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Assessment Planning and GLOs

Every graduate program assessment plan -- every "Graduate Learning Outcomes" statement -- should contain the following elements:

Program Mission Statement

Learning outcomes need to cohere closely with their program's mission statement. In those cases where programs within a unit differ significantly from one another, as judged by the members of that unit and as evidenced by significant differences among the learning outcomes, each program needs its own distinct mission statement. But in those cases where all the programs in a unit share, to some significant degree, common learning outcomes, all those programs may share a common mission statement.

Expected Learning Outcomes (four to six)

Paula Krist of UCF asks her faculty to think "SMART" when writing student learning outcomes:

Specific — clear and definite terms describing expected abilities, knowledge, values, attitudes and performance
Measurable — it is feasible to get the data; data are accurate and reliable; it can be assessed in more than one way
Aggressive and Attainable — the outcome has the potential to move the program or department forward
Results-oriented — describe what standards are expected from students
Time-bound — describe a specified time period for accomplishing the outcome

Two principles that must be addressed:
(1) graduate programs must incorporate graduate instruction and resources that foster independent learning, student-directed scholarship, and/or appropriate professional experiences and
(2) graduate programs must be progressively more advanced in academic content than undergraduate programs.
These two principles are perhaps better thought of as arching over the entire program, but it is important that a program's Mission Statement and Expected Learning Outcomes captured the two.

Assessment Plan / Approach / Strategy

For those graduate programs that do not have discipline-specific accreditation, an "embedded assessment approach" focused on whatever capstone products the program generates (such as thesis, dissertations, comprehensive examinations, and portfolios) is recommended.

The faculty members charged with guiding and reviewing these capstone products can develop rubrics based on their program's GLO statements. These rubrics can be completed by these faculty members — for instance, a thesis committee — at the time of the products' review and evaluation.

For those graduate programs lacking both discipline-specific accreditation and capstone experiences, these programs should work with the university's assessment officer on the development of an assessment strategy that meets their needs and that the program faculty find meaningful and useful.

Improvement Plans

No assessment program is complete without resulting in the construction and implementation of improvement plans directed at achieving greater (deeper, more lasting, more transferable, more critical, more widely connected, etc.) student learning.