Colleagues,
You all have been around the discussions of assessment and learning goals for long enough now that I feel comfortable in assuming that you are up to speed with our campus efforts. When I charged academic departments and programs first to develop an articulation of their learning goals and subsequently to report back on their plans for how they are going to go about evaluating the extent to which students in their programs are meeting them, I thought at the time that it would be important for the other educational programs in academic affairs to engage in this work as well. I know some of you have been thinking about it and others have even taken the initiative to get the discussions and reflections going.
I write now to ask each of you to engage the folks in your program in a process of reflection and articulation on learning goals and assessment. You might organize your work around these questions, though I certainly trust you to develop your own approaches, appropriate to your programs:
- What are the learning goals you would highlight as capturing the essence of your program?
- How do they connect to the University mission and Aims and Objectives?
- How might you go about evaluating the extent to which the students who participate in your program realize your learning goals?
It would be great if I could have a report from each of you by March 15th. Please note, I am not asking you to report on any assessments you have conducted by that date. I am simply asking you for a statement of your learning goals tied to the University mission, and a plan for how you might go about evaluating them.
Kim has compiled outstanding resources to help you with this work, and I suggest that each of you consult with her right at the outset.
Thanks so much,
Grant
