Discussion and Use of [CAPS] Assessment Summary Results to Improve the UCORE General Education Program

In concert with the UCORE Director, faculty on the UCORE Committee and Subcommittee for Assessment regularly review results of UCORE’s Capstone [CAPS] Assessment and suggest actions for improved assessment or use to inform decision-making to support student learning.

In place since 2015, UCORE’s Capstone [CAPS] Assessment provides valuable data about how well students are achieving the [CAPS] designator learning outcomes, as well as evidence of UCORE’s contribution towards advancing the WSU Undergraduate Learning Goals at the near-graduation level. While UCORE’s [CAPS] Assessment summary results have consistently shown that most students are meeting or exceeding faculty expectations on [CAPS] designator learning outcomes, these results have also informed a number of discussions and decisions intended to improve the quality of the UCORE general education program at WSU.

Faculty Development Offerings. Open response comments from [CAPS] instructors about student preparedness for [CAPS] courses have helped inform Lunch and Learn professional development programming for UCORE instructors, including sessions on assignment design, scaffolding, writing, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, and rubrics.

Reducing Junior Enrollments in CAPS Courses. To complement UCORE’s [CAPS] Assessment Reporting by instructors (direct measure, using faculty expert judgement), [CAPS] course enrollments and C-/D/F/W rates are also monitored for UCORE assessment (indirect measures, giving information about success and progress through the curriculum). These data have informed continued conversations with academic advisors and faculty around junior enrollments and achievement gaps in [CAPS] courses as compared to seniors, and strategies to enroll students in [CAPS] courses as seniors whenever possible. Over the past several academic years, this work has steadily reduced junior enrollments in [CAPS] courses from 1,083 in AY17-18 to 533 in AY24-25, a reduction of roughly half (Figure 1). Similarly, the number of juniors earning C-/D/F/W grades in [CAPS] courses decreased from 164 in AY17-18 to 62 in AY24-25 (Figure 2).

“These examples represent two of the ways that UCORE’s [CAPS] assessment summary results, including faculty evaluation of student performance and enrollment data, have been used to support reflection, discussions, and decision-making to support student learning and quality undergraduate education,” observed UCORE Director Kate Watts.

“On behalf of the UCORE Committee and Subcommittee for Assessment, we extend our appreciation to the many faculty and staff that engage in UCORE instruction, assessment, and advising,” Watts added. “We are committed to an ongoing, iterative process of improvement and faculty development support, and these data help us collectively take informed, intentional actions.”

For more examples of how student learning evidence from UCORE’s Capstone [CAPS] Assessment contributes to decision-making, including changes instructors plan to make to their [CAPS] course based on assessment, see Uses of UCORE’s Capstone [CAPS] Assessment.