Senate to study program assessment

By MARA MCGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

A proposal calling for more broad assessment of the effectiveness of the university's educational programs in order to improve courses, curricula, and student learning at both the undergraduate and graduate levels was introduced to members of the Faculty Senate Tuesday.

The resolution, which focuses on assessing the overall effectiveness of programs rather than specific courses, was developed last spring by the senate's Educational Programs and Policies Committee (EPPC) and was presented to senators by committee chair Jack Meacham, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and chair of the Department of Psychology.

Meacham emphasized the EPPC's use of the term "assessment" rather than "evaluation" in formulating the resolution.

"What assessment means to us is a critical appraisal carried out from an authoritative position; that is, by people who are knowledgeable and can make an informed judgment," he said. "Evaluation to us means to set a value of something; to set a value on a person, a department, or a course, to judge the worth of something. Evaluation implies putting things in the same category up against each other and ranking them."

He added that "evaluation" often gives summative, rather than formative, conclusions and that it often focuses on student satisfaction rather than what students have learned, which can result in useless rather than useful feedback.

"When we talk about assessment, we have in mind a process that involves a number of steps," Meacham explained. "The first step is that the faculty in a particular program identify what the goals are for the students in term of learning objectives."

A faculty committee then would choose procedures for identifying whether the learning objectives have been met, carry out the assessment and then look at how they can use the findings to revise the courses and to strengthen and change the teaching method for better learning outcomes.

According to Meacham, teaching methods, courses, curricula, learning processes, achievements and educational programs are examples of areas to be considered for assessment. In addition, he said, the assessment could take place at a variety of different points: during a course or program and up until five or 10 years after graduation.

Meacham recognized that many departments already have been conducting assessments for 15 or 20 years and that some of those could serve as good models for other departments.

"We're not asking for something new here; we're merely asking for an endorsement of extending this assessment procedure to all the education programs on campus," said Meacham, adding that "our campus is, quite frankly, a bit behind compared to other institutions of higher education on (assessment procedures).

"There are quite a variety of things that could be employed in terms of procedures," he noted. "It opens up a variety of interesting possibilities. I want there to be a diversity of ways to assess and a diversity of ways for us as teachers to discover if our teaching is working."

Several faculty members expressed concern that the document calls for leaving the details up to the administration, rather than the faculty, since the resolution begins by stating that the UB president "is called upon to ensure" that assessment is conducted "both regularly and frequently" and does not outline details of how it will be done.

Only then does it state that "the faculty of the university are called upon to recognize" its responsibility to participate.

Meacham said that the intent of the resolution is to "call upon the administration to provide a bit of leadership because there are many sectors that are not doing program assessment. We want to have assessment occur more systematically and are asking the administration to make it happen."

He said that the resolution implies that the president would tell the provost to make sure that program assessment happens in some way and that "how that takes place in particular units is wide open."

Judith Adams-Volpe, director of Lockwood Library, cited Access99 as an educational program that should be assessed and asked who would be responsible for making sure that assessment happens in programs that do not belong to a specific department.

"My sense is that the EPPC does not want to go down that road," said Meacham. "We want the Faculty Senate to formulate a direction, a charge to the administration. There are some details we need the administration to work out."