Assessment Plan
Assessment practices are
everywhere in life for us.That is,
evaluation of accountability to guidelines and standards occurs through out our
lives and happens subjectively and objectively from some point every day.
In response to the
expectations of the SACS QEP standard, HSU has constructed an assessment
plan.The intent is to gather data,
evaluate that data, and report findings—whether the objectives of the plan were
met or not, or to what degree—to SACS. For the complete HSU Quality Enhancement
Plan click here.
Assessment Plan
The evaluation of the HSU QEP initiatives includes
three types of assessment. Diagnostic assessment will be used to examine
existing programs and establish a base point for student performance. Ongoing
formative assessment will inform and guide the development process. Summative
assessment strategies will be implemented to examine the impact of the QEP initiatives
on student learning outcomes. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be
used to assess and improve the effectiveness of the initiatives.
Three Initiatives and their
Actions for Assessment
In order to assess Initiative A, increased collaboration
among faculty and between disciplines, evidence of attaining Action 1 required
written documentation of the time, place, attendance, and subject of faculty
discussions regarding ethical issues or pedagogy. Such documentation is to be
housed in the school or college hosting the discussion. This evidence is
measured by means of a Feedback Survey, the results of which are examined by
the university Provost and members of the Ethics Education Council. Evidence of
Action II, developing one or more interdisciplinary ethics courses as part of
the new ethics minor, will consist of documentation of course development
meetings, of course proposal consideration beyond the development stage, of
syllabus and actual course offering post approval as well as number of students
enrolled, different disciplines involved in the teaching of each of these
courses, and specific modes of participation by each of these disciplines.
These materials are to be housed in the Logsdon School of Theology in
conjunction with records concerning the development of the minor in ethics. To
accomplish Action III, the university President intends to appointed Dr. Bill
Tillman as the Chair of the Ethics Education Council (See QEP Report Appendix
J: "Resume of Dr. William Morris Tillman, Jr."). The appropriate dean
in consultation with the university Provost appointed a representative from
each of the schools and colleges while a student representative was appointed
by the Dean of Students in consultation with the Provost. The Chair and Council
report directly to the Provost. Evidence of these steps are available in the
Provost's office.
To fulfill Initiative B, Action I developed an
Extracurricular Assessment Plan (EAP) which will initiate a two-fold approach.
First, a record will be kept of each training session, along with a record of
those attending, to ensure that all faculty and staff sponsors receive the
training. Second, the effectiveness of the training will be assessed by
observing the results of external surveys (described in assessment for Action
II) regarding the ethical behavior of students in actual situations. Action II
has been assessed in several ways. First, after the council of sponsors and
students was selected to serve (the selection has been done by the Senior Vice
President for Student Development, the Dean of Students, or their
representatives), the charter and roster of the council has been maintained in
the Dean of Students office. Second, the Senior Vice President of Student
Development and the Dean will review any decisions made by the council
regarding ethical questions regarding student behavior, and a record of such
decisions will be maintained by the Dean. Finally, the council will oversee the
development and administration of surveys to be administered to groups and
persons who regularly observe the behavior of students during their activities.
The surveys will focus on the issue of ethical student behavior, and the SVPSD
and the Dean will work with the council in determining any action to be taken
as a result of the surveys.
Assessing the enhancement or incorporation of
ethics curriculum into selected courses, Initiative C, began with a
comprehensive curriculum review as a part of Action I. This review resulted in
documentation identifying ethics curriculum in existing courses for
pre-professional and professional programs and identifying those programs with
little or no current ethics components. In response to this review, individual
schools and colleges developed plans for addressing the enhancement or
incorporation of ethics into the curriculum of each pre-professional and
professional program in that school or college. These plans are becoming an
additional section on each area's annual Assessment of Learning Outcomes
Committee (ALOC) report and must be submitted to the appropriate school or
college dean, the Ethics Education Council, and the university Provost.
Evidence of attainment of Action II, asking for
student demonstration of knowledge in ethical philosophy, is a written record
of the completion by each pre-professional and professional undergraduate
program of a discipline-specific project requiring demonstration of knowledge
in ethical philosophy. Each discipline will determine its own measuring device
for this project and must record this assessment strategy as well as an annual
report of the students' demonstration of knowledge reflected in these projects
as part of the added QEP section of the area's annual ALOC report. In addition,
the ALOC report contains the discipline's evaluation of overall demonstration
results and indicate any resulting curriculum changes. Copies of this report
are submitted to the appropriate school or college dean, the Ethics Education
Council, and the university Provost.
Quantitative Testing
The quantitative testing of ethical ability might
be characterized as still undergoing healthy developmental discussion and
resulting alterations. The Measure of Moral Orientation [MMO], for example,
while affirmed as a reliable "standardized assessment of moral voice"
by Debora L. Liddell in The Journal of College Student Development, is unable
to gauge the context of students' moral dilemmas unless professors engage with
students beyond the testing process. To
the degree, however, that such testing has developed up to the present time, HSU's
QEP Steering Committee decided to examine external testing as a means for
assessing Action III, students evaluating real-world context ethical scenarios.
Three possible measuring devices were investigated: the National Survey of
Student Engagement [NSSE], the Measure of Moral Orientation [MMO], and the
Defining Issues Test [DIT].
The DIT became the central consideration for
external testing. The DIT-2, developed by the Center for the Study of Ethical
Development at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is the newly revised
version of the original DIT and attempts to assess moral reasoning by asking
students to choose from a list of potential answers to a set of hypothetical
dilemmas. Based on Kohlberg's theory of moral development, as is the MMO, the
DIT-2 offers each student a set of four moral dilemmas, each followed by 12
questions. Scoring is based on the student's ranking of the top 4 of these 12
questions in relation to significance to making a decision regarding that
dilemma. (See Appendix L: "Review of the Defining Issues Test" for
evaluations of the DIT's initial test by Burrows Mental Measurements.)