Outcomes Assessment

01 August 2009 | Program Review | Frank Vozzo

30 days and counting.

I am in the process of writing a self-study for the Forensic Science program at Russell Sage College.  The self-study will first go to RSC Dean Sharon Robinson and to an external evaluator by August 31, then later this fall to the Program Review Committee.

The story behind this dates back to January 2008.  The Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Vice President for Information Resources, the Academic Deans, the Director of Student Learning Outcomes Assessment (that’s me), and the (former) faculty chair of the Steering Committee writing the Middle States self-study design, met to discuss the readiness of The Sage Colleges for reaccreditation review, particularly in the area of documenting student learning outcomes assessment.  At the meeting in question, I came up with an idea that ended up being quickly endorsed and implemented: on the CampusCruiser intranet for The Sage Colleges, a file folder called “Program Review Portfolios” was set up in an area accessible to all members of the faculty, administration and staff.  In that folder, each leader of an academic program not subject to individual outside professional accreditation was instructed to upload documents that could be relevant to both internal Program Review and to the institutional reaccreditation, and to update those documents frequently.  Program leaders were encouraged to organize existing documents in such a way as to clearly demonstrate a succession of steps leading to improvements in student learning, beginning with identification of the problem (which ideally is based on previously articulated program goals and objectives), then progressing to data (showing what is collected routinely or specifically to address the problem), decision making, curricular or policy change, and data on learning outcomes resulting from the change (favorable and unfavorable). If unsure where to begin, the program leaders were encouraged to post any documents (with data) related to the most recent curricular changes. Documents had to be non-confidential in nature, since part of the purpose for the public intranet posting was to give all program leaders access to what everyone else was doing, so that good ideas could be spread.

Practicing what I preach, I collected and posted documents for each program in my department.  The one I spent the most time working with is Forensic Science, since I am the academic advisor for all of its majors and was primarily responsible for getting the program started back in 2001.

At a faculty meeting at the end of the spring 2008 semester, the leaders of the Program Review Committee gave a report that described difficulties in meeting the goal of reviewing every program on a cycle not to exceed ten years.  The offer was made to accept any program that volunteered for an expedited, informal review, in order to improve the overall rate of coverage.  Initially, I offered the Forensic Science program for an informal review but later changed that to a full regular review.

My thinking: if I could demonstrate that (with outcomes assessment in mind) I have been collecting and posting just the right information to satisfy the needs of PRC, and that if I could write a self-study without too much effort using the documents-at-hand, then that would help other program leaders to see the Program Review Process in a positive light (it’s about faculty members helping other faculty members to strengthen their programs).  I hope to also demonstrate that outcomes assessment iinformation is extremely useful, and not that hard to gather!

I have produced three drafts of my self-study over the last two weeks, spending a total of about six hours with the actual writing (more time in corresponding with my department colleagues and re-reading my documents).  The current length is 21 pages; I expect it to increase to about 30 pages by the time it’s ready.  There are six documents in the Forensic Science subfolder of the Program Review Portfolios that I have referenced in the self-study so far:

1. Mission and Goals.doc
2. Chemistry Competence/CHM-FS.xls (student grades analyses)
3. program retention 2001-2009.doc
4. FS Grad Survey.doc
5. Learning Outcomes.doc
6. Outcomes Assessment 2008-2009.doc

Other files from the CampusCruiser intranet shared files I have used:

1. Institutional Research & Planning > Program and Course Enrollments > Enrollment_by_college_by_Department_Fall_2008_UPDATED.xls
2. Institutional Research & Planning > Planning Documents > 2008 Strategic Plan > Plan Final Draft 6.5 5-27-09.doc

Web sites I have used:

1. http://catalog.sage.edu/print.php?page=academics/academic_programs/rsc/bachelor/forensic_science/index.php&college=rsc.
2. http://mysite.verizon.net/fvozzo/forensic/
3. http://www.strose.edu/academics/schoolofmathandscience/forensic_science/forensicscienceprogram4yearplan

Note that there are many other useful documents in the Institutional Research & Planning folder of the intranet shared files that I could have used, but documents that I generated myself were more useful to me in discussing my own program (such as job placement of graduates).  I admit that my familiarity with the documents found in Institutional Research & Planning has helped me to find that information quickly and incorporate it easily into the self-study.

More to come!