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NCA official: 'We've shifted paradigm' Assessment may begin with testing, but at heart it's more about planning, Dr. John A. Taylor of the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges told a group of SCI faculty and staff last week. And it most definitely is not a pro forma exercise that colleges undertake to placate accrediting bodies like NCA, he said. "It's not a little entity out by itself, and I want you to understand that NCA didn't make you do it," he said. "It grows out of your strategic planning, and it involves continuous evaluation of yourself. " Associate director of NCA's Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, Taylor spoke to 20 faculty and four staff members March 2 in Dawson Hall. He said NCA got involved with assessment in the 1980s when the Reagan administration questioned what students learn, but NCA likes to see its role as helping member institutions plan to meet their own goals. "In order for an assessment program to be successful, it has to be faculty-driven," Taylor said. "Why? We're talking about student learning, and most of that student learning we perceive as taking place in the classroom. We've shifted the paradigm -- the focal point is now on the learner." Taylor said testing provides the data for a continuous cycle of improvement, as changes are made are more data are collected on how the changes have affected learning. He said the best assessment programs rely on multiple sources of data, which are then factored into an orderly planning process. "There is no single assessment measure that you're after," he said. "You need to ask your colleagues, 'How do we determine what a student has learned in this discipline?' Assessment is not a criterion of accreditation in an of itself. But assessment is a part of criterion No. 3, 'The institution is accomplishing its educational and other purposes,' and Criterion No. 4, 'The institution can continue to accomplish its purposes and strengthen its institutional effectiveness.' If you don't assess your educational purposes, you don't know." Taylor, who is SCI's staff liaison with NCA in Chicago, outlined several areas of concern as NCA reviews progress on SCI's 1996 assessment plan:
Taylor said SCI's statements of its mission, goals and objectives form the framework for planning. He said they are linked to specific learning goals, and the institutional factors that enhance or detract from realizing those goals. "You have the responsibility for identifying what the (desired) learning outcomes are -- what do you think a student should know before transferring to Institution X, Y or Z?" he said. "The real question isn't whether you do testing. The real question is whether the test you chose matches the kind of learning that you want. We don't prescribe that, either. We simply ask the question." Asked what faculty and staff at SCI can do to learn more about assessment, Taylor suggested resources linked to SCI's Web site. His main points are elaborated on in two papers by NCA vice-president Cecilia Lopez. Click here to see her 1998 progress report on the NCA Assessment Initiative and her 1996 list of criteria NCA examiners look for and suggested "Opportunities for Improvement." New on the assessment Web site Lynette Shaw-Smith's report on how SCI's Languages and Literature Division used norm-referenced reading scores and other hard data to upgrade SCI's developmental English program has been added to our Reports section. After four semesters, preliminary numbers suggest we now have student success rates nearing 100 percent -- more than double the 30- to 50-percent rates before. Click here to read the report on Developmental English Composition. |
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