Assessment of Learning at the College of Arts and Sciences

Assessment of the student learning experience provided by the College of Arts and Sciences follows from its mission and its purpose, values and expectations. The College plan is a combination of policies and procedures that allows the faculty and administration of the College to ensure that it is fulfilling its mission and serving its students with a meaningful, appropriate and effective learning experience that will satisfy the educational objectives set forth by the College and its degree programs.

Assessment, furthermore, affords the College and its faculty and students the opportunity to reflect formally on and measure the effectiveness of their engagement in a defined and directed learning experience that has clear and consistent goals. In addition, systematic formal reflection on the outcomes of the learning experience provides faculty and administration with guidance regarding curriculum and pedagogical development.

The College’s accrediting body provides guidance to the University and College with regard to assessment of the student learning experience. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is Adelphi’s primary accrediting body which requires “that it [the University] assesses both institutional effectiveness and student learning outcomes, and uses the results for improvement; …” Middle States asks its member institutions to embrace Standards emphasizing that: “Educational courses, programs, and experiences are not static constructs. Their creation and lifespan may be characterized as part of a dynamic four-step cycle:

1. Developing clearly articulated written statements of expected learning outcomes;
2. Designing learning experiences that provide explicit opportunities for students to achieve those learning outcomes;
3. Implementing appropriate measures of student achievement of key learning outcomes, … ; and
4. Using the results of those assessments to improve teaching and learning, …”

It is with this cycle in mind that the College has developed its Comprehensive Assessment Plan, and which has informed the development of general and specific program learning goals, expected outcomes and related assessment measures.

The College has adopted the University’s general education learning goals as fundamental to its learning experience. These goals are addressed in various ways throughout the College in all of its majors, program concentrations and individual courses. The College houses the University’s PATH: General Education program including its First-Year Seminars which are designed to provide a distinctive introduction to the University’s learning experience.

The program directly addresses the Middle States Standard requirements that the institution provide General Education as a core learning experience over the course of the baccalaureate degree. Middle States requires that: “The institution’s curricula are designed so that students acquire and demonstrate college-level proficiency in general education and essential skills, including at least oral and written communication, scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical analysis and reasoning, and technological competency.”

The current general learning goals of the undergraduate programs of the College are expressed through the PATH: General Education Learning Goals.

Program Specific Learning Outcomes: Based on the College’s mission and in addition to the general education learning goals defined above, student engagement and learning within specific programs and courses should result in outcomes that demonstrate successful student learning evidencing appropriate and specific and understanding consistent with each major. These outcomes will result from the completed coursework required by the major’s curriculum and by activities related to the learning experience—production, research, participation in student organizations, co-curricular activities, etc.

General Education Learning Goals are currently being assessed through the coordinated efforts of the Office of Research and Assessment and the University Assessment Committee. The tools being utilized to assess are defined by those entities. The results inform the General Education Committee’s deliberations on General Education course requirements.

Assessment efforts being undertaken by individual departments within the College will use various assessment tools to measure program defined outcomes. Assessment tools will provide data comparisons over time and will be informed by evolving theory and practice. Tools are intended to provide data that can be measured, described and analyzed on a cohort basis at the College-wide or department level. Assessment activities that have been used and are being refined to determine student learning include the following (please note that this is not an exhaustive or prescriptive list of assessment tools and not all of the tools are being or will be used by every program):

• Successful completion of a capstone course where the capstone is required of all students in the major and is designed to incorporate the stated learning goals and is assessed by a method that is applied across all sections of the course.
• Pre and Post examinations.
• Student portfolio reviews.
• Annual student juries (performing and visual arts).
• Internship host supervisor evaluations of student interns.
• Documented alumni accomplishments.
• Externally juried student competitions.
• Entry, mid-point and completion of program examinations of required skills and basic content knowledge providing comparison points of results at the three levels.
• Department-wide or multi-section course exams and/or assignments based on stated learning objectives in program assessment plans or multi-section course syllabi.
• Documented student employment success upon graduation.
• Student academic achievement–grade distribution comparisons in key courses or course areas at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels.
• Success in transition to graduate programs and employment rates.

Individual departments may use these or other tools that provide the most appropriate measures (direct and indirect) of their defined learning goals and expected outcomes.

Faculty will review and analyze the results of assessment on a departmental and College-wide basis as gathered through the various means/tools in order to accomplish the following:

• Clearly demonstrate that the mission and educational goals of the College and department are being achieved;
• Provide evidence that a variety of direct and indirect measures have been used to assess student learning at various points and under various circumstances during progress to the degree as well as after graduation;
• Provide evidence of the results of the learning experience in terms of stated learning goals and expected outcomes;
• Utilize the results in curriculum development, pedagogy and overall improvement of the learning experience;
• Provide an articulate, continuous, and reliable source of information to be used in the ongoing deliberations of faculty and academic administration as they seek to maintain and improve student learning and to fulfill the College and department missions;
• Represent the standards of academic and professional excellence to which the College and its faculty members and students aspire.