Tiffany Seeley-Case, Vice President of Instruction, College of Southern Idaho
Whitney Smith-Schuler, Dean of Transfer and General Education, College of Southern Idaho
Anyone who has ever been a teacher has struggled with how to get their students to more deeply and meaningfully engage in class discussions, activities, and assignments. Teachers complain in hallway conversations about the many students who view their educations as cursory and transactional. The dreaded “if I complete task, I’ll get a grade as a result” approach to learning. This attitude biases students toward getting an assignment done rather than attaining something through the rich multi-step process of learning.
We educators lament this attitude in our students, yet if pressed we might acknowledge a similar perspective of our own toward student learning assessment. There are times we “do” assessment to get it done, to stop the reminders from the department chair, to comply. This view of assessment predisposes us to focus on the box we will be able to check when we’ve completed the task, instead of concentrating on the task itself. Task, however, sounds chore-ish, and assessment should be anything but a chore. At its purest, assessment is about improving how we teach, so our students improve how and what they learn. Why, then, can assessment sometimes seem like a chore to be done, rather than a process to be embraced?
One reason might be that assessment can be thought of as an act of judgement, and no one likes to be judged. To assess is to “evaluate or estimate the nature, ability, or quality of.” Having the quality of our work judged or evaluated can create feelings of vulnerability or even defensiveness. Another reason might be that we feel assessment is forced upon us. Arguably, something that has been chosen for us has diminished value compared to something we ourselves have chosen to do. Finally, the timing of assessment, often completed at semester’s end, means the assessment process is not fluid and continuous, but interrupted by holiday breaks. And, when faculty return to campus, their focus is on preparing for new classes instead of sustaining the assessment conversations started a few weeks or months before.
Ten or so years ago, those three points together constituted what might be called our “culture of assessment” at the College of Southern Idaho. While some pockets of instructional faculty had embraced assessment, others felt a bit threatened by it; some felt they had been made to do assessment without much say in the decision; and some questioned its value because they felt nothing happened after assessment results were reported. Then, in 2015, CSI received an accreditation recommendation from NWCCU that specified we did not treat our general education requirements as a wholistic program with outcomes, nor did we assess those outcomes. This recommendation gave CSI the opportunity to redefine what general education meant at our college and to implement a new process of general education program assessment. A committee of faculty and administrators, with input from faculty campuswide, spearheaded work on these reforms. We knew, however, that for any structural change to be meaningful and long-lasting, we had to honor and work in tandem with the cultural attitudes that already existed.
Our first step in doing that was to hold a campuswide town hall style meeting that focused on the purpose of General Education at CSI. Nearly 90 faculty, administrators, and students assembled. Attendees were provided different philosophies of general education to consider and were asked to explore both their congruent and incongruent opinions about those viewpoints in small discussion groups. The format of the town hall meeting gave participants an opportunity to share their beliefs about general education but at the same time pushed them to consider positions alternative to their own. Working together in this way our campus articulated and clarified our own philosophies of general education, which we felt were vital to understand before we defined program goals and how to assess those goals. Another significant result of the town hall was that we were able to connect in unusual ways, in groups outside of our regular departments and with people who we did not regularly interact with on campus, in a larger and richer community than we previously enjoyed.
The reform committee’s work to define general education program goals and to implement an assessment process then continued. As we examined assessment processes at other colleges and debated what might work for our own, we were honest with ourselves that some faculty would not want to participate in whatever process we suggested. We responded to that hesitancy by advocating for an assessment process that required of general education faculty nothing more than what they were already doing in their classes. We proposed asking faculty to submit an assignment and student response that they felt best supported a particular general education program goal. We would then organize those assignments and artifacts into portfolios that represented the learning opportunities a student would have in completing the program of general education at CSI. Groups of readers would then wholistically assess portfolios for evidence of student achievement of our program goals.
Key to the implementation of this new process was clearly communicating to faculty that we understood their feelings about assessment. We reassured faculty that we wanted to evaluate the success of our program of general education as demonstrated in student artifacts rather than point to individual instructors’ pedagogical strengths and weaknesses. We were up front about the compliancy aspect of what we were asking them to do, but we were also eager to highlight the opportunity the new assessment activity created for instructional improvement. And, we promised faculty we would “do something” with assessment results.
We feel that because our general education reformations were rooted in respect for prevailing cultural attitudes toward assessment, the structural changes that we implemented have been effective and long-lasting. During our first full assessment cycle, approximately two dozen readers participated, all of whom were general education faculty. Five cycles later, triple that number were involved, including both academic transfer and career technical faculty, staff, and administrators. Portfolio readers consistently share that the reading and discussion session is a highlight of the academic year. What was once an afternoon meeting has grown into an “Assessment Week” that now includes not only general education assessment meetings but also gatherings in our discipline or “way of knowing” groups, as well as campuswide assemblies with guest speakers. And, earlier this year we held our first annual summer conference that invited more than 300 dual credit instructors to also read portfolios and to learn how the courses they teach are part of a comprehensive program of general education. Finally, we communicate assessment results to our Teaching and Learning Center; the learning designers create focused professional development opportunities in direct response to those assessment findings. Thus, we are “doing something” with assessment results and are closing the assessment loop in purposeful and meaningful ways.
Perhaps the most impactful outcome of these general education assessment efforts is a new, richer and broader sense of belonging. Through a process of shared assessment, we have created stronger inter-departmental bonds. Whereas before we saw ourselves as only a part of a Math or English or Biology department, now we identify together as General Education faculty, as well. The summer conference enables us to also nurture this sense of belonging in our dual credit faculty, who are spread throughout the state but can now unite with us through the shared values we have created in assessment. We are proud of this cultural shift in assessment at CSI. We have moved from one of mistrust and compliance into one of belonging, connection and worth. It benefits our students, enriches our faculty, and truly places assessment where it should be in the cycle of teaching and learning.
