SUBJECT: Campus Assessment Practices Update

Greetings, colleagues: 

Hot off the press!!! I have some excellent and exciting assessment information to share from the Assessment Subcommittee in regards to current and upcoming student learning assessment work. As Provost Scarlata shared in her October updates, engaging in assessment practices are integral to evaluating and celebrating student learning and success in your program.

As a reminder, regular assessment is required for all credential- and degree-granting programs on campus (i.e., majors, certificates, masters, doctorates, etc.). Many other student-facing programs on campus also require or conduct regular assessment, including DDC and co-curricular activities. This means that many, if not most, of us are involved in assessment work.

Program Assessment

Great and exciting news on the program assessment front! All credential/degree-granting programs on campus are now on the same biennial program assessment cycle. The current cycle starts this Fall 2023 and will wrap up in Winter 2025, when all programs will turn in their biennial assessment reports.  

To facilitate this process, all programs must have a program assessment coordinator. Each department chair manages a list of program assessment coordinators, so please make sure your chair knows who the program assessment coordinator is for your discipline/program for this cycle. 

The Assessment Subcommittee will be communicating with program assessment coordinators soon with feedback from last year's submitted reports; helpful approaches to assessment this year; and more exciting and fun details. Keep an eye out for that if you are a program assessment coordinator.

DDC Assessment   

The news keeps getting better! We are in year 4 of the current DDC assessment cycle. This is the second assessment cycle for our general education program (the Dearborn Discovery Core!!!), and a full cycle takes 6 years to complete!  

This year, we are assessing all courses in the Upper-Level Writing, Critical & Creative Thinking, Writing & Communication, and Capstone categories. If you are teaching a course in any of these categories this Fall semester, you should have already received an email about it. If you are teaching a course this Winter in one of these categories, look out for an email about this towards the end of the semester.  

We will also be holding "discussion and debriefing" DDC Sessions to provide faculty with the space and opportunity to discuss the assessment results for last year’s assessed categories. If you taught a course – or are just interested in – the INT, SBA, and NS categories, keep an eye out for those in the winter semester!  

Assessment Workshops 

Last, but not least, some information about workshops during the academic year. 

Fall 2023 semester: 

An "exclusive" -- along with fun and exciting -- in-person Assessment Workshop will be held on Thursday, October 26 from 12:00pm - 1:30pm. To keep this an interactive and productive workshop, attendance will be capped at 20 people. You will leave the workshop with a deliverable: a concrete and specific agenda for assessment planning in your program. The Assessment Subcommittee will hold additional workshops if there is demand. This workshop is scheduled to be done right before Chancellor Grasso and President Ono’s event on October 26 at 2:00pm - come for the assessment workshop, stay for the leadership chat! Register for one of the 20 spots! 

Winter 2024 semester: 

Look out for more information and communications about Annual Assessment Week, including multiple assessment workshops, drop-in assessment conversations, and the DDC Debriefing Sessions for Intersections, Social & Behavioral Analysis, and Natural Sciences.

Thank you all for everything you do and making assessment ROCK at Dearborn!!! Please reach out to Emily Luxon ([email protected]) or Jessica LaGrange ([email protected]) with any questions. 

Thanks,

Mitch
Mitchel A. Sollenberger, Ph.D.
Associate Provost and Professor of Political Science
University of Michigan-Dearborn