Frequently Asked Questions
Assessment is a reflective process by which a department or unit reviews and considers the effectiveness of instructional methods, class activities, curriculum, and student engagement by measuring student learning. This process should be informative and meaningful to the faculty and staff engaged in providing instruction in the course or program and should lead to improvements to student learning based on data-informed decision-making.
While we recognize that assessment is a component of institutional compliance with state and regional policies, Georgia Southern values assessment as a critical activity to ensure continuous improvement in the experience of our students.
The goal of your assessment process should be to gain a greater understanding of student learning in your course or program. Keep this focus in mind as you draft student learning outcomes, design assignments for assessment purposes, decide what data are critical to collect and how you will collect it, interpret those data in alignment with student learning outcomes, and use that interpretation to drive action plans to improve student learning.
Your assessment should provide meaningful insights into student learning that can be used to guide future developments of the course or program. As disciplines, pedagogy, and student characteristics change and evolve, you may need to adapt your assessment framework and processes to address those changes and ensure that your process remains meaningful and useful.
The systematic examination of outcomes that define achievement in our courses and degree programs plays a significant role in student success. Your efforts contribute to the intellectual, personal, and professional development of students as we work together to ensure excellence in teaching and learning at Georgia Southern.
When assessment is done in a meaningful way, it is beneficial to students, faculty and staff, Georgia Southern, and our community. The assessment process allows us to continuously seek improvement and make informed decisions for achieving our desired outcomes, goals, and strategic plan.
Every Academic Program at Georgia Southern has student learning outcome (SLO) statements aligned with the university mission. These program SLOs are assessed annually using direct measurement tools (e.g., objective tests, analytic rubrics) selected by the faculty in the program. The assessment process is led by a designated program coordinator selected by the department chair with the expectation of collaboration of program faculty across all campus locations. A document summarizing the assessment process, results, and action plans for improvement is submitted to IAA. Annual academic program student learning outcomes assessment documents undergo a peer-review by the members of the Academic Assessment Steering Committee (AASC) using the university approved rubric to provide feedback to the program.
An academic program student learning outcomes assessment document focuses on student learning outcomes with an emphasis on strengths and weaknesses in student learning to make evidence-based decisions about curriculum and instruction. A comprehensive academic program review document is more encompassing than a student learning outcome assessment document and includes program outcomes related to indicators of student quality, curricular alignment and currency to the discipline, indicators of faculty quality and productivity, and programmatic productivity, and program viability.
Department chairs designate a specific person to serve as the coordinator for each academic program assessment document. That individual will receive an email that contains instructions, links to important documents for your reference, and a button to click when you are ready to submit your assessment document. Clicking the button will open a form that will allow you to upload your assessment document and submit it to IAA. You can only submit your assessment document once. If you attach the wrong document in error, you will need to contact IAA directly to correct the issue.
There is no required number of SLOs for an academic program, but IAA generally recommends 3-6 SLOs for an undergraduate or graduate program. Graduate certificate programs should have at least two SLOs. Most importantly, all degree programs must have at least one unique SLO that distinguishes the program from any similar programs. For example, a BA and BS cannot have all identical program SLOs. The BA must have one unique SLO and the BS must have one unique SLO even if all other SLOs are shared.
It is important to consistently assess student learning for every SLO on an annual basis in order to track trends over time and to evaluate the effectiveness of any changes made to curriculum or instruction in order to improve student learning. In some instances, there may be a good reason to pause assessment for a short period if you are redeveloping a student learning outcome or an assessment measure, but these disruptions should be minimized as much as possible.
A curriculum map is a visual method to align instruction with student learning outcomes, reveal gaps in curriculum, and help design instruction and assessment cycles. A program/plan of study is a summary of course and credit hour requirements often organized by semester and year.
Yes. Every course in your curriculum, whether required or elective, should align with your academic program student learning outcomes and with specific levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. All of these courses are part of the student learning experience so they should be included on your curriculum map. You may designate which courses are required or elective within the curriculum map or by listing the required courses first and the elective courses in a separate section of the map.
This depends in part on the number of SLOs you are assessing using the test, but, as a general rule, 20-25 test questions should be sufficient. You want students to have more than one opportunity to show their learning associated with each SLO, so there should be more than one question aligned to each SLO. Your test blueprint will help you to make sure that you are adequately measuring student learning associated with SLOs or course concepts at the appropriate levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Also keep in mind that you do not have to include all questions in a single test. You may choose to distribute the questions across quizzes throughout the course instead of placing them all in a single exam.
There is no set rule for the number of students to include if you are using a sample instead of your entire student population for assessment. You should use the entire student population whenever possible to ensure the most accurate and representative assessment results. However, if you are using an analytic rubric to assess a large enrollment course, it may not be possible to assess the work of every student. In these cases, you want to make sure that you are selecting a sample that is representative of your entire student population. In other words, some students should be included from every section, instructor, campus, and mode of delivery. Additional guidelines on sampling strategies including suggested sample sizes can be found under Data Collection Additional Resources on the Student Learning Assessment Resources library guide.
The purpose of student learning outcome assessment is to identify strengths and weaknesses in student learning associated with specific student learning outcomes. The results need to be examined by each outcome for the entire population of students (or a representative sample). Grades, on the other hand, don’t isolate measurement of learning by student learning outcome but by student. Grades identify strong or weak students, but not necessarily strong or weak performance on specific student learning outcomes.