Author Archives: sbarre13

About sbarre13

Director, Assessment, Evaluation and Institutional Outcomes Johnson County Community College GEB 262, 913-469-7607

We Are All in the Same Boat

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All of my life, I have heard the phrase, “We’re all in the same boat.”  Growing up on the water in Florida gave me ample opportunity to hear it.  I recently tried to track down the original quote and found references all the way back to Sophocles, so I think it is safe to say that it has been operative for quite a long time. I thought of this phrase recently in chatting with some colleagues from a community college in St. Louis.  The campus is bringing a team here to JCCC in October to visit with our office and the college’s Assessment Council about assessment issues.  They want to know how we are approaching assessment, what is working well, and what doesn’t work.  I believe they are hoping we have a magic pill that we can share that will help them engage more of their faculty in assessment initiatives on campus. It is a conversation I have often with Continue reading We Are All in the Same Boat→

Professional Development – A Plethora of Opportunities

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  Definition of Professional Development – “the process of obtaining the skills, qualifications, and experience that allow you to make progress in your career.” (Macmillan Dictionary, 2014) Looking ahead over the next several months at JCCC, I find the opportunities for faculty development in the assessment of student learning remarkable in both breadth and depth. Leading off the new academic semester in January, the Office of Outcomes Assessment (OOA) will host a workshop that was piloted last summer. Assessment by Design – Comprehensive Overview, is a day-long, hands-on workshop which provides participants with an interactive and theoretical framework for addressing the assessment needs of their courses or programs. Come to this workshop as an individual faculty member working on assessing student learning in your courses, or bring your colleagues to address assessment initiatives for your program. During Professional Development Days, find your development opportunity in sessions such as: “Hits and Misses” in Launching Assessment Strategies, a faculty panel discussion Taming Continue reading Professional Development – A Plethora of Opportunities→

Assessment-More than Numbers

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Assessment – More than Numbers From my first forays into assessment work, I heard colleagues assert that assessing student learning is the responsibility of faculty with the goal of improving student outcomes.  I agree wholeheartedly with the statement, but then encountered examples of assessment processes that seemed to be driven more by the need to satisfy accreditors, state agencies, or other external bodies, all of which seemed ill-suited to foster faculty interest and involvement in assessment.  While I believe that Institutional Research or Assessment offices are colleagues that partner with faculty to assist, the actual work of assessment belongs to faculty and processes of assessment within institutions should be constructed in a way to ensure faculty ownership and use of assessment results. At Johnson County Community College we have found that using the cycle of assessment provides a theoretical and practical framework to engage faculty in authentic assessment activities. What was the Question? The cycle of assessment begins with a Continue reading Assessment-More than Numbers→

OOA Over the Summer…

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Over the summer – We were still busy in the Office of Outcomes Assessment… The OOA hosted a faculty workshop with Dr. Tom Angelo, on “CATs and COLTs: Classroom Learning Techniques and Collaborative Learning Techniques.” Dr. Angelo has consulted on teaching, assessment and learning improvement in 17 countries and throughout the United States for more than 60 higher education associations/systems and more than 250 postsecondary institutions. Internationally, Tom has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Program (Italy), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Australia) and the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. He has authored or co-authored five books and more than thirty-five articles and chapters. His best-known publication is Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd Edition, with more than 100,000 copies in print. The truly great news is he is coming back to JCCC in the Spring as the keynote speaker for the 5th Annual Continue reading OOA Over the Summer…→

Excellence in Outcomes Assessment Award Winners

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Congratulations to our Winners! Patty Titus, Jane Zaccardi, David Luoma, Ginny Radom, Connie Reischman  “To ensure that our students are prepared to meet the challenges of the future, we are committed to continuous program improvement.” This attitude is the defining feature of the team that will receive the Excellence in Outcomes Assessment award for 2013-14.   Their project looked at the students’ ability to collaborate respectfully as part of an emphasis on professionalism for their practical nursing students.  Key components of the project included curriculum mapping to identify objectives specific to their project, a qualitative survey, and a faculty-designed rubric to evaluate aspects of professionalism during clinical practicum and simulation experiences. The most crucial component of the assessment work involved the changes that the project brought to the practical nursing curriculum.  Some of the changes that were made based on the data include the use of behavioral objectives regarding professionalism that faculty incorporated into simulation experiences for the students.  Curriculum changes Continue reading Excellence in Outcomes Assessment Award Winners→

Reporting Assessment Data

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Reporting & Using Assessment Results   Assessment results are meant to improve teaching and learning as well as inform planning and decision making. Results of assessment activities can highlight successes such as:  better alignment of the curriculum with desired outcomes; creation of useful rubrics; development of explicit standards and corresponding samples of student work; evidence that students are meeting or exceeding learning expectations. Elements to include in an Assessment Report Things to consider The outcome(s) that was addressed. Is this a department/course level or general education assessment? The type of data that was collected and the timeframe for collection. Was this a pilot or department wide assessment? Was the data collected in Fall or Spring semester or over the course of the academic year?  If sampling was used, how was the sample collected? Who submitted data How many students were used? How were they selected? How was the student work evaluated? Describe the scoring mechanism, rubric, dichotomous responses, scaled responses. Continue reading Reporting Assessment Data→

Does this Rubric Make my Assessment look big?

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Does this Rubric Make My Assessment Look Big?  In my office, rubrics are frequently a topic of conversation.  Usually I am meeting with a faculty member, or a department chair about an assessment planned for the coming semester.  The conversation usually comes around to needing a rubric to evaluate a student performance.  So in this article I am sharing the basics about rubrics.  Something to get you started if you are currently a non-rubric user, or if you want to improve the rubrics you currently use. Rubrics at their most basic are a tool used by faculty to help in the task of assessing student learning.  Rubrics can be holistic or analytic, general or task specific.  Rubrics can assist faculty in assigning grades, or can be used for collecting assessment data. Holistic vs. analytic Rubrics  Holistic rubrics provide a single score based on the overall performance of a student on a specific task or assignment. Advantages: this type of rubric Continue reading Does this Rubric Make my Assessment look big?→