Pre-Institute Workshops
All Pre-Institute Workshops will be held on Sunday, October 16th. You may sign up and pay for any of the Pre-Institute Workshops when completing the on-line registration form (available mid August). Fees for workshops are in addition to Institute registration fees.
October 16, 2016
Full-Day Workshops - 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. ($140.00 ea.)
01A - Assessment 101
Participants will receive a copy of the Assessment 101 workbook, which they will use as they are guided through the development of an assessment plan for one academic program, plan their data collection and analysis, and help each other to identify ways the results can be used to improve student learning. The workshop is designed to help new or experienced assessment practitioners or faculty to conduct their own program assessment or to train colleagues at their institutions. After the workshop, participants will receive an electronic copy of the workbook for use at their home institutions.
Wanda K. Baker, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute; and Nana Allison-Brewer, Haskell Indian Nations University
01B - Monitoring and Assessing Community-Engaged Activities Across Campus
Most campuses are eager to answer the question “How are the students, faculty, and staff on campus working to address civic issues and public problems?” Explore a range of strategies to assess community-engaged activities, which include curricular, co-curricular, or project-based activities that are done in partnership with the community. Institutions committed to community engagement frequently approach assessment with a variety of lenses including assessment and
evaluation of community outcomes, student outcomes, partnership assessment and faculty/staff engagement among others. In practice, campuses confront an array of challenges to align these approaches into a comprehensive assessment plan. This session will give participants tools, strategies, and information to design, initiate and/or enhance a systematic mechanism for monitoring and assessment of community-engaged activities.
Kristin E. Norris and Anne Weiss, IUPUI; Heather Mack, Heather Mack Consulting, LLC; Amanda Wittman, Cornell University; and Kristin Medlin, Treetop Commons
01C - Making it Meaningful: How to Engage Faculty in Lasting Assessment Reform, From Idea Generation to Supported Implementation
Assessment professionals are often tasked with the wholesale reform of assessment processes at their institutions. Lack of faculty engagement can doom such work to failure, even when in the hands of the most capable leader. This workshop looks at building the capacity of your faculty and staff to lead and implement assessment reform. We focus on four specific techniques in the morning: appealing to higher ideals, creating a visual communication message, thinking politically and creating microleadership opportunities—all of which support generating ideas and garnering support for assessment reform. In the afternoon, we look more deeply at a form of microleadership, assessment coaching, as an effective model for moving from ideas about assessment reform to implementing a sustainable, high quality assessment process led by faculty for faculty.
Debora Hinderliter Ortloff, Jacob E. Amidon, Kellie Gauvin, and Meg Gillio, Finger Lakes Community College
Half-Day Workshops - 9:00 a.m. - Noon ($70.00 ea.)
01D - Program Review: Purposes, Perspectives, and Processes
Program Review is a widely acknowledged approach to improving quality in higher education. This workshop identifies the purposes of program review and examines its evolution and impact in helping colleges and universities improve student learning outcomes as well as student affairs and administrative services. Perspectives of faculty, chairs, academic unit leaders, student affairs professionals, and central administrators will be shared. The process of planning for, conducting, and using the results from program review will be highlighted.
Karen E. Black and Stephen P. Hundley, IUPUI; and Robert W. Aaron, The Ohio State University
01E - Assessing Intercultural Competence: A Hands-On Workshop for Assessment Professionals
Gaining perspective in terms of assessing intercultural competence and global learning is not common in our field. Many campuses have initiated very fine plans, but few have persevered over time with consistency, in order to amass a body of data to draw upon to make improvements in their instructional designs. In this session 3 such campuses will share their expertise at the campus-wide, program-wide, and course-level assessment cycles, with appropriate instructional improvement implementations. Participants will gather and discuss insights into the possible mixes of assessment practices and instructional improvements at each level of this highly nuanced and complex work.
Chris T. Cartwright, Intercultural Communication Institute; Christopher Hightower, Texas Christian University; Donna Evans and Martha Patrone, Miami University of Ohio; and Iris Berdrow, Bentley University
01F - Designing and Implementing a Sustainable Assessment Process: Practical Strategies for Balancing Accountability and Improvement
The principal purpose of assessment is continuous improvement of student learning. However, results of assessment of student learning in colleges and universities have traditionally been used for accountability purposes. This practice is quite common in research institutions where development and Implementation of a systematic assessment process primarily aimed at promoting continuous improvement of student learning can be a major challenge. This presentation provides practical strategies for developing, implementing and sustaining a systematic institutional assessment processes aimed at cultivating a culture of continuous improvement of student learning in research universities, while at the same time, addressing accountability needs.
Felix O. Wao and Ryan C. Chung, University of Oklahoma
Half-Day Workshops - 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. ($70.00 ea.)
01G - Complementing the Classroom: Developing and Assessing Co-Curricular Learning Outcomes
This workshop outlines the best practices used to develop and assess co-curricular learning outcomes. Learning outside of the classroom, or co-curricular learning, receives a great deal of attention from student affairs professionals, faculty, administrators, accreditors, and other stakeholders. The advantages of developing learning outcomes for the co-curriculum and assessing those outcomes will be discussed. Participants will have the opportunity to develop co-curricular outcomes and identify appropriate assessment techniques. Implications co-curricular outcomes have for student programming, the relationship between co-curricular outcomes and institutional and external learning domains, and using assessment results for program improvement will be discussed.
Robert W. Aaron, The Ohio State University; and A. Katherine Busby, The University of Mississippi
01H - Making Assessment More Valuable on Our Campuses
Promoting the value of assessment as internally-driven, rather than externally-mandated or administratively-initiated, is challenging. Although we thought deeper understanding of assessment could be cultivated simultaneously with an appreciation of the value of the assessment process, we quickly realized this was not so. We will share the evolution of our comprehensive and coordinated assessment process and tools designed to engage all programs and units in the assessment cycle for improvement purposes and show how our own assessment results have been used to promote increased value of assessment. Participants will develop a draft plan for cultivating similar processes at their own institutions.
Teresa L. Flateby, Delena Bell Gatch, and Cynthia Groover, Georgia Southern University