Office of Assessment: Spring NEEAN Conference Report (March 28, 2008)
The theme of the meeting at UMASS-Amherst was “Dialogues Across the Disciplines: Focusing on General Education Outcomes Across Disciplines.”
A plenary session featuring Dr. G. Earl Peace, Jr., Program Director of NEEAN and a dean at the College of the Holy Cross, opened the proceedings. Dr. Peace reviewed the current regulatory climate and the urgency it gives to institutional assessment efforts, though he stated that he remains optimistic that in the end, higher education assessment will respect the distinctive characters and missions of each campus.
Attendees then transitioned to breakout sessions.
The Critical Thinking session was led by Dr. Bronwyn Adams from Syracuse University. The didactic portion of the presentation was limited. Mostly, we discussed around tables (which separated administrators, department chairs, and faculty) our various successes and challenges as regards critical thinking assessment. She ended with a series of recommendations:
- Begin with definitions developed communally. If there really is a generic definition of CT that spans history and physical science, faculty will have to determine what it is.
- Stated learning goals should be appropriate to level. (NB: This is not an uncontroversial position. Many believe that the highest levels of achievement should be consistently and repeatedly stated as learning/performance goals, while what counts as “acceptable” work should vary by level.)
- Communicate learning goals from many directions.
- Use multiple measures and verify that they are consistent.
- Make and record improvements based on assessment data.
- Change assessments themselves as part of the improvement process.
An interesting CT website: http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu/ctr.htm
The Quantitative Reasoning session was led by Dr. Nathan Grawe from Carleton College. He described his college’s FIPSE-funded QUIRK (QUantitative Inquiry, Reasoning, and Knowledge) initiative. Developers of the initiative made a distinction early on between mathematics, which is inherently theoretical, and quantitative reasoning (QR), which is by definition applied. QR can and does occur in many disciplines other than math. Indicators of quantitative reasoning include bringing math to bear where quantitative data would be most compelling, interpreting qualitative data generated by others, and communicating mathematically using graphs, tables, and prose. The assessment schema used at Carleton includes evaluation of QR content for competence, clarity, and effectiveness and a weighting schema that identifies the centrality of the QR content to a piece of student work as a whole. Discussion concluded with directed discussion of QR assessment implementation around resources, administration, faculty, and other considerations.
The Global Awareness session was led by Mr. Kevin Hovland, Director of Global Initiatives and Curricular Change at the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Mr. Hovland’s key message was that global awareness needs to be an overarching curricular commitment which finds its way into knowledge and skill assessments in many disciplines, rather than an add-on or a distribution requirement. This more usual attempt to infuse global awareness into curriculum trivializes it by reinforcing the idea that global awareness is an option which students can take or leave. He highlighted several different schema for defining “global awareness” as a set of learning goals, and then for distinguishing levels of achievement in meeting those goals. Attendees were invited to brainstorm questions and observations about assessing global awareness around tables, then each table presented its lists for further discussion. At the end of the presentation, Mr. Hovland distributed results of a national employer survey about what students need to know and be able to do and an AAC&U publication entitled Assessing Global Learning: Matching Good Intentions and Good Practice.
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