April 3, 1998
In attendance: Tom Ellett, Susan Bonzi, Kelley Bishop, Mary Beth Manners, Dave Potter, Steve St. Onge, Bill Pollard
Tom communicated the charge to AUSLOAC and to this sub-committee. He also shared the report of the Residence Life pilot project. Then Kelley Bishop from Career Services, Mary Beth Manners from Judicial Affairs, and Tom Ellett from Residence Life talked about their mission statements and the role of assessment in the continuous improvement of their offices. Kelley indicated that they have just started a longitudinal study that focuses on the value students place on their education. Mary Beth described a project to review 3600 files to determine the impact of the Judicial Affairs efforts on student retention, recidivism, academic success, etc. Tom mentioned two efforts. The first is the strategic planning process that the Office of Residence Life has initiated. The second is the project on community standards that will research (1) how students construct their educational and residence life experiences and (2) how they make moral decisions requiring complex decision making and complex thinking. They will also look at how residence hall staff within and outside of the program have benefited from the training provided by Neil Katz from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
Tom also described the Student Affairs Division SUIQ Quality Improvement Team for Assessment template for assessing Student Affairs programs. This is a template based on a discrepancy model developed by Peter Gray (which in turn was patterned after Robert Stake's countenance of educational evaluation model). The models are described at the end of these notes.
The conversation then turned to the consideration of a more comprehensive view of "out-of-class learning." The main point was that we should not compartmentalize such learning in either the student affairs domain or the academic domain. What students take away from attending college results from a combination of experiences. There is out of class learning that is related to academic courses (assignments, projects, discussions, internships, co-ops, service learning, etc.) and there are many other formal and informal opportunities for student learning and development in addition to those offered by student affairs offices.
Bill Pollard warned against a "silo" mentality where "learning" is viewed to occur in self-contained environments or settings. He said, "we are not creating a Social Work graduate, but an SU graduate."
Committee members suggested that: We also have to include students in the process of defining and assessment learning and development. We have to help students articulate their own expectations for their education. Inside the classroom we have to engage students in discussions about what they have learned inside and outside of the classroom (for example, individually and in groups, such as the honor society, SGA, UBE, GSO, peer advisors and educators, and other student organizations). We have to make connections. And we have to help students to make connections (1) between academic in-class and out-of-class experiences and (2) among their "academic" experiences and all of their other experiences.
We have to define all of the venues of learning and development that are available to students. We have to look at the historical and economic context related to student affairs, residence life, and academic affairs as they have affected student learning and development. We have to have knowledge of what's going on all over campus. We have to ask students, where are you headed? We have to find ways to help students see the importance of both classroom activities and residence life activities for their education. We have to understand why some students have no sense of community at SU. Some students ask why would I want to be part of a community or why do I need to be involved? Do they come to SU without a sense of belonging or do they become alienated after they arrive?
We will continue this discussion of learning out side of the classroom at the next subcommittee meeting.
The discrepancy model has the following elements (Gray, 1997):
| Program name, components & intended outcomes | Intended Activities | Actual Activities | Perceptions of Program | Program Impact |
| This element describes what the program is all about and what it is intended to achieve. | This element describes what the program staff and target students will do. | This element describes what actually hap-pened in the program. | This element describes how the students and staff experienc-ed this program, their satisfaction with it, and the potential influence of other factors. | This element describes the extent of both intended out-comes and unin-tended out-comes related to the program and students' and staff's exper-ience of it. |
In describing this model it is important to highlight the following:
There may be problems with the inappropriateness of the facilities used or staff performance, which affect the actual implementation of the program. Sometime these are two programs that are being contrasted. In this case it is especially important to document the actual activities of each program since there is always a risk of "appraising non-events" in this type of assessment. Knowing how faithfully the actual activities of staff and student conform to the planned activities provides insight to the likelihood of achieving the intended outcomes of the program. Even with the best laid plans that are followed faithfully, students and staff who participate in a program construct their own meaning as they experience it. Therefore, an essential element of the assessment process is finding out (1) how satisfied people are with their participation, (2) how they characterize their experience of the program, and (3) what other factors they can identify that may have had an influence on them relative to the intent of the program (e.g., their background and experience, other people, other programs and activities, or their personality and point of view).
Once it is clear what actually took place during a program and how those involved experienced it, then it is possible to describe the impact of the program. However, it is important to design and implement data collection methods that identify the extent to which both intended and unintended outcomes occur.