Annual Assessment Report to the College 2009-2010
College:
Health and Human Development__________________________
Department: _ Family and Consumer Sciences________________________
Program: _______________________________
Note: Please submit report to your department chair or program coordinator and to the Associate Dean of your College by September 30, 2010.
You may submit a separate report for each program which conducted assessment activities.
Liaison: ________Angie Giordano________________________
1. Overview of Annual Assessment Project(s)
1a. Assessment Process Overview: Provide a brief overview of the intended plan to assess the program this year. Is assessment under the
oversight of one person or a committee?
FCS Department Assessment Plan 2009-2010
PART 1:
Our FCS Department has conducted assessments of all four of our Department’s previous student learning outcomes (SLOs) over the past four
consecutive years:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Demonstrate knowledge of human ecological theory and the integrative nature of the family and consumer sciences profession.
Demonstrate and apply knowledge from their program of study to issues of well-being of individuals, families, and communities.
Demonstrate and apply appropriate research, technology and skills in professional practice.
Demonstrate knowledge and application of ethical and professional standards.
During the academic year of 2009-2010, the Department revisited the existing department SLOs to determine whether or not modifications
were warranted. Our review process of the department SLOs included an examination of three main issues:
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
•
First, the content of each of our stated SLOs was evaluated to question how applicable and representative each still is for our
individual areas and department as a whole.
•
Second, our Department analyzed the structure or wording of each SLO to ensure that each student learning outcome could be
assessed directly by students’ assignments in identified courses in our Department. For example, it was determined that our
previous SLO #4 could not be easily assessed by individual assignments because the previous SLO actually assessed four separate
student learning outcomes: (1) knowledge of ethical standards, (2) application of ethical standards, (3) knowledge of
professional standards, and (4) application of professional standards. Hence, specific changes to that SLO were completed.
•
Third, we considered the addition of subcategories for each of our Department SLOs that might consist of brief statements that
begin with appropriate assessment verbs. The addition of subcategories could help to link more general department SLOs (e.g.,
demonstrate knowledge) to specific assessment verbs (e.g., classify, name, count, etc.) that could more easily be assessed in
students’ course assignments.
Assessment planning was placed as an agenda item on our full faculty meetings (when possible) and, collectively, the faculty attempted to
address each of these three issues in the redevelopment of our FCS Department’s SLOs.
I was the primary assessment planner and organizer in the department, but all assessment work was completed this academic year in the
presence of the full faculty at our department meetings due to the nature of the assessment task.
(The outcome of this work is discussed below in the section, “How do your assessment activities connect with your program’s strategic plan?”)
PART 2:
In addition to the assessment work completed in Part 1, I also began to develop a student assessment plan for our Departments SLO#1 that will
be administered in our gateway (FCS 170) and capstone (FCS 491/494) courses. Specifically, I worked on creating a written essay assignment to
measure students’ understanding of our SLO#1, in collaboration with the full faculty to obtain their approval, with the intention to collect these
data in an online Moodle community. Detailed plans for these data collection efforts were initiated during the 2009-2010 academic year and
finalized at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year.
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
1b. Implementation and Modifications: Did the actual assessment process deviate from what was intended? If so, please describe any
modification to your assessment process and why it occurred.
Yes, slightly, for our Part 1 assessment plan. I had intended to spend a great deal of time on the plan above (at least focusing a portion of all of
our Spring semester department meetings), and had planned to accomplish this work at Department faculty meetings when all members could
join in a collaborative discussion. Full faculty participation was critical in that Department SLOs need to represent the connected, but uniquely
individual areas in our department. However, last year we conducted a search for two new faculty hires and a search for a new department
chair. As a result, the large majority of our department meetings, and any other additional meeting times that needed to be scheduled, were
focused on candidate interviews and selection, which left much less time to address our assessment plan than I had intended.
2. Student Learning Outcome Assessment Project: Answer questions according to the individual SLO assessed this year. If you assessed an
additional SLO, report in the next chart below.
2a. Which Student Learning Outcome was measured this year?
We did not measure any of our individual SLOs this year. Instead, we chose to revisit our existing Department SLOs and make any
modifications that our faculty felt were appropriately necessary.
2b. What assessment instrument(s) were used to measure this SLO?
2c. Describe the participants sampled to assess this SLO: discuss sample/participant and population size for this SLO. For example, what type of
students, which courses, how decisions were made to include certain participants.
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
2d. Describe the assessment design methodology: For example, was this SLO assessed longitudinally (same students at different points) or was
a cross-sectional comparison used (comparing freshmen with seniors)? If so, describe the assessment points used.
2e. Assessment Results & Analysis of this SLO: Provide a summary of how the data were analyzed and highlight important findings from the
data collected.
2f. Use of Assessment Results of this SLO: Think about all the different ways the results were or will be used. For example, to recommend
changes to course content/topics covered, course sequence, addition/deletion of courses in program, student support services, revisions to
program SLO’s, assessment instruments, academic programmatic changes, assessment plan changes, etc. Please provide a clear and detailed
description of how the assessment results were or will be used.
3. How do your assessment activities connect with your program’s strategic plan?
PART 1:
Our assessment activities this year connected with our program’s strategic plan by revisiting the core question of our FCS Department: what
basic student learning outcomes do we deem most important and essential for our graduates from the department to understand/apply. Our
assessment plan for the 2009-2010 year was a valuable and worthy task for several reasons. First, it has been at least five years since the
faculty have discussed and considered revising our SLOs because our assessment tasks over these past four years have been focused on
evaluating each separate department SLO. Second, the faculty in the department have undergone significant changes, with many retires and
new hires. As a result, many of our current faculty were not faculty members in the department when the existing SLOs were identified and
their perspectives needed to be incorporated into our overall SLOs. Third, because all of the areas in our department are closely affected by the
changing nature of community issues, both national and global, the department felt it was worthwhile to reexamine our SLOs in consideration of
any new social developments that may have occurred and that may have made it necessary for us to modify our existing SLOs. For instance, we
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
decided to add the word “global” to our SLO #2 and the concept of “sustainability” was discussed as a possible addition to our revised set of five
SLOs.
The outcome of our work on our Part 1 tasks resulted in the following revisions:
ORIGINAL FCS Department SLOs
1. Demonstrate knowledge of human ecological theory and the integrative nature of the family and consumer sciences profession.
2. Demonstrate and apply knowledge from their program of study to issues of well-being of individuals, families, and communities.
3. Demonstrate and apply appropriate research, technology and skills in professional practice.
4. Demonstrate knowledge and application of ethical and professional standards.
REVISED FCS Department SLOs 2009-2010
1. Demonstrate knowledge of human ecological theory and the integrative nature of the family and consumer sciences profession.
2. Demonstrate and apply knowledge from their program of study to current and future issues of well-being of individuals, families, and
global communities.
3. Demonstrate and apply appropriate research and technology in professional practice.
4. Demonstrate knowledge of ethical standards.
5. Apply professional practice standards and skills.
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
PART 2:
Inherent in our program’s strategic plan is the ongoing attention to student assessment. Our faculty, and each of our areas’ own accredidating
agencies, want to see evidence of students’ comprehension and application of fundamental student learning outcomes. The accumulation of
student data over time (longitudinal data that will be obtained at the onset and exit of students’ involvement in our department) will assist us in
determining to what extent our graduates are successfully achieving department SLOs. Using the university-wide online program, Moodle, to
collect and store data that can be analyzed for these purposes is also a smart choice. Analysis of the student work that will be collected can
allow us to present empirical quantitative data that can be included in professional reports. In addition, data analyses will afford our faculty the
opportunity to evaluate how we can improve course content, course sequencing, class assignments, etc., so that our graduates are certain to
exit our department with knowledge of the student learning objectives that we deem most fundamental to FCS.
4. Overall, if this year’s program assessment evidence indicates that new resources are needed in order to improve and support student
learning, please discuss here.
No resources were identified.
5. Other information, assessment or reflective activities not captured above.
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller
6. Has someone in your program completed, submitted or published a manuscript which uses or describes assessment activities in your
program? Please provide citation or discuss.
Not yet, but I would like to begin plans to do so in the near future.
March 30, 2009, prepared by Bonnie Paller