Institutional Assessment
Major Field Assessment
Graduating seniors at Tennessee Tech take Major Field Exams in their disciplines if licensure exams are not required. The University uses standardized major field tests to assess the quality of academic programs as evaluated by the performance of graduates. The major field tests employed for this purpose are through the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Area Concentration Achievement Test (ACAT). Students take major field tests during their final semester/year of study after they successfully complete most of their major's required courses.
ETS and ACAT test results are compared by dividing the Tennessee Tech program score by the national comparison average. The threshold of acceptability is set at 90% of the ratio for the Tennessee Tech average score/national comparison average with the targeted goal set at 100%.
Table 1. Major Field Tests - ETS
Table 2. Major Field Tests - ACAT
Click here to see a larger view of the ETS and ACAT tables above.
As shown in Table 1, the average ratios of Tennessee Tech ETS test scores/national norms vary in the range of 99%-102%. All academic programs listed on the table have achieved the comparison ratios above the threshold of acceptability of 90%. Several programs have consistently attained results exceeding the targeted goals. Very similar to the ETS results, academic programs that use ACAT exams have achieved the comparison ratios exceeding the threshold of acceptability of 90%. The average ratios of Tennessee Tech program test scores/national norms vary in the range of 99%-107%, which are also higher than the targeted goal of 100%, see Table 2.
