April 30, 1998
The agenda of the all-committee meeting during the afternoon was to address the three questions posed to the subcommittees. (See the individual subcommittee meeting notes for a full account of their discussions.)
The following points were made:
The committee has to have a conceptual direction and a process to go forward that encompasses many voices. What we need is an anthology of assessment, or a map that shows where assessment is occurring and how it is defined at each location.
A three dimensional matrix was proposed to capture the richness and variety of assessment. It could help us to understand the context within which an assessment takes place. (See the notes from the Ongoing Efforts subcommittee.)
The issue of outcomes is a debatable concept. How do we differentiate between formative and summative assessment and between outcomes and aims?
What have we learned to date?
One of the things that we have learned is that not all units know what assessment is. We also have learned that to talk about assessment raises everyone's level of consciousness but that this can lead to both positive and negative results. However, conflict in itself does not mean that the process or the outcome is good or bad.
Clearly there is tension between an individual response and a collective response to assessment. There is a fear that we're defining an image of a "good professor." The thing that unites us all as teachers divides us because there are so many ways of teaching. We must be sensitive to the differences.
Departments and schools are at different places and, therefore, we must be sensitive to where they are in starting a conversation. They are on a continuum in terms of what they are doing with assessment and in different places in terms of their culture and epistemology.
We learned that people want to know where assessment ranks in the priorities of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. What are the consequences associated with moving along in this process or not (doing well or not engaging). What does the administration want and when? We will encounter skepticism and resistance if we don't provide some structure. We have to help people to get started and to learn the process of assessment or some departments won't be able to get started. The question is, "How do we involve the uninvolved?"
Where should we be a year from now?
By the end of next year we should be finished with information gathering about assessment on campus by asking questions, giving examples, providing resources and be ready to report what we have found. People know this is a complex concept and process so we have to communicate the complexity or we will not be credible. We have to talk about all the dimensions of assessment including the purpose, the content, the audience, the context, and the subjects. There also are interdependencies and mutual influences that have to be taken into account.
Ron Cavanagh assured the group that there is no requirement or expectation on the part of the Vice Chancellor that departments will share information gained in an assessment with anyone else. They may choose to share it with others at SU or external audiences (accrediting body).
We need to clarify the roles of faculty members and student affairs staff and to foster communication and collaboration between groups. We could develop a resource guide to facilitate this effort. We may choose to help define what an SU graduate should be. We also could engage faculty in intentional programming such as the learning communities project. We want to support student involvement in out of class experiences consistent with the core values of the University and the learning intended by faculty members. However, the student has to be at the center of all that we do.
In thinking about what distinguishes an SU student, perhaps we should use the metaphor of a chorus rather than a single voice. It is multiple students. We need to begin by knowing who our students are and what their experiences are before they come to SU. We need to clarify our expectations and students' expectation of an SU education. (Some of these expectations are spelled out in the SU Compact.)
Faculty have a very limited view of what students do here, that is, what student life is like. We need to find ways to connect academic affairs and student affairs activities and people.
We can accomplish our goals by having a series of community conversations through which we create a view of ourselves as a university. We have to listen and reflect what we hear. We have to outline the issues that emerge from the conversations regarding how individuals view their own and their collective missions of teaching and learning. We have to flesh-out the differences and similarities in teaching and learning in each field. (We have to collect data for the cube.) We have to describe the global expectations for assessment. And we have to answer these questions: Who are our students? What have they learned? How can we help faculty do what they do? How can we foster collaboration at all levels? How can we share what we are learning with each other and with the University community?
Meeting notes: CSTL Staff