Assessment Basics

What

Saint Paul College engages in a variety of assessment initiatives at our campus that are part of our commitment to excellent teaching and effective learning. Faculty and staff outline plans for collecting information to document student learning and to reflect and improve learning at the course, discipline, program, department, and college levels.

Why

Assessment connects student performance to specific learning outcomes. Assessing student learning helps to provide a more detailed picture of what students are learning that is not always reflected in grades, completion rates, or other engagement data like usage or satisfaction. It allows faculty and staff to adjust and improve based on detailed information and to observe trends on student learning over time.

Formative and Summative Feedback

Within a course, you can use Formative Assessments to give timely feedback on student performance to help them as the course/activity progresses. How can they improve going forward? At the end of a course, Summative Assessments to measure student achievement. Did they reach the goal(s) stated in the learning outcome(s)?

How

Our quality assessment of student learning starts with defining student learning outcomes. We have built a strong foundation for this work by graduating from the HLC Assessment Academy in the Summer of 2021.

All courses at Saint Paul College have defined course learning outcomes, all programs have defined program learning outcomes, and the college has defined college learning outcomes. In addition, we define, collect, and analyze co-curricular learning outcomes to help inform our student services and institutional practices.

To achieve this, faculty and staff create a variety of assessment plans including Signature Assignments within a discipline, Program Assessment Plans, Co-Curricular Assessment Plans and shared rubrics for the evaluation of College Learning Outcomes. Programs and Disciplines include an analysis of these assessments in their annual and comprehensive program reviews. The Academic Effectiveness and Innovation team provide support and resources for assessment including crafting classroom assessments and rubrics.