My husband and I decided after 15 years in the same house that we were exceedingly tired of our kitchen. The kitchen is original to the house which was built in 1964 and has gone through a few half-hearted face-lifts but truly needs to be gutted and reimagined. The planning stage of this type of project is always the most fun. We picked out flooring and cabinets, discussed paint colors and wall treatments. That represents the fun part of Do-It-Yourself (DIY). The decidedly harder part is bringing these plans and choices to life.
At the Assessment Conference next month, the Office of Outcomes Assessment will offer a breakout session to discuss some basic DIY strategies as they apply to assessment on campus.
The tasks associated with building and then maintaining a culture of assessment necessarily change over time. Sometimes you just need a little sprucing up with a quick touch-up here or there, and other times it is important to start from scratch and completely reimagine. The session entitled From Nuts & Bolts to Drywall & Paint: Building an Assessment Culture, is a look at how the assessment culture at JCCC has matured and changed over time. Members of the Assessment Office staff and members of the Assessment Council will share some tools used to encourage faculty engagement and foster ownership on campus as well as long-term strategies for building assessment capacity over time.
Not unlike my house, assessment is a continuous project, in constant need of some kind of maintenance. For me, the romance of a new kitchen has already faded into the reality of the labor involved in clearing out the old to prepare for the new. Using the right tools to accomplish the tasks at hand make the chores easier in a kitchen or in a college culture. And for the record, DIY definitely looks infinitely easier when viewed on HGTV.
Sheri H. Barret, Ed.D