Assessment activities and results are intended to inform regular faculty reflection and discussion about effective teaching, learning, and curricula, and ultimately contribute to decision-making to support student learning.
Each semester, Roots of Contemporary Issues [ROOT] instructors submit a short report providing an assessment of student achievement of [ROOT] designator learning outcomes in their course (direct measure, using faculty expert judgement). The results are compiled annually and shared within the program to gauge student learning on [ROOT] designator learning outcomes and provide [ROOT] faculty with information for program improvement. Understanding student strengths and weaknesses helps instructors know how to target improvements.
Over the past two years, these [ROOT] assessment results have informed a number changes intended to improve first-year experience [ROOT] courses, such as:
- Revising the Library Research Assignments for online sections to better align with in person sections and to support student performance on the Information Literacy outcome and Source Analysis criterion
- Resuming faculty norming sessions to ensure a shared understanding of [ROOT] learning outcomes and assessment criteria
- Regularly reviewing how assignments are aligned with and advance [ROOT] learning outcomes
- Developing training for Teaching Assistants related to program learning outcomes assessment and scoring student written work using rubrics
Discussions of assessment results have helped us reflect on the extent to which our assignments explicitly ask students to produce work that demonstrates their proficiency, with consistency across all course sections, campuses, and instruction modes.
RCI Assistant Director Katy Whalen
For additional information about how UCORE assessment contributes to decision making intended to support student learning and quality undergraduate education, see Use of Student Learning Evidence. See Key Assessments for additional information about Roots of Contemporary Issues [ROOT] Assessment.