Assessment Philosophy
Academic Course and Program Assessment
Assessment of student learning outcomes in academic offerings (courses and programs) at Glen Oaks Community College has been undergoing a steady process of improvement, seeking to strike a balance between creating clear, streamlined, and sustainable steps and ensuring the focus of these steps is to help faculty think through the important questions of how to improve student learning in their classes and programs. Glen Oaks is currently participating in the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Assessment Academy to bring the most current best practices for student learning assessment to our campus. The faculty-led Assessment Committee has the key role on campus of overseeing all the assessment processes at the College and recommending improvements to the college’s Chief Academic Officer. The most recent Assessment Committee recommendations adopted by GOCC’s Academics division are detailed below.
All credit-bearing courses will have Common Course Outcomes (CCOs) that will…
- Be listed on the CDM for the course and on every syllabus for course section, regardless of location, instructor, or format – full-time vs. adjunct instructor; face-to-face on- or off-campus, online, or hybrid, etc.
- Be developed to maximize transferability or meet program/industry outcomes through consensus of all full-time faculty in the discipline who teach the course; for courses with no full-time faculty, administration may assign a part-time (adjunct/annual) instructor in the discipline to develop CCOs
- Utilize a common quantitative measure with a common benchmark to define “success,” even if the assessment is by nature qualitative (for example, students will earn at least 3 points on a 4-point common rubric; at least 80% on a common long-answer exam question; etc.)
- Utilize a common quantitative target for assessment (for example, 70% of students will meet the success measure and benchmark).
Completability of Assessment
- Each course is limited to a reasonable number of CCOs, unless otherwise dictated by external discipline-specific accreditation;
- An infrequently offered (one section per year or less), stacked/combined, or Open Entry/Open Exit course, as well as other courses, may be limited to a smaller number of CCOs as shown below – with faculty-submitted rationale, by recommendation of the Assessment office, with Assessment Committee review and subject to Academic Dean approval.
- Program (PLOs) and Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) are aligned with (mapped to) individual CCOs and assessed indirectly through ongoing CCO assessment, in addition to any external assessments.
- Each course has at least one CCO that is mapped to an ILO – but every CCO is not required to have an ILO.
- Each course required in an occupational program has at least one CCO that is mapped to a PLO– but every CCO is not required to have a PLO.
Assessment Plans
- The proposed “default pattern” is one CCO assessed per semester.
- Faculty may develop “alternate patterns” to collect sufficient data for low-enrollment courses.
- Full-time faculty will develop an assessment plan to ensure minimum frequency of assessment per cycle, with February 15 as the deadline for entering Fall semester assessment data and September 15 as the deadline for entering Winter semester data.
Implementation
- Assessment of Common Course Outcomes according to the proposed process commenced in Fall 2018 semester.
- Faculty may request delayed implementation of the new process of CCO assessment:
- Alternate implementation dates: Winter 2019, Fall 2019.
- Faculty have to supply a rationale for delayed implementation.
Consistency – When can CCOs be changed?
- During CDM review or being revised in Curriculum Committee
- Based on accreditation changes/requirements
- As an action plan resulting from analysis of assessment findings or from Program Review
- Based on statewide initiatives (Right Math at the Right Time, Transfer, etc.)