Assessment

Assessment

The SUNY Board of Trustees adopted resolutions in 1998 and 2004 that strengthened the University’s longstanding commitment to rigorous and regular assessment of academic programs to enhance academic excellence.  In 2010, the Board updated its policies to reduce unnecessarily duplicative assessment requirements for campuses while maintaining high standards.  On behalf of the University Provost, the Office of Academic Programs, Planning and Assessment implements the Board’s assessment policy through guidance, coordination and partnerships with campus academic and assessment leaders and organizations such as the SUNY University Faculty Senate, the SUNY Faculty Council of Community Colleges, the SUNY Council on Assessment, the Assessment Network of New York, and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. 

SUNY Assessment Policies and Procedures

SUNY Resources for Campuses

SUNY Council on Assessment 
Appointed by the SUNY Provost in consultation with campus and faculty governance leaders, the Council's mission is to enhance the assessment of institutional effectiveness and student learning by building, leading, and supporting a SUNY‐wide assessment community that fosters collaboration, reduces duplication of effort and provides guidance and resources to campuses. 

Institutional Effectiveness Rubric

SUNY Academic Programs Dashboard for Program Planning and Assessment
These dashboards enable campus users to define tables and graphs to analyze trends in each of their own academic programs in terms of enrollment, persistence, and degrees, and to compare their data to other campuses.

Guidance for Developing Institutional Assessment Plans
This document provides information on important elements of an institutional assessment plan.

SUNY Assessment Listservs
Assessment listservs promote a community of best practice among SUNY colleagues. Request to be added to the SUNY Campus Assessment Officers List and an Assessment Listserv here.

SUNY Association of Institutional Research and Planning Officers (AIRPO)
SUNY AIRPO, open to all New York State institutions, supports institutional research and planning officers at institutions of higher education in New York State, including their contributions to the assessment of student learning and institutional effectiveness.

SUNY Center for Professional Development (CPD)
The CPD offers a wide range of professional development opportunities related to teaching, learning and assessment, as shown on its events calendar. To subscribe to its listserv, send an email to info@cpd.suny.edu.

SUNY General Education Requirement Student Learning Outcomes 
This is a list of student learning outcomes in all 12 of SUNY’s General Education areas that guide the development of SUNY General Education courses and the assessment of student learning in those courses. Common student learning outcomes promote seamless transfer of SUNY General Education courses.

SUNY General Education Assessment Review (GEAR) Group
GEAR developed rubrics that campuses can use, on a voluntary basis, to assess student learning in three of SUNY’s General Education areas, as well as guidance for campuses and templates for keeping records of the assessment of student learning in general education and the major. GEAR also endorsed the use of commercially available assessments that provide national benchmarks for selected General Education student learning outcomes. They are the ACT CAAP in Critical Thinking and Writing Skills (Basic Communication), for which SUNY-specific score reports can be obtained for an extra fee, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) for multiple student learning outcomes, including Critical Thinking and Writing.

SUNY Stony Brook University’s List of Interviews on Innovation in Education 
Assessment of student learning is among the topics discussed in videos produced by Stony Brook's Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology.

SUNY Student Opinion Survey (SOS)
SUNY’s Office of Institutional Research conducts the SOS on a three-year cycle. Many campuses publish online reports based on their SOS results.

SUNY University Faculty Senate
Guide for the Evaluation of Undergraduate Programs(January 2012 edition)

SUNY Campus Resources

These links to selected SUNY campus resources on assessment and institutional effectiveness illustrate multiple approaches and promising practices.

Resources on College Readiness Assessments in New York State

The New York State Education Department is developing “college readiness assessments” to measure student progress in grades 3 through 8 and high school towards meeting Common Core Standards designed to prepare high school graduates for success in careers and introductory, credit-bearing college courses.  SUNY is involved in this work because it advances our strategic goal of a seamless education pipeline.

Update on College Readiness Assessments in New York State (Spring 2012)‌.  This briefing on  college readiness assessments in New York State indicates their implications for SUNY.

Selected Other Assessment Resources

American Association of Colleges and Universities Assessment Resources. AAC&U offers institutes, online resources, publications and more, including its VALUE Rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) in multiple areas that were developed by national panels of faculty.

Assessment Network of New York (ANNY). ANNY is a professional network established to assist New York's colleges and universities in their efforts to assess student learning and institutional effectiveness. It publishes a newsletter, sponsors conferences and plans to provide other services.

Assessment UpdateThis peer-reviewed, bi-monthly publication features articles by institutional assessment professionals and columns by national assessment leaders. Back issues and guidelines for submissions are online.

Association for Institutional Research (AIR). AIR, the world's largest professional organization for higher education institutional researchers, provides educational resources, best practices, and professional-development opportunities for its more than 4,000 members. 

Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE). AALHE is a national organization of assessment practitioners committed to documenting and improving student learning in higher education through events, events, publications, and other services.

Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE)  COACHE is a research-practice partnership based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are dedicated to the discovery of and insight into the postsecondary faculty experience. Partnering with COACHE, academic leaders at more than 250 colleges, universities, community colleges and systems have strengthened their capacity to identify the drivers of faculty success and to implement informed changes.

Center for Community College Student EngagementThe Center is an umbrella organization for survey research, focus group work, and related services for community and technical colleges interested in improving educational quality through strengthened student engagement and student success. It offers nationally-benchmarked, research-based services to colleges and sponsors:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). CHEA, a national advocate and institutional voice for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation, is an association of 3,000 degree-granting colleges and universities and recognizes 60 institutional and programmatic accrediting organizations. 

ePortfolios. An ePortfolio is a digitized collection of artifacts—such as demonstrations, resources, and accomplishments—that represent an individual, group, or institution for assessment or other purposes.

Internet Resources for Higher Education Assessment. Hosted by North Carolina State University, this site has over 1,200 links, including over 400 links to college and university assessment sites, as well as links to U.S. regional and specialized accrediting agencies, international quality assurance agencies, state-specific assessment organizations, sites focused on assessing specific skills or content, assessment handbooks, and dozens of other topics.

Inventory of Higher Education Assessment Instruments. This list of assessment instruments, created by the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement in 2003, has four areas: Institutional Effectiveness (surveys of opinions and institutional experiences of students, faculty, staff, administrators, or alumni); Basic Skills (measures of the general cognitive capacity of the students); Affective Development (surveys of the values and social development of the students); and Major Field ExamsNOTE: This list is not current and does not include assessments created since 2003.

Listserv for Assessment Professionals in Higher Education. Hosted by the University of Kentucky, this national listserv has over 1,000 subscribers who exchange questions and valuable information, and features a publicly available searchable archive

Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). To assist institutions in meeting its accreditation standards, Standards for Accreditation and Requirements of Affiliation, MSCHE has extensive resources about the assessment of student learning and institutional effectiveness:

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). NILOA aims to discover and disseminate ways that academic programs and institutions can productively use assessment data internally to inform and strengthen undergraduate education, and externally to communicate with policy makers, families and other stakeholders. It conducts surveys and analyses, issues position papers on pressing topics, develops short, instructive case studies of promising practices in collegiate learning assessment, and publishes an interactive calendar of assessment events.

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). NSSE conducts surveys, issues reports and provides services to four-year institutions of higher education with the goal of improving student learning and institutional effectiveness using research-based, effective educational practices. Its services include:

New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability. The Alliance, an advocacy-focused organization, is leading and supporting voluntary and cooperative efforts to move the higher education community towards gathering, reporting on, and using evidence to improve student learning in American undergraduate education, and has published principles and guidelines.    

Voluntary Framework of Accountability – Community CollegesA project of the American Association of Community Colleges, the VFA is developing metrics for measuring the effectiveness of community colleges, collecting data from colleges and building tools for displaying the metrics in consistent ways for the public.

Voluntary System of Accountability – Four-Year Institutions. Sponsored by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the VSA is an initiative to supply clear, accessible, and comparable information on the undergraduate student experience to important constituencies through a common web report – the College Portrait.  The VSA endorsed the use of three nationally-normed, standardized tests with the capability of measuring improvement in student abilities in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communication:

For more information contact Assessment.

 
 
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