About the
Institute:

Program Assessment Institute

August 9-10, 2007

Institute Objectives

During this Institute, you will produce a draft of a program assessment system that:

  1. Helps meet program goals and standards.

  2. Clarifies your program’s processes, systems and structures

  3. Significantly benefits your program.

  4. Evidences qualities of the program by key outcomes

Additionally:

  • Determine the “why” and “how” of measures with respect to their importance in a program assessment system (i.e., why are quality measures important and how do you measure them?)

  • Gain understanding of the relationship between measurement, assessment, and evaluation.

  • Understand the role of self-study and self assessment in designing a program assessment system.

  • Understand the importance of a fair and equitable evaluation system.

  • Effectively apply limited assessment resources systematically to obtain the greatest incremental growth in the program.

The Program Assessment Institute comes at time when there is a strong need to improve existing program assessment systems within higher education. The increasing demands of external accrediting organizations requires institutions to take a new look at their program’s outcomes. A new set of questions is being asked and must be addressed.

In a program:

  • What determines its quality and how will this be measured?

  • What student performance or learning outcomes should be explicitly stated?

  • How will you determine if students have met these performance outcomes?

  • How will performance be measured, assessed and evaluated, for both students and faculty?

  • Will the program assessment design meet the standards for external review, and how are their criteria determined?

The institute will help participants determine the quality desired in a program, clarify the program goals, and identify key processes which will help produce those qualities.

Then quality measures will be identified which are needed to document where a program is against a set of standards and help improve performance for the next cycle. For this reason, it is important that participants be able to identify and define measures for both processes and outcomes and to determine the standards required for these measures.

Comparing Program Assessment and Program Evaluation

The process of program assessment differs from program evaluation in the following manner:

Perspective

Program evaluation involves determining the quality of past efforts while program assessment focuses on improving future performance.

Ownership

The evaluator in a program evaluation provides a reward or punishment while the stakeholders in a program share ownership in the process of program assessment. and its continual improvement.

Time

With program evaluation, common checkpoints occur every 3, 5, 7, or 10 years while program assessment is ongoing with continual synthesis.

Framework of a Program Assessment System

A program assessment system helps to determine:

  • what you are trying to do (goals),

  • the process you use in doing it,

  • which qualities you want,

  • how you are going to measure those qualities,

  • the level of quality you want and,

  • how well you are doing it.

Institute Activities

Activities during the institute will include:

  • Overview: Assessment, Evaluation, Program Assessment System.

  • Develop a one-sentence description of your program.

  • Determine your program’s three-year or five year goals/objectives.

  • Define the appropriate scope for your program.

  • Produce 5-8 sentences describing the processes of your program.

  • Assess the quality of your current program.

  • Brainstorm important and desirable qualities.

  • Write clear statements as performance criteria.

  • Identify attributes for each performance criterion.

  • Identify the means and instruments for measuring each attribute.

  • Establish standards and accountability for each attribute.

  • Writing an annual assessment report.