Outcomes Assessment at Edmonds Community College
2007-08 Annual Outcomes-Assessment Report: Edmonds Community College
Assessment Liaisons: Beth O’Donnell, 425-640-1208, bodonnel@edcc.edu ;Kathy Murphy, 425-640-1380, kmurphy@edcc.edu
A. Highlights of Major Assessment Activities/Project
- We focused most of our time on Accreditation-oriented tasks, such as responding to research questions and surveys, addressing assessment-related Accreditation Standards, helping other staff and departments respond to Accreditation tasks, and contributing to the larger Self-Study.
- We allocated some O.A. funding for two faculty Assessment Mini-Grants (for small-assessment projects) and for conference attendance
- Additionally, we helped restructure the Institutional Effectiveness Task Force by re-examining its mission and areas of influence, especially with respect to Self-Study findings and Accreditation recommendations.
- We collaborated with Institutional Effectiveness, IT, CIS, and other faculty and administrators to research various software platforms (including Blackboard) that could be used to collect, track, and assess student learning, institutional-effectiveness measures, and other college-wide assessment indicators.
- We helped prepare a Title III Grant related to Outcomes Assessment, Professional Development, and Institutional Effectiveness. The college was awarded the grant for approximately 1.2 million, which, among other things, will fund the additional positions we need to improve coordination between Outcomes Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness and to integrate both more effectively into larger institutional processes.
- We devoted significant O.A. resources and efforts to processing results from the previous year's Diversity Assessment project, conducting the 07-08 Writing Assessment project, and supporting the Writing Modules project. See details below.
Diversity Assessment Project (2006-2007): We surveyed faculty who teach CD classes and Diversity-Studies courses to identify one commonly taught and assessed diversity outcome (as specified in the college’s diversity domains). We used Blackboard to collect samples of student work that reflected the identified CD outcome, and then selected faculty evaluated how well students met the CD outcome.
Preliminary analysis —Assignments & Students address CD issues but not necessarily our exact CD domains. (Many evaluators could not score the assignments in terms of the specified domain)
Where we are now —Working with Diversity Studies and the Committee for Instruction & Diversity to get a more accurate picture of what CD content we do address and what analytic tools or frameworks we apply in our classes.
Next Steps and Goals — Reconsider the domains in light of our work with CID; develop/adapt CD assessment tools. We’re discussing using a “Big Ideas” approach for understanding the CD content our classes address and an SGID format for exploring what CD content, skill, and analytic frameworks are students are comprehending.
Writing Assessment Project (2007-2008): As we did for the Diversity-Assessment Project, we used Blackboard to collect samples of student work. We recruited faculty to evaluate the students’ writing in terms of clarity and organization, two of the Writing Outcomes listed in the College-Wide Ability for Written Communication.
Preliminary analysis—Evaluators scored 231 student postings from multiple disciplines.
Only 10% earned a “0” (doesn’t meet standard); about 42% earned a “1” (meets standard); and almost 49% earned a “2” (exceeds the standard)
Other results—We noted some gaps between evaluators’ ratings/comments about sentence-level problems: Frequently, if an assignment scored low for overall content, evaluators indicated more sentence-level problems than actually appeared in the students’ work (as if evaluators developed the impression that a generally poor student assignment had more sentence-level errors than generally good student work. Conversely, evaluators seemed to overlook or under-penalize sentence errors in good student work. (These findings are are consistent with other composition research about perception of errors in student writing.)
Where we are now—We’re using the writing samples in Writing Modules Project (See details below). We’re continuing to analyze the writing samples and evaluations.
Next Steps and Goals—We’ll continue to report additional findings. We’ll discuss with departments and programs how they can use this process to address their learning outcomes. We’ll incorporate use of Bb in future Assessment Plans as we coordinate with I.E. and Title III work.
The Writing Modules Project (Spring 2008 through Spring 2009): English instructor Jennifer Inslee is coordinating participants from Writing Center, TRIO, Bridge, EAP, ESL & English in identifying common student-writing errors (indicated, in part, by the Writing Assessment project) and developing cross-disciplinary instructional modules to help address student-writing problems.
Where we are now—Finishing research of “best practices”; culling student postings from Writing Assessment project (and other sources) for sample problems to be used in the writing modules
Next Steps and Goals—create the modules, pilot them, and assess their effectiveness.
Goals for next year?
- Build on and address the findings and recommendations indentified in the College’s Self-Study and the Accreditation Team’s report.
- Continue to use Blackboard to support classroom and program assessment.
- Continue to facilitate individual and large-scale assessment efforts.
- Help to shape and administer the Title III Grant work.
- Continue to help research software platforms that will support all-levels of campus assessment.
B. Examples of Educational Improvements Made/Actions Taken
- We contributed significantly to the Self-Study process.
- Restructuring the I.E. Task Force will help improve coordination between Outcomes Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness. That in turn will provide more support for assessing instruction and student learning. Ultimately, we hope that such coordination and support will mean that O.A. and I.E. will play a larger role in campus-wide planning processes.
- We used Blackboard to pilot program-level assessment of student learning—an area that both our Self Study and the Accreditation Team identified as needing improvement.
- We used results from previous and on-going project s to support additional follow up assessment work and instructional activities initiated by faculty
C. Current Issues/Concerns
- We are anticipating at least some areas will not be proactive enough about substantially addressing accreditation recommendations.
- We also anticipate some understandable resistance to creating a “culture of evidence & assessment” and to engaging in the kind of “front-loading” that the entire campus needs to do in order to fully exploit the resources offered in the Title III grant. Virtually all campus areas will need to be involved in collecting and analyzing data about student learning, professional development, and college performance.
D. Budget
RECAP 011-2940
OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT
TOTALS |
Gonzalez |
PT Fac F, |
Mini-grants |
Registrations |
Travel |
Other |
|
Allocations: |
54,210.00 |
17,178.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
37,032.00 |
Expended: |
34,193.69 |
0.00 |
33,342.64 |
784.00 |
0.00 |
67.05 |
0.00 |
Encumbered: |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
Submitted: |
21,309.32 |
17,178.00 |
0.00 |
2,448.00 |
1,510.00 |
0.00 |
173.32 |
Balances: |
(1,293.01) |
0.00 |
(33,342.64) |
(3,232.00) |
(1,510.00) |
(67.05) |
36,858.68 |
