in Canvas – Rubrics and Outcomes. Learn how enabling this will allow you to measure pedagogical goals and communicate criteria for assignments. Participants will leave with the following skill – how to apply rubrics and outcomes to track learning mastery.

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USING OF RUBRICS TO EFFECTIVELY ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING (PDF)
by Melody Huckaby Rawlett

This presentation will walk faculty through the steps of rubric formulation, use, and feedback. It will focus on use of rubrics in the classroom and as a larger assessment tool to address overall learning within the department. In both the classroom and in assessment, rubrics allow faculty to find and close gaps in learning. Systematic use of rubrics creates opportunities to adopt changes to benefit student learning.

 

 

THE POTENTIAL FOR MULTI-DIMENSIONAL OUTCOMES BY INTEGRATING VIRTUES INTO SUBSTANTIVE COURSE CONTENT
by David Craig and Aimee Franklin

David Craig:

This session will focus on the presenter's experience revising a Gaylord College undergraduate course, Journalism Ethics, to focus more on virtues with the support of the OU Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing. The instructor assessed several assignments used in the class revision including an exemplar paper, short reflections and exams. The results offer insights on teaching and assessment in courses where virtues are a component.

Aimee Franklin:

This session describes how course assignments culminated in undergraduate students' creating reflective portfolios and making peer to peer presentations illustrating how human flourishing values enriched their understanding and analysis of substantive course content. Participants will be invited to identify a value that would be salient for their substantive content, then brainstorm how to pair the value with an existing assignment.

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STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE DOCUMENTATION OF ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES TO MEET ACCREDITATION STANDARDS
by John Jones

The scope of program accreditation is to capture the essence of student learning relative to university programs that demonstrate alignment to national standards and to determine if program completers can demonstrate those standards through content knowledge and skill activities. This quality assurance is accomplished through external peer review.

• Understanding and review of national program standards – handout will be provided
• Creating assessments that address program standards – handout will be provides
• Devising rubrics to assess performance – handout will be provided
• Analyzing data regarding performance – handout will be provided

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INCORPORATING AND ASSESSING SERVICE-LEARNING IN AN UNDERGRADUATE OR GRADUATE COURSE: SIMPLE AND PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES
by Joy Pendley

OU Community Engagement is working with faculty advisory committees to develop resources for teaching, research and outreach.  The Service Learning Committee (made up of faculty, The Writing Center, CTE and Office of Assessment) established criteria for designating service-learning courses. This designation will be visible in the enrollment process and on the student transcripts, making it easier for students to locate service-learning opportunities and for the university to track student and faculty participation. In this roundtable, we will talk briefly about the criteria that include both assessment of student learning outcomes and community partnerships and see examples of faculty syllabi and learning assessments and learn about roundtable participants’ experience with assessing service-learning and community engagement.

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ASSESSING STUDENT WRITING IN THE SCIENCES
by Karen Antell and Megan Elwood Madden

At this roundtable discussion, we will present writing assessment techniques used in their GeoWriting class, including guided peer review, extended rubrics, and instructor review & rewriting.

• Guided peer reivew
• Extended rubrics
• Instructor review and rewriting

In addition, they will discuss ways to integrate these techniques into Canvas.

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ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCES ON STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
by Natalie O’Reilly and Shane R. Brady

Professional programs often vary from traditional academic programs and disciplines in their emphasis on applied learning that prepares students for entering a specific workforce. In social work, the primary assessment point within the curriculum to determine if students have attained the needed knowledge and skills from the curriculum in order to successfully engage in professional practice is field practicum. This session will focus on explaining the role of internships in the development of competency among social work students and how the school collects assessment data to demonstrate competency attainment of social work students and for program improvement.

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EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF TEAMWORK SKILLS
by Somik Ghosh

Upon graduation, students from the Construction Science program engage in diverse teams including key members of a project. To prepare the students for their profession, assignments are geared to engage students in collaborative problem-solving and decision-making processes. Students are expected to effectively plan, organize, schedule, execute, and lead construction management-related projects in a project team environment to assess team, team members, and project performance.

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INSIGHTS FOR EFFECTIVELY ASSESSING COMMUNICATION SKILLS OF GRADUATE STUDENTS
by Deepak Devegowda

Petroleum Engineering students face a unique problem. The oil and gas industry is characterized by a bimodal population distribution, with a large percentage of people in the 55+ age group and a large proportion in the 25 to 35 age group as well. Because of the way the industry evolved over the years, the former group has great experience but little to no formal education beyond a bachelor’s degree and sometimes, even lesser. The latter group is characterized with little to no experience but come armed with MS and doctorates in Petroleum Engineering. Getting students to navigate the technical gap but also the generational gap is a challenge that has slowly lead to the 10-minute short talk or even a 2- or 3-minute elevator speech. These are really short talks where students distill years of research in to succinct, non-technical speeches that can be understood by the lay person. In this talk, I discuss some of the success stories, what worked and what did not and present a plan for the future to help our students advance their communication skills.

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ASSESSING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY: EFFECTIVE AND PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES
by Anthony Natale

This roundtable will focus on practical techniques for assessing diversity and inclusion within group projects.  Session materials include a sample group contract, a reflective written assignment of individual contributions to group work, and an oral reflection method focused on observations, reflections, interpretations, and decisions.  Each is overviewed with tips and discussion on their application in the classroom.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to overview the recommended components of a group work contract.
• Participants will be able to describe a reflective written assignment on individual contributions to group work.
• Participants will be able to apply an oral method for assessing student learning focused on diversity and inclusion.

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INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT PROCESS: THE PRICE EXAMPLE
by Frances L. Ayres and Beth Stetson

Participants will practice drafting Program Objectives, Learning Goals and Measurable Outcomes for their program and participate in interactive discussion.  We will discuss the integrated assessment process for Price College of Business (PCOB)’s Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program.  PCOB is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).  AACSB directs schools to define their own mission and operate to fulfill that mission.  PCOB’s BBA program’s mission, curriculum and related assessment is derived from PCOB’s mission.  Assessment data is gathered via the capstone course, nationally-normed objective tests and career placement data.  We will discuss the design and operation of the BBA program’s assessment plan, including the use of assessment results to “close the loop” and implement meaningful program change. 

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ACADEMIC LIFE ADVISING: AN INNOVATIVE ADVISING APPROACH TO PROMOTE STUDENT SUCCESS
by Kathleen Smith

Mentoring has remained a critical element within the culture of higher education and has proven to be one of the most effective strategies for integrating students into the institutional fabric and their academic discipline, key predictors of degree completion.  Given the power of mentorship, there are few practical frameworks to guide meaningful conversation that inspires action. Students’ lives are rarely compartmentalized where academics are experienced separately from other dimensions of their human identity and they rely on faculty for support and guidance. Please join this roundtable discussion where we will  discuss our own experiences with mentorship and share how we can take our own lessons learned to strengthen mentoring practices at OU. Participants will be introduced to Academic Life Coaching, an innovative advising approach designed to invite engagement, empower executive functioning capabilities, and bring greater purpose to the mentorship relationship.

 

REAL-TIME STUDENT ASSESSMENT: A SHARED CONTINUOUS COMMITMENT TO STUDENTS' EQUITABLE ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING OUTCOMES (PDF)
by Peggy Maki

Building on the University of Oklahoma’s existing cyclical commitment to report on and use assessment results to improve students’ learning, this keynote initially makes the case for why closely gauging students’ progress toward achieving high-quality exit-level outcomes and developing on-time interventions to improve patterns of underperformance along currently enrolled students’ educational pathways needs to become the new assessment norm. This approach represents a commitment to students’ equitable progress toward achieving high-quality outcomes. A confluence of developments across the landscape of higher education in this century, including the expanding use of scoring rubrics and technological means to aggregate and disaggregate scoring results, now makes it possible to use assessment results nimbly in real time in a shared commitment to currently enrolled students’ success.

FOLLOW-UP INTERACTIVE SESSION (PDF)
by Peggy Maki

The follow up interactive session identifies the shared set of learner-centered commitments, principles, and processes that underlie the Real-time Student Assessment approach to assessment, including:

1. The canvas that supports real-time student assessment.
2. Creation of communities of practice (COPs) that act on continuous reporting of assessment results in the short- and long-term to improve currently enrolled students’ achievement in real-time along their educational pathways.
3. Use of developments in technology that provide on-time access to and visual representation of students’ semester-by-semester assessment results to keep all constituencies:

a)  Informed about patterns of performance and underperformance across your student demographics and
b)  Aware of the need for timely institutional support, interventions, or resources to improve patterns of underperformance as they emerge or persist in currently enrolled students’ work.