Assessment Institute Free Webinar Series
2023-2024 Season
The Assessment Institute will host 5 complimentary Zoom-based 60-minute webinars throughout the year featuring national leaders from Grand Challenges in Assessment. These webinars are open to anyone in the higher education community.
Last season's recordings from the HIPs in the States (High-Impact Practices) series can be found here.
- Wednesday, November 29, 2023, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern
- Wednesday, February 28, 2024, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern
- Wednesday, April 24, 2024, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern
- Wednesday, June 12, 2024, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern
- Wednesday, August 28, 2024, from 3:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern
This season's Assessment Institute free webinar series is sponsored by Xitracs™ by Concord USA, Inc.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern
Grand Challenges in Assessment: Guiding Innovations, Improving Pedagogy, and Increasing Equity
The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaborative effort endorsed by ten higher education organizations to create and enact national strategic plans to address pressing challenges facing assessment in higher education. Singer-Freeman and Robinson (2020) solicited feedback on grand challenges facing assessment in higher education by surveying members of the assessment community and presenting results at national meetings. This work resulted in the identification of three challenges with broad support from the assessment community: 1) Using assessment findings to increase equity; 2) Using assessment findings to direct rapid and equitable pedagogical improvements; and 3) Producing visible and actionable assessment findings that drive innovation. Six implementation teams are now enacting national strategic plans to drive improvements in these important areas. This introductory session will provide a project overview, share some national implementation highlights, and discuss tactics that participants can begin to implement on their own campus to increase equity, direct rapid pedagogical improvement, and drive innovations. Participants will leave this session with some good ideas they can implement immediately and an overview of the project and webinar series.
Featuring:
- Christine Robinson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Moderator)
- Karen Singer-Freeman, Wake Forest University
- Jessica Taylor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- R. Joel Farrell, Air University
- Ciji Heiser, Developing Capacity Coaching, LLC
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Wednesday, February 28, 2024, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern
Grand Challenges in Assessment: Making Assessment Actionable with Implementation Fidelity
The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaborative effort to create and enact national strategic plans to address challenges facing assessment in higher education. As part of the Grand Challenge of increasing the extent to which assessment findings are actionable, we seek to increase the use of implementation fidelity by assessment practitioners. Simply put, implementation fidelity is a measurement of the degree to which a program was implemented as it was planned. National and local strategies to advance the assessment of implementation fidelity were studied through an intensive scoping review of the higher education research literature. In this webinar we share definitions of implementation fidelity, the measurement of implementation fidelity, and the various frameworks used to characterize the role of implementation fidelity in higher education assessment. The webinar will present the group’s findings, giving practitioners resources to begin improving assessment at their institution by measuring implementation fidelity.
Featuring:
- Karen Singer-Freeman, Wake Forest University (Moderator)
- Anthony Arciero, Virginia Military Institute
- Elizabeth Hinton, University of Mississippi Medical Center
- Sarah Kirkland, Marine Corps University
- Carley Dear, University of Mississippi Medical Center
- Xiaomei Song, Case Western Reserve University (Resource Presenter)
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Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern
Grand Challenges in Assessment: Directing Rapid and Equitable Improvements in Pedagogy
The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaborative effort to create and enact national strategic plans to address pressing challenges facing assessment in higher education. One key challenge for the assessment community is increasing the extent to which assessment findings direct rapid and equitable pedagogical improvements. In this session, we discuss ways in which assessment data can be leveraged to inform rapid and equitable pedagogical changes and strategies that instructors can adapt for immediate course implementation that will benefit students, using tools such as student self-efficacy assessment, learning management systems, and generative AI, and using the lessons learned from instructional faculty members in our case studies. We will end with professional development recommendations for faculty, assessment, and curriculum leaders to adapt and implement on their own campuses.
Featuring:
- Christine Robinson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Moderator)
- Yao Hill, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Assessment and Curriculum Support Center
- Jarek Janio, Santa Ana College
- Heather Maness, University of Florida
- Karen White-Goyzueta, Southern New Hampshire University
Resource Support:
- Yan Cooksey, Southern Methodist University
- Rebecca Gibbons, University of South Florida
- Deb Hokien, Palm Beach State College Lake Worth Campus
- Bryant Hutson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Susan Kahn, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- Sarah Park, Grand Canyon University
- Brad Regier, Kansas State University
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Wednesday, June 12, 2024, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern
Grand Challenges in Assessment: Improving the Measurement of Student Learning Over Time
The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaborative effort to create and enact national strategic plans to address pressing challenges facing assessment in higher education. One key challenge for the assessment community is increasing the extent to which assessment findings direct immediate and equitable pedagogical improvements. This session will share findings from a nationally distributed survey that asked higher education stakeholders how the measurement of student learning is happening in different contexts - formative assessment, experiential learning, multiple-choice exam questions, and co-curricular learning. This webinar will begin with a panel presentation of key findings from each topic area followed by a discussion of the potential implications of the findings. Participants will leave this session with new ideas of ways to measure student learning in different contexts.
Featuring:
- Karen Singer-Freeman, Wake Forest University (Moderator)
- Jessica Taylor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Chadia Abras, Johns Hopkins University
- Elizabeth Carney, Clackamas Community College
- Jun Fu, Michigan State University
Resource Support:
- Bri Lauka, Johns Hopkins University
- Suzanne Carbonaro, Heliocampus
- Colin Suchland, Lincoln Land Community College
- Kari Thierer, Northeastern University
- Kim Daugherty, Spalding University
- Rene Schmauder, Clemson University
- Elizabeth Carney, Clackamas Community College
- Ashley Charsha, University of Tennessee Knoxville
- Bryant Hutson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Wednesday, August 28, 2024, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Eastern
Grand Challenges in Assessment: Employing Data Visualization to Guide Innovation
The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaboration to create and enact national strategic plans to improve assessment in higher education. One key challenge is to develop integrated institutional effectiveness (IIE) frameworks that make assessment findings visible and actionable, and drive innovation. IEE requires coordination of all functions and processes that support educational performance, quality, and efficiency. While IIE provides a holistic view of an institution, it also creates challenges around effectively sharing data from siloed areas. In this webinar we discuss ways in which data visualization and storytelling can drive decision-making. At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: (1) Describe IIE; (2) Challenge institutional structures, attitudes, and perceptions while leading IIE from an advisory role; (3) Build awareness and capacity for data visualization and storytelling; (4) Understand the difference between exploratory and explanatory storytelling; and (5) Incorporate equity principles in data visualization and storytelling.
Featuring:
- Christine Robinson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Moderator)
- Beth Janetski, School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Chad Bebee, University of Northern Colorado
- Kelly McCarthy, University of South Florida
- Ryan Smith, Illinois State University
- Amy Heston, Walsh University
Support:
- Shae Robinson, The University of Alabama
- Becky Croxton, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- Tracey Meilander, Lorain County Community College