General Education Program Assessment Overview
To ensure that students are achieving the goals of the program, the General Education Oversight Committee (GEOC) undertook a collaborative process to develop an assessment plan for Gen Ed. Assessment is a means for the GEOC, departments, and instructors to evaluate how they are meeting the learning outcomes of the program; it is not an SET and cannot be used without the instructor's permission in performance or merit evaluations. Instead, assessment should be a transparent process that protects individual instructor and student confidentiality while encouraging departments and instructors to strengthen instructional delivery, materials, and assignments, and build on areas of strength. The GEOC will rely heavily on the Continued Improvement phase of assessment. Our goal is to provide the best General Education program we can for our students. The GEOC cannot do this without your cooperation!
1. Instructors look at the Gen Ed assessment timeline to see if their course's designation is scheduled for data collection this year
2. Instructors identify one or more assignments in their Gen Ed courses that align with the Gen Ed designation's learning outcomes and rubric.
3. For help with assignment/Gen Ed outcome alignment:
- Attend an Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) workshop or
- Request a consultation from OTL or GEOC's assessment designee for help in identifying or developing aligned assignments.
4. Students complete the assignment as part of their normal coursework.
5. Instructors grade the assignment using their normal scoring criteria as part of students' class grades.
6. Instructors score the assignment in Canvas using the appropriate Gen Ed rubric. For your convenience, a Canvas assignment with using the appropriate Gen Ed rubric attached will be automatically set up in your course.
7. For help using the Canvas assignment, watch a video tutorial.
8. If you require an alternative to submitting scores in Canvas, please send your request to GEOC.
9. GEOC's assessment designee extracts the scores from Canvas at the end of each semester, de-identifies and aggregates them, and reports the aggregated results to GEOC. (Additional aggregate reporting to instructors, departments, and colleges that protects instructor and student confidentiality is under discussion in GEOC.)
10. Instructors, departments, colleges, and GEOC engage in action planning and implement their plans to improve student learning in the Gen Ed program.