Albany Assessment Matrix

ALBANY'S ASSESSMENT MODEL (SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS)

Table 1 gives a summary of possible methods for assessing student attainment in the major depending upon each purpose. The suggestions contained in the table should be treated as guides for departmental consideration, rather than as definitive uses. A capstone course or departmental exam might be the most useful for assessing the student's attainment of faculty determined performance standards. For the purposes of meeting professional or national standards, a competency test or external examiner may be employed. Comparing a student's performance to some external reference group almost always requires the use of a national exam or performance standard, but even graduate school and placement information can be used for comparative purposes. Measuring the attainment of a student's personal educational goal requires student-centered strategies such as learning portfolios or focus groups. To answer the question about getting better, a wide range of strategies using multiple sources of information can be utilized.

By now, it may be obvious to the reader that each assessment question or purpose can be addressed in a variety of appropriate, yet different ways. The question of whether the activity is relatively centralized ad controlled by forces outside the department, or decentralized and controlled by the faculty, is perhaps less important than the usefulness of the assessment for enhancing student learning. Even standardized, nationally normed tests can be used by faculty to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the department's program. And even the most student-centered form of talent development usually yields results that can e aggregated to serve program evaluation purposes.

Judgments of student learning and program effectiveness will be better ad richer if they are based upon multiple indicators and measures, than if based upon a single indicator or measure. First, the use of a single measure (such as a single test) is likely to be unfair to students either who prepared heavily in an area not covered by an exam or had an “off” day. Second, a multi-dimensional approach yields a far more reliable image of strengths and weaknesses. For example, when a department sees congruence between the information it receives from graduating seniors’ test results and from alumni survey, it has more confidence in the strength of the findings.

There are many appropriate uses and efficiencies to be gained from relatively centralized data collection activities carried out in campus offices of institutional research. Institutional researchers often work with others on the campus to develop and maintain student and alumni information systems that can serve as rich assessment databases. Rather than developing their own survey research, database, and software expertise, departments can draw upon these centralized databases in conducting their own assessment activities.

Albany's Department of Mathematics provides a good example of cooperative data sharing between administrative offices and academic departments. We are able to download from our centrally maintained student and alumni databases a variety of useful information that is helpful to student and program assessment faculty.

The Albany alumni studies is an excellent example. The cost to the institution of conducting separate alumni surveys in each department and maintaining independent databases is too high. Therefore, during the 1980s we met with several of our largest departments and designed a survey containing items of value for both centralized and decentralized purposes. After surveying several thousand alumni, we are now in a position to distribute both aggregated and disaggregated responses to a wide range of measures of alumni satisfaction, educational outcomes, intellectual growth, career development, and effectiveness of the Albany undergraduate experience, both departmental and campus wide.

An important ingredient in a successful assessment program is a attitude of cooperation and trust among faculty and between faculty and administrative staff. Faculty need to be trusted to use the information for the enhancement of student learning, and administrators need to be trusted to use the information to promote institutional effectiveness. Assessment evidence should not be used for faculty evaluation. Assessment promotes evidence-based thinking and new conversations.