Southwest Virginia Community College Institutional Effectiveness Background

Transcription

1 Southwest Virginia Community College Institutional Effectiveness Background Prepared by the SWCC Institutional Research Office Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [1]

2 Southwest Virginia Community College Institutional Effectiveness Manual Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction Changing Focus Where You Start Is Where You Begin Again The Templates Conclusion Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [2]

3 Introduction The Southwest Virginia Community College (SWCC) Institutional Effectiveness Manual is inspired by the efforts of colleagues at other Virginia Community Colleges, especially Dabney Lancaster Community College and Virginia Highlands Community College. Many people have been seeking to improve our SWCC assessment efforts over the years. Our former VP of Instruction, Dr. Robert Tomlinson, our current VP of Academic and Student Success, Dr. Barbara Fuller, our Deans, Cathy Smith Cox and James Dye have sought to increase awareness of the need to examine our educational efforts. The Finance and Administration area of the college is working to integrate its processes with the processes used on the academic side of the College. The College Mission is the focal point of assessment. Mission: Southwest Virginia Community College, a comprehensive two-year institution, provides quality educational and cultural enrichment opportunities for lifelong learners, workforce and community. Each part of the College should determine how what it does relates to the College Mission with the particular focus depending on its activities. At the institutional level, the change has been moving from planning sessions which we held in the 1990s and early 2000s to Strategic Planning Sessions which use SWOT [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats] analysis to determine how the College should meet the challenges it faces. The College is linking budgeting to the strategic plan. In the College implemented unit assessment which changes the focus the earlier annual reports took. Unit assessment brings administrative assessment within the same umbrella SWCC has been using in its academic assessment. The SWCC faculty have demonstrated their dedication to making academic assessment work at SWCC. Our faculty translate examination into meaningful action. Our administrative units have adapted well to assessing their operations. The manual like assessment is a work in progress. Program assessment is reflective and involves our faculty s efforts at describing, analyzing and evaluating what they are doing in their programs. Programmatic assessment seeks to review the content of the program and focuses on making the program relevant by ensuring it contains information and skills practitioners in the field, employers, and faculty at senior institutions associate with the field. Learning outcomes assessment aims at measuring the student s mastery of the skills and knowledge associated with the field. There are many ways to ascertain the extent to which students in the program are acquiring the skills and knowledge associated with the field. Each faculty member is encouraged to use approaches each of them thinks will provide them with the tools to assess student knowledge and skills. Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [3]

4 In like fashion, administrative assessment seeks to have each administrative unit study how well its operations are performing and how what the unit does fits in with the College and Virginia Community College System s goals. Assessment is not an onward ever, backward never undertaking. Faculty members may find their students didn t acquire the skill being assessed or the knowledge being measured. Discovery of what didn t work may be even more important than learning what worked. Going back to the drawing board to rework efforts should provide faculty with the insight that even the best efforts and intentions don t always produce the results they were meant to achieve. Students benefit from realizing growth comes from studying what they don t know as much as from what they know. This approach lays the foundations for academic success. Administrative units may find that some of their activities are not achieving the objectives intended or that their activities need to have stronger ties to college or community college system goals. Such findings should lead to trying other ways to achieve their goals and/or make their focus more in line with college and community college system goals. Engaging in assessment requires developing a formal framework and processes, even though there are no silver bullets which can ensure successful assessment. The framework in place at SWCC goes back more than a decade. Assessment begins with the objectives of the College Mission to prepare students to gain the knowledge and skills associated with their chosen field so that they can succeed in the workplace, at a transfer institution and in life. For the administrative units the objective is a similar one to improve the way the unit performs its duties. The template stresses: Changing Focus Goal development Establishing skill/information associated with goal and a benchmark to be measured Evaluating the outcome Future activity, if any, based on the evaluation Reports to users the result. At least for now, our assessment will continue to use the framework in place. What will change is the focus. In the past we focused on areas such as enrollment, retention, employment, equipment needs and advice from advisory committees, and transfer data. While these areas can be part of assessment, especially as it relates to meeting the needs of program reviews, the overall focus will turn to program assessment and skills/knowledge assessment. Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [4]

5 Program assessment will look at how the program is meeting the needs of students transferring to senior institutions and seeking employment in their field of study. As senior institutions change what they expect of their freshmen and sophomore students our transfer programs must work to align what we teach our students in preparation of transferring to the senior institutions. The same is true of the Career-Technical programs. As employers want their employees to have new skills and knowledge, our programs will have to reflect the changing work environment. Our graduates, advisory committees, meeting with individual employers will be important sources of information about the dynamics in the various fields. Working with key administrators, faculty will be putting forward changes in the programs to keep pace with changes in workplace. Equally important will be taking the pulse of how students are gaining the knowledge and skills associated with their fields of study. Faculty will be assessing the major skills associated with their field not only in end of program third party assessments, but while the students are in the program. Depending on the program this process may take the form of capstone class evaluation, internship evaluations, and measuring key skills such as communication skills by using rubrics on ability to demonstrate oral or written skills. Depending on the program these assessments may evaluate specific skills anyone in the field is assumed to have mastered. Administrative unit assessment is transitioning from doing reports which report what the unit is doing and state its future operational plan to reviewing how it is performing its main functions and what it plans to do to improve what it does and improve its serve to its users. Where You Start Is Where You Begin Again If you don t know what you want to do, you can do anything and work back to say that is what you intended to do all along. Assessment begins with assessors knowing what they want to do. o Goal setting is the starting point in assessment. o Next you determine what is going to be assessed to achieve the goal. o Together with stating what you are going to do to achieve the goal you must set a benchmark which will be used to determine if the goal was achieve. o Next perform the activity which will be used to achieve the goal and get your findings, your outcome. o Determine how successful you were in achieving the goal and what action will be taken based on the finding. o At this point you can state who will be using the results to make decisions it may be the assessor, their peers, their superiors, users, outsiders. Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [5]

6 o This process brings you back to where you started [hopefully at a higher point] and based on the outcome you can write a new goal to improve your results or set another goal which replaces your earlier goal. The goal of assessment is learning to do things better. The objective of assessment is improving student performance or unit performance. Collaborative efforts should help achieve our goal and objective. The Templates and Available Assistance Some colleges use off the shelf products to report these processes. At SWCC we use templates that were developed after checking what peer institutions use. Our templates were reviewed by administrators, faculty and staff. Both templates [academic and administrative] have a walk through approach which should enable both faculty and staff using them to determine what they want to present in their assessment and track what they have done and what they propose to do. Greg Horn will be available to assist the academic program heads as they work on their assessments and Ed Smith will be available to assist the administrative unit leaders in their preparation of their unit s assessment. If the individuals conducting their assessments need outside data they should contact the Institutional Research Office by phoning or ing their request. SWCC has two templates one for academic assessment and a second one for unit assessment and they are found below. Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [6]

7 Academic Program Assessment: Southwest Virginia Community College Division Program Lead Faculty Academic Year Program Mission Statement Program Goals Goal 1 Goal 2 Goal 3 Assessment Categories Outcome Sought Measures Success Standard Findings Action Plan Analysis/Use of Results Comments (Goals tied to other unit activities, Anticipate new goal based on findings) Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [7]

8 Administrative Unit Assessment: Southwest Virginia Community College Administrative Unit Contact Beginning Term Anticipated End Term Unit Mission Statement Unit Goal Relevant College or VCCS Goal Assessment Categories Unit Objective Measures Benchmark Findings Action Plan Analysis/Use of Results Comments (Goals tied to other unit activities, Anticipate new goal based on findings) Conclusion If assessment is looked upon as another task you must do, assessment will be a failure. Assessment needs to be seen as a means which enables practitioners to gain insight into what they are about. Assessment is taking the step back and reflecting about what you spend a good part of your life doing and thinking about what you can do to improve what you do, how you serve others and using the feedback you get from your research and what others tell you to try to do a better job. Southwest Virginia IE Background 25 September 2015 [8]