Annual Assessment Process
All colleges should have a college-wide process that assesses the degree to which academic programs/units reach their student learning outcomes. The college-wide assessment process in the College of Education & Human Sciences is called the College of Education & Human Sciences Annual Assessment Process (COE-AAP). This process serves three inter-related purposes:
- Annual assessment plans help programs/units continuously improve and track the degree to which improvements contribute to student success.
- Annual assessment plans constitute evidence that the college is working toward continuous improvement for discipline-specific accreditors. Specifically, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) requires that colleges have a quality assurance system that “documents how data enter the system, how data are reported and used in decision making, and how the outcomes of those decisions inform programmatic improvement” (Standard R5.1).
- Annual assessment plans help programs/units make data-driven decisions and support resource requests and annual reports to administration.
Assessment Cycle
The assessment cycle is a closed loop of planning, implementing, measuring, collecting
and analyzing, reporting and strategizing, improving, and then planning again. The
cycle is closed by programs/units use of data for continuous improvement. Assessment
is an ongoing activity with different benchmarks that allow programs/units to debrief,
discuss, and redirect their efforts towards more effective use of resources to meet
unit goals.