Challenge One:  Seminole State College needs to identify goals, objectives and learning outcomes that are measurable and publicly stated for all of its courses and academic programs.

Response: Challenge One

            This section of the report discusses how goals, objectives, and learning outcomes were identified by SSC and incorporated into comprehensive and thorough revisions of all course syllabi.  Each revised syllabus reflected the inclusion of a course-embedded process of assessment.  Course-embedded assessment is a direct assessment measure of student learning that the College supplements with the Educational Testing Service Academic Profile Test and Transfer Data Performance Indicator Reports.  Through the syllabi and other campus documents, such as course and division assessment reports, the directly-measured goals, objectives, and learning outcomes are publicly stated and widely dispersed across the campus community.  

The College now maintains eight general education student expectations.  Each supports the mission of the College.  Each department/division has a set of two to twelve departmental learner outcomes that support the general

Evolution of Assessment of Student Learning at Seminole State College

SSC’s use of course-embedded assessment evolved from the College's 1991 Assessment Plan, cited by HLC/NCA as “exemplary.”  At that time, the College established a committee to write a formal assessment plan for the institution.  The committee chose the course-embedded assessment approach after a series of conversations with faculty members and administrators, and after obtaining further information at various conferences.  Two major factors in that decision were:  1) recognition that each course includes foundational knowledge which consists of sequential knowledge and/or skills, and 2) the importance of faculty ownership of the assessment process.  To ensure faculty ownership, the committee asked faculty members to base their course-embedded assessment tools on this foundational knowledge.  Course-embedded assessment enables faculty members to affix and measure direct learning objectives at every course, department/discipline, general education, and program level.  In addition, this approach guarantees findings and outcomes that are mission related and academic oriented.  Subsequently, faculty-written course-embedded assessment became a part of the College's overall 1991 Assessment Plan, adopted in 1992. 

Revitalization of the College’s original assessment plan of 1991 began with the creation of a new Assessment of Student Learning Committee in 1999.  The committee’s initial duties included meeting the HLC/NCA challenges to the College’s assessment of student learning outcomes by encouraging faculty members to identify goals, objectives, and learning outcomes that are measurable and publicly stated for all of their courses and the College’s academic programs.

The Assessment of Student Learning Committee represents the entire college community.  The faculty members of this committee serve on a two-year rotation basis and represent all six divisions.  Other committee positions include standing positions for the president of the Faculty Senate; two student government representatives; the Vice President for Student Affairs; SSC's HLC/NCA Consultant Evaluator faculty member; and a member of the professional staff.  The Assessment of Student Learning Coordinator and the Vice President for Academic Affairs are chair and co-chair, respectively.  All meetings are public and open to faculty members, students, and staff. The College's budget is supportive of the work of this body.  Through the leadership of these committee members, faculty members began the revitalized college-wide Course-Embedded Assessment Program (Appendix G).

            Faculty members have worked continuously to develop course-embedded assessment instructments that offer several options to accommodate various educational goals and learning approaches.  Assessment options include: pre- and post-tests; pre- and post-writing assignments; pre- and post-performance tests; reading assignments; creative assignments; and testing and writing assignments.  The vast majority of faculty members typically administer test options at the beginning of a course to gauge entering knowledge, as well as later in the semester to measure learning progress, while others intersperse assessment measurements as they introduce new concepts throughout the semester. 

To further refine the process and to respond to HLC/NCA's concerns, the Assessment of Student Learning Committee recommended the College undertake a series of steps to aid faculty members in further development and refinement of workable course-embedded assessment tools.  To aid faculty members in implementing an effective college-wide assessment plan, the College invited experts in student assessment to the campus for faculty in-service workshops.  Dr. Jim Fulcher, Chair of the Humanities Division of Lincoln College, Lincoln, IL, and Consultant for HLC/NCA, held a workshop in August of 2000 on the importance and uses of assessment. Upon the recommendation of Dr. Cecilia Lopez, NCA liaison to SSC, in February 2001, the College invited Sally Wallace and Mary Emmons from Parkland Community College, to visit the campus for a workshop on ways to implement effective assessment.  The visiting colleagues  identified avenues for making changes based on assessment and reviewed the intricacies of writing enabling objectives for student learning.  To further broaden the experience and knowledge of the faculty concerning assessment, the administration sent several faculty members to HLC/NCA meetings. These steps helped the College redesign and implement improvements to the College’s assessment plan as recommended by the 2000 HLC/NCA site visit team. 

During ensuing faculty-driven assessment workshops, faculty members realized the importance of linking the College’s Mission Statement to general education student expectations, departmental learner outcomes, expected learner outcomes, enabling objectives.  Faculty members then embarked upon the demanding yet rewarding task of rewriting their Course and Common Student Syllabi in a college-wide standardized format that included these essential linkages (Resource 1 and 2 as listed in Appendix A).

            In this intensive, year-long process, the faculty also undertook the development of the various measurable levels of assessment of student learning which they integrated into the course-embedded assessment process and publicly stated in their syllabi.  First, they developed measurable departmental learner outcomes based on SSC’s Mission Statement.  From the departmental learner outcomes, faculty next developed for each course a set of measurable expected learner outcomes and a set of measurable enabling objectives.  These three levels of measurable objectives tie to measurable campus-wide general education student expectations.  The course syllabi and the General Education Program Outcomes Course Matrix of all courses note these relationships.  The matrix comprehensively demonstrates how each course is linked to each of the College’s eight general education student expectations, all of which are tied to the College’s Mission Statement.  This closes the loop from the College Mission Statement to the department learner outcomes, the expected learner outcomes, the enabling objectives, and the general education student expectations.  The benefits of these exercises rejuvenated the campus assessment program and strengthened the culture of assessing student learning (Resource 3 as listed in Appendix A).

The revitalized assessment process is both fluid and dynamic.  As the foundation of the College’s assessment program, course-embedded assessment provides the consistent basis by which faculty members assess not only their course, but also the academic programs in which they teach as well as their general education classes.  Other measures, both direct and indirect, round out and help triangulate the assessment process, yet course-embedded assessment is the critical measurable building block for the entire process.  Furthermore, faculty members continue to make improvements to their course-embedded evaluation options by refining these tools to better evaluate objectives and outcomes. 

            For instance, during fall 2002, faculty members in the College's six academic divisions evaluated student learning of thousands of students as part of the institution's Course-Embedded Assessment Program. In reporting results of teaching effectiveness, faculty members reported evidence of increases in student learning. Faculty members also included examples of a variety of ways they intended to utilize the information gathered to further improve student learning. The Math, Science and Engineering Division, for example, inaugurated new teaching methods such as adopting computerized tutorials and internet sites to facilitate learning of difficult math concepts. Faulty members also spent more time reviewing previously introduced math topics.  Faculty members in the Language Arts and Humanities Division, campus leaders in developing rubrics for evaluation purposes, made two essential changes based on what they learned--a series of rubrics to evaluate students in Art Studio courses and a unified curriculum in the Principles of English Composition I and II classes.           

            The entire assessment process also provides an opportunity for faculty members to discuss ideas and report needs revealed by the assessment process.  A rich informal communication network has developed across campus. Division Chair Council and Administrative Council meetings, memos, and conversations among members of the campus community facilitate discussion of the College’s ongoing, open and public process of student learning assessment.  Faculty members often include their cumulative ideas in Division Goals and Objectives reports.  This dynamic process has made the information from the Course-Embedded Assessment Program more meaningful and has led to more faculty ownership of the process. 

Response One:  Conclusion

            Based on a strong foundation of a fully developed Course-Embedded Assessment Program, the College's assessment approach is a dynamic one that is flexible enough to be useful yet standardized enough to encompass the mission of the College.  Course-Embedded Assessment also gives faculty members a feedback mechanism to fine-tune both the curriculum and the assesment process itself on a semester-by-semester basis.  The College’s Course-Embedded Assessment Program, which now contains measurable and publicly stated goals, objectives, and learning outcomes for all of the College’s courses and academic programs, is used as a basis for measuring learning outcomes not only in courses but also across all academic programs.