1A

Assessment Clear and Simple:  Practical Steps for Institutions, Departments, and General Education
Emphasizing simplicity, feasibility, and effectiveness, this workshop offers a step-by-step plan for institutions, departments, and general education to build on what they are already doing, discard what is not working, get faculty on board, enhance student learning, meet the institution’s own needs, and work with external accreditors.  Special attention to current national developments such as the Voluntary System of Accountability, new ePortfolio developments, projects of the AAC&U and others, assessment software, and appropriate uses of standardized tests or survey instruments.
Barbara E. Walvoord, University of Notre Dame

1B

Implementing Student Electronic Portfolios for Assessment
Student electronic portfolios have been implemented for varied purposes throughout much of the world over the past fifteen years, generating considerable enthusiasm among their advocates. But the prospect of adopting and implementing ePortfolios remains daunting, in part because they can address so many different interests and purposes. In this full-day workshop, faculty and staff from IUPUI will share some hard-won lessons, focusing especially on ePortfolio uses to meet assessment needs for campuses, departments, and courses. Specific topics to be discussed include: an overview of student electronic portfolios and available software; implementation strategies at the institutional, departmental, and individual course levels; and faculty and student development and support. Several IUPUI faculty members will offer real-life case studies of ePortfolio uses for a variety of assessment purposes. Small group discussion will provide opportunities for participants to consider uses, opportunities, and potential pitfalls related to ePortfolio adoption on their own campuses.
Susan Kahn, Debra Runshe, Susan Scott, and Lynn Ward, IUPUI

1C

Planning, Implementing, and Using Assessment Results: A Case Study Approach
Assessment is an essential component of program development and refinement in University College, the entering student unit at IUPUI that serves over 6,000. Comprehensive assessment activities are often necessary to plan, implement, and continuously improve first-year programs. All major programs, including orientation, advising, and peer mentoring, are regularly scheduled for reviews, a two-year process with self-study and outside review components. We plan to present some major assessment strategies such as improving and proving effectiveness, using assessment results for planning and resource decisions, involving faculty, measuring student learning outcomes, using quantitative and qualitative approaches, and linking data to action. We will also discuss some major challenges we have faced in implementing assessment plans. This workshop has been designed to appeal to those who are just beginning assessment activities on their campuses and for those who are interested in improving existing assessment programs. We will be using a case study approach to discuss critical issues and methods of assessment.
Michele J. Hansen and Gayle A. Williams, IUPUI

1D

Outcomes Assessment Nuts and Bolts
Outcomes assessment should help both program planning and accountablity reporting. This workshop focuses on the steps needed accomplish these goals, including stating outcomes, selecting assessment methods, describing your assessment process and results, and using results in planning. Exercises help participants ask "how does this apply to me?" and develop concrete ideas for their own assessment processes.
Ephraim Schechter, HigherEdAssessment.com

1E

Writing Proposals for Course/Curricular Reform
This session is designed to assist faculty who have little or no experience writing a grant proposal for external funding to support curriculum development. Topics to be discussed include aspects of the proposal development process including writing a problem statement, describing an appropriate intervention, clearly identifying methods to assess student learning, and selection of an appropriate project evaluator.
Pratibha Varma-Nelson, IUPUI; and Nancy Pelaez, Purdue University

1F

Don’t Fail to Plan: Developing and Assessing a Student Affairs Strategic Plan
This workshop will describe student affairs strategic planning processes and the approaches used to evaluate th at plan. A specific example of a division that established, executed, and successfully completed the goals of the strategic plan will be discussed. One reason for the success of the process was the comprehensive evaluation and assessment component. The measures used in the evaluation included institutional data, departmental data, and qualitative assessments. Participants will have the opportunity to determine how such a process could be facilitated on their campus and identify appropriate measurement techniques. The link between strategic planning at the division level, institution level and accreditation requirements will also be discussed.
Robert W. Aaron , IUPUI; and A. Katherine Busby, Tulane University

1G

Institutional Portfolios and Online Self-Studies: The State of the Art in 2010
Online presentation of at least some self-study materials is commonplace today in the context of regional accreditation. Use of the Web to manage the self-study process may be even more widespread. Yet, to date, none of the regional associations and commissions has provided guidelines or recommendations for good practices in developing and exhibiting self-studies or related information online. In this workshop, presenters and participants will discuss these questions:  How are colleges and universities using the Web today to support self-study development and to demonstrate effectiveness and accountability for regional accreditation purposes? What lessons from the experiences of the past decade remain relevant? What can we expect in the future? The presenters managed the creation of two early online institutional portfolios/ accreditation self-studies.
Susan Kahn, IUPUI; and Kathi A. Ketcheson, Portland State University

1H

Capstone Experiences and Their Uses in Learning and Assessment: Fundamental Approaches and Strategies
This workshop explores how capstone experiences from a variety of disciplines can be used to enhance and document student learning outcomes.  Purposes of capstones will be presented, organizing approaches to capstones will be discussed, powerful pedagogies employed in capstones will be highlighted, and ways to tie capstones to assessment activities—both in the discipline and in general education—will be shared.  Case studies, sample syllabi and assignments, and methods of developing and involving faculty will also be examined.
Stephen P. Hundley and Karen E. Black, IUPUI

Assessment 101
Arizona State University has adopted a workbook that faculty use both independently and in our facilitated workshops.  This workbook guides participants through a straightforward process of developing an assessment plan for any kind of academic program.  The process includes self-checking along the way to ensure that the outcomes and measures identified are appropriate, useful, and likely to yield meaningful information about student learning.  We have successfully used this workbook in the following ways:

• to guide large groups of faculty through the assessment planning process
• to coach individual faculty members struggling to create outcomes and measures for their programs
• as a self-guided tutorial available on our web site for faculty who prefer to work independently

Participants will engage in the same process that ASU faculty are led through, and leave with the foundation of an assessment plan for an individual program as well as the tools to complete the process or to guide others through the process.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will be encouraged (but not required) to bring mission documents from their institution.  They will engage in the same process as our faculty to identify long term goals for their program graduates and the knowledge and skills necessary for graduates to achieve those goals.  They will use that information to work through the step-by-step process of drafting an outcome statement, using our easy checklist to determine whether the outcome meets the guidelines, then revising the draft into a final outcome statement.  They will examine various kinds of measures and discuss the relative value of each, then identify specific measures for their outcomes.  For each measure, they will develop performance criteria.  Finally, they will consider how they might use the student data collected to answer questions about student learning in the program and consider whether and how to revise the curriculum to improve student learning.

At each step, participants’ attention is focused on how each aspect of the assessment process supports the institutional mission, what evidence they have about student learning, and how they will use this evidence to drive their curricular decisions.