CARLA L. MORELON, PH.D.
Dr. Jo Beld’s brief, Building Your Assessment Toolkit:
Strategies for Gathering Actionable Evidence of Student
Learning offers a collage of practical steps that - when
pulled together – can create an holistic assessment picture
that accurately depicts the university’s impact on student
learning outcomes (SLOs). The greatest advantage to Beld’s
framework is that the suggested strategies can be scaled
to institutional size and contextualized to help Minority
Serving Institutions (MSIs) determine the extent to which
its student learning outcomes are being met (also leading
to fulfilment of the institutional mission). The advice that
Beld provides is useful to any person in the institution
wishing to build a bevy of factual information (rather than
anecdotal assertions) about the impact of their program
on SLOs. Beld offers a roadmap to reach the final destination – i.e., assessing SLOs to determine its impact on
the mission – by encouraging readers to ask themselves a
few questions. The answers she provides highlight three
challenges that must be overcome to realize a successful
assessment implementation: collaboration, communication
and connection.
the president communicate that assessment is a priority.
Otherwise, it will be difficult for this type of initiative to
become a part of the institutional culture. Adding to this
difficulty, assessment must be communicated and implemented in ways that hold the entire campus accountable
for their role in helping the institution assess SLOs and
realize its mission. Secondly, senior administrators (on
both the academic administrative sides) must communicate, through their strategic goals, the ways that their units
will use assessment to answer questions about quality and
impact. Middle-level administrators must establish structured modes of communication to regularly collect, discuss
and analyze data that can be used to determine whether
initiatives are having the intended impact. Naturally, the
staff members are doing the brunt of the work and should
aspire to share their assessment strategies and results with
others hoping to make data-informed decisions about their
programs. In the classroom, faculty members must increasingly share rubrics at the same time that assignments
are administered. As Beld suggests, providing students
a rubric from the beginning is an opportunity to clearly
communicate expectations for quality submissions. While
assessment conversations are held on a regular basis, sharing how results were implemented for improvement has
been historically difficult.
Collaboration. When an institution’s infrastructure is such
that human and fiscal resources are lean, collaboration
is one of the most resourceful steps its members can take
when assessing SLOs. The successful implementation of
Beld’s framework relies upon cross-campus sharing of
resources (e.g., instruments, data and information) among
academic as well as administrative units. But here is the
catch: People must be willing and feel comfortable in sharing materials. Sharing is beneficial, but it can also make a
person/unit feel vulnerable when doing so with others for
the first time. Therefore, it is helpful to create an environment that facilitates collegial inquiry. When I implemented
an Assessment Report-Out Day, units presented their
data and explained how they used it for improvement.
As people learned new information about others’ assessment initiatives, they began having conversations about
ways to combine and share their work. As Beld suggests,
collaborating (to the extent possible) enables institutions
to maximize resources and can exponentially increase the
impact of an assessment activity.
Connections. Beld concludes the brief with an emphasis on
the importance of using the data to “sustain and strengthen learning, to the benefit of the students we serve.” While
all parts of assessment are important, connecting the
multiple data points and using results for improvement is
critical for enhancing the impact that institutions intend
to have. Beld’s framework can help units establish and
sustain a focused assessment agenda using myriad assessment options. Beginning with the end in mind, units must
determine how to combine the results of direct (e.g., tests,
portfolios, discipline-specific exams, journal responses)
and indirect (e.g., focus groups, surveys) data to paint a
holistic picture of the student learning experience. Tests
and exams alone can answer questions about the extent to
which student learning outcomes were realized. Portfolios
can showcase students’ capacity to adapt newly-acquired
skills to reach various audiences. But this is not the entire
picture and does not fully capture the students’ entire
learning experience. To fill this void, focus groups and
surveys can delve into students’ perceptions of the learning
environment and solicit feedback about suggested improvements. If, for example, examinations reveal that most
Communication. Oftentimes, assessment conversations and
decisions happen in silos, a practice that could potentially
drain institutional resources. The successful cross-campus
implementation of assessment initiatives is dependent
on several levels of communication. It is imperative for
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students performed exceptionally well on a particular SLO
but were not meeting the unit’s intern/job placement goals,
a focus group or survey could reveal that students were impressed with the course’s faculty and available technology,
but felt that more cutting-edge courses were missing that
would make them more competitive in the field.
requirements. But, those are the easy answers. I assert three
things. First, institutions should WANT to know whether
their students are learning as intended, because it protects
their legacy of educational excellence. What better reason
to collaborate? Secondly, institutions should be the architect of communicating their stories to internal as well as
external audiences, because only they know how to tell
it in the proper context. Finally, connecting the multiple
data points through assessment provides a solution for
both challenges by providing a body of data and information that can be used to explain the institutional impact on
student learning. Beld’s brief offers a very practical strategy
to accomplish those goals.
So, why is this conversation important? Why is Dr. Beld’s
outline of practical steps important? One could easily
respond that assessment is here to stay, given the federal
government’s plan to implement college accountability
measures. As assessment professionals, we are all intimately familiar with the regional and discipline-specific
accrediting bodies’ student learning outcome assessment
Carla L. Morelon, Ph.D.
Carla Morelon has worked in
higher education for 24 years and
is originally from Arkansas. Her areas of expertise include accreditation, assessment/evaluation, institutional/organizational effectiveness
and strategic planning but she truly
has a passion for using her skills to
help institutions manage programs
efficiently and effectively. She developed these skills while working at
Dillard University (New Orleans)
as the director for such programs
as institutional effectiveness and
assessment, academic advising,
Supplemental Instruction and the
Honors Program. She joined Dillard
when her PhD in Higher Education
Administration was completed at
Indiana University (Bloomington),
where she worked as a Project
Associate for the National Survey
for Student Engagement (NSSE).
During that time, she also created a doctoral research team that
published the book, Standing on
2
the Outside Looking In: Underrepresented Students’ Experiences in
Advanced Degree Programs. Before
enrolling at Indiana, she completed
an M.Ed. in Higher Education at
Vanderbilt University’s Peabody
College of Education and often returned to to Arkansas to administer college preparation workshops
for her community. Her passion for
education has its foundation in her
mother’s emphasis on the importance of getting a college degree.
As a Grambling State University
graduate, she attributes her undergraduate experiences with caring
faculty and staff as the second
reason that she is so eager
to help others realize their
educational aspirations.