Developing an Assessment Culture in Multi-Section General Education Courses
Abstract
Multi-section courses introduce challenges for assurance that learning outcomes are being met. Often, large-scale assessments are disconnected from individual instructors’ efforts to understand their own classes, such as they might through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. As my university’s first-year composition and communication courses developed concurrent with the university’s general education program, we built faculty-driven internal processes that expanded the university’s limited information. Drawing on existing literature on composition and oral communication pedagogy as well as assessment research, we devised instructional approaches and assessment techniques that integrated and tested existing best practices. Our design uses data collection (e.g., questionnaires with direct and indirect measures, artifact collection, course evaluations) at multiple time points in an ongoing process. These data allow us to both aid instructors in answering specific questions about their classes and look at broader changes such as new assignments to better meet learning outcomes. The data also serve as a rich resource for presenting and publishing our successes and challenges as a form of scholarship. In providing details and examples of our approach, I will also challenge audience members to consider opportunities within their own programs or courses to create an ongoing SoTL mindset.
Location
Rooms 113 & 115
Recommended Citation
Gaffney, Amy, "Developing an Assessment Culture in Multi-Section General Education Courses" (2015). SoTL Commons Conference. 129.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2015/129
Developing an Assessment Culture in Multi-Section General Education Courses
Rooms 113 & 115
Multi-section courses introduce challenges for assurance that learning outcomes are being met. Often, large-scale assessments are disconnected from individual instructors’ efforts to understand their own classes, such as they might through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. As my university’s first-year composition and communication courses developed concurrent with the university’s general education program, we built faculty-driven internal processes that expanded the university’s limited information. Drawing on existing literature on composition and oral communication pedagogy as well as assessment research, we devised instructional approaches and assessment techniques that integrated and tested existing best practices. Our design uses data collection (e.g., questionnaires with direct and indirect measures, artifact collection, course evaluations) at multiple time points in an ongoing process. These data allow us to both aid instructors in answering specific questions about their classes and look at broader changes such as new assignments to better meet learning outcomes. The data also serve as a rich resource for presenting and publishing our successes and challenges as a form of scholarship. In providing details and examples of our approach, I will also challenge audience members to consider opportunities within their own programs or courses to create an ongoing SoTL mindset.
