A paradigm shift has occurred in higher education. A generation
ago such terms as “assessment,” “rubric,” and “learning outcomes”
were not in the working vocabularies of many faculty and
departments. Today these terms are unavoidable and omnipresent, and
they have profoundly changed the landscape of higher
education.
Nor can academic institutions, when their various accreditation
agencies demand greater evidence of assessment, simply “push back”
(as some colleagues have been heard to suggest). There is no
resisting the assessment wave.
But there is no reason we should want to push back on assessment.
After all, faculty and academic institutions have always been
assessing their students and themselves. What's important is that
we keep abreast of best practices in assessment, and conduct
ongoing assessment in ways that privilege faculty expertise while
taking seriously, student feedback. At its heart assessment is
about learning: reflecting upon what one has learned and
acting upon those reflections, continually.
The trick is to ensure that assessment is understood as something
that develops locally and organically, originating in conversations
between faculty and students within their own disciplines. Faculty
know their disciplines better than anyone else. And because they
are in such sustained contact with their students, faculty can
learn a great deal about what students think of their courses,
syllabi, and assignments. Together, faculty and students need to be
learning from each other, all the time. All good academic
assessment has faculty-student dialogue and mutual learning at its
core.
Administrations also play a key role in assessment—not by telling
faculty or departments how they must assess, but by creating a
supportive, nurturing culture of assessment for faculty and
students. Administrations help initiate, orchestrate, study (and,
yes, assess) a University’s assessment practices. They help provide
faculty with the necessary tools and direction for conducting an
array of ongoing assessment activities and methods. In turn the
administration is continually learning from faculty and students
about the learning that takes place throughout the institution.
This is the three-way conversation that drives good assessment:
students, faculty, and administration in continual dialogue,
reflecting upon their ongoing learning.
What Is the Value of a St. John’s Education? is the
question at the core of our University's recent “Repositioning
Document.” This is the question that will drive much of our
assessment initiatives for the foreseeable future. (It is, in fact,
the kind of question all educational institutions are wrestling
with, especially as the cost of tuition continues to rise and
students are increasingly selective about where they attend
college.) This question cannot be answered without in-depth,
ongoing assessment.
Our goals:
- Cultivate a culture of assessment that is local and
“homegrown”—where assessment methods and initiatives are designed
by faculty, and unique to each department.
- Foster a lively sense of collegiality among faculty within
their disciplines, as well as between those faculty and their
students.
- Create a truly collaborative and mutually instructive three-way
dialogue of assessment between students, faculty, and
administrators.
- Showcase our collective assessment efforts every semester as a
means of demonstrating to prospective students and our fellow
colleagues just how creative and engaged we are when it comes to
reflecting upon the learning that is at the heart of our work at
St. John’s.
- Follow up on departmental and program assessment findings in
ways that enrich our programs and student success.