Assessment of Student Learning

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Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan

Goals and Objectives

Bergen Community College's mission is focused on the goal of providing a high-quality education through an outstanding curriculum, outstanding teaching, and outstanding student services. The purpose of the current plan is to build on, amplify, and refine the College's existing methods of assessing learning outcomes with the higher goal of continuously improving student learning.

The Assessment Team that has overseen the development of this plan was chaired by a faculty member, and had faculty representatives from the three academic divisions, as well as representatives from Student Services, the Library, the college administration, and the Office of Research and Planning. The Team's primary goal has been to develop a college-wide learning assessment plan that

" is simple and realistic
" has clearly articulated goals
" has the best chance of regularly providing useful information for improving student learning
" is itself assessable in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency
" is drawn from, and will further, the College's mission
" can be supported by appropriate College resources

The development of this plan was driven by five basic questions and corresponding actions to be taken in the assessment plan:

To maximize the effectiveness of the assessment plan, the plan itself will be fully integrated into the College's institutional assessment plan and strategic planning processes. Tying budgeting and allocation of future resources to assessment processes will ensure that assessment results are used, and used in the most rational and useful way for improving the functions of the College.

Scope of the Plan

Assessment of student learning at the course level has been, and will continue to be, the mainstay of the College's assessment of student learning outcomes. Since the ultimate goal of the assessment plan is the improvement of learning, assessment of learning in all of its forms should be primarily in the hands of those who foster learning: the faculty and other College personnel who work directly with students in learning contexts. Since the enhancement of learning is the underlying goal, the assessment of learning should occur whenever possible in the learning environment, where feedback can be given to students in a timely manner, and thus lead to immediate improvement. While faculty will be free to exercise professional judgment and creativity in designing and implementing their assessment practices, they will also be encouraged and supported in learning about good assessment practices.

Student Learning Objectives

A comprehensive outcomes assessment program for student learning must start with a clearly articulated set of objectives at the course, discipline/program, and institutional level. At BCC, learning objectives at the course level will be subsumable under, or aligned with, learning objectives at the discipline/program level, which in turn will be subsumable under, or aligned with, nine core competencies.

Core Competencies

The purpose of the competencies is to serve as a framework that will provide mission-based direction and guidance to our various efforts in assessing student learning outcomes. The competencies have been designed to constitute a very broad and general set of institution-level learning objectives, and they include traditional transferable skills of liberal learning, modeled on the goals of the College's General Education program. However, since learning occurs outside the classrooms of the three academic divisions, the competencies are also geared toward learning-oriented experiences in Student Services, the Library, and the co-curriculum (lectures, student activities, club meetings and events, workshops, and the like.) The nine Core Competencies are as follows:

In line with the College's mission of educating the "whole student," the set thus includes both cognitive and affective competencies. Disciplines and programs will select which of the competencies they wish to focus on in their courses. While some disciplines and programs may have learning objectives that align with each of these competencies, the competencies, as a set, are not designed to be represented or embodied in the explicit learning objectives of each discipline and program. Nonetheless, as educators, all members of the college community who work with students will try to promote and foster these competencies in their interactions with students. In addition, since outcomes assessment is a continuous and dynamic process, it is expected that the competencies will give direction to the development and further refinement of student learning objectives at the discipline/program and course levels.

The competencies are also not designed to be directly measured, and in general, their level of achievement will be assessed through the measurement of outcomes at the discipline/program level, and ultimately at the course level. Other measures, such as portfolios, capstone projects, surveys, and focus groups may be used, when appropriate, to demonstrate the extent to which these competencies are being achieved.

Assessment should not be divorced from the ideals an institution has for student learning, and thus these competencies represent an ideal in some sense-a goal that will guide the direction in which our assessment processes will move. Initial failure or only partial success in demonstrating that our students possess these competencies will not be a strike against the plan or the Core Competencies; the overall success of the plan will be measured by the extent to which assessment results are being used, when appropriate, to make positive changes in the curriculum, pedagogy, and student learning.

The competencies will be highly visible to students, faculty, and the rest of the College's stakeholders. They will, for example, be displayed prominently in the college catalogue, on the college website, and in common areas. Such visibility will raise awareness not only of the College's expectations for student learning, but also our students' own awareness of their level of development.

Course Learning Objectives and Assessment Criteria

There will be a set of student learning objectives for each course taught at the College, and these learning objectives will appear on the syllabi and/or course outline of every section of every course offered at the College. Faculty will also develop a corresponding assessment criterion for each learning objective. In addition to indicating the method(s) by which the objective is to be assessed, the assessment criterion may include precise benchmarks or other expected standards that can be met or not met. (It is expected that such benchmarks may only be able to be sensibly added after an initial round of assessment of the relevant learning objective is done.) Prior to any assessment activities, all of the above information should be collected and represented in table format, as below:

Data Collection and Continuous Assessment

Some data will be collected by disciplines/programs each semester, for the simple reason that it will be much easier to manage data collection if only a small amount is being done at a given time. Disciplines/programs will decide what learning outcomes data they will collect during a given semester. For example, they may decide to assess performances on a disciplinary/program learning objective across a number of courses that share that learning objective, or they may decide to focus on a single course or two, and measure learning outcomes relevant to all of the learning objectives for that course(s). A representative sampling of specifically chosen learning outcomes will be done each semester, and this data will be analyzed and will help form the basis for any recommended changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and the like.

The College will develop an infrastructure to oversee and assist with these assessment activities. Disciplines/programs will be given guidance concerning the construction and use of data sets, as well as on matters of reliability and validity. Strategies such as using common assignments, common questions, and/or agreed upon scoring rubrics will facilitate the process.

In addition to the development of data sets concerning particular learning objectives, outcomes results will be reported in multiple forms, including traditional grades.
The establishment and use of a clear set of learning objectives and corresponding assessment criteria within each course will enable course grades to accurately reflect the degree to which a student has met the learning objectives of the course and the Core Competencies that are aligned with them.

Annual Reports and Program Reviews

The year-end annual reports traditionally submitted by disciplines and departments will briefly describe what assessment activities took place during the previous year, and the faculty, in consultation with the dean and other relevant parties, may begin to implement changes based on the assessment data.

Since a discipline/program will only undergo program review once every five years, it is imperative that changes be permitted not only as a result of the program review, but in the intervening years as well.

The program review process itself is being simplified, streamlined, and will require disciplines/programs to reflect on and assess their outcomes assessment activities that have been occurring on an ongoing basis. The Team believes that the effect of both streamlining the program review process and spreading the measurement activities over several semesters will be to take some of the pressure and work off of program reviews, which faculty have found difficult to complete because of the amount of concentrated work involved.

The program review process will provide disciplines/programs the opportunity to reflect on their assessment practices and data, and recommend further changes. Programs undergoing such self-study will continue to have a site visit by an external program evaluator, and program review reports will ultimately be presented to the college administration and the education subcommittee of the Board of Trustees.

Professional programs that are accredited by specific external agencies will continue to use mandated program reviews and applicable licensure exams as their primary method for assessing student learning outcomes. All courses in such programs currently have sets of student learning objectives and assessment criteria.

All of the above is intended as the foundation or core of the College's learning outcomes assessment plan; other measures of student learning (e.g., pre- and post-testing to demonstrate the "value added" nature of a BCC education, capstone projects, electronic portfolios, etc.) may be added at later date, and as needed. In addition, various indirect measures of student learning, many of which are already being used, will be taken.

Indirect Measures of Student Learning Outcomes

Indirect measures will include overall graduation and transfer rates, performance in the transfer institution (as evidenced by the student's GPA there), satisfaction items for the graduates, employment information for graduates, and the like. Graduation/transfer rates, employment information, and satisfaction items for specific programs will be considered during program review. Much of this data is available from the Graduate Follow-Up Survey, which also has some items on student perception of achievement in several areas of general education. Many programs are already using an additional set of program-specific questions that is sent to their graduates with the rest of the Graduate Follow-Up survey, and these can be developed and modified as needed.

Some analysis will also be done of the distribution of competency-aligned learning objectives within courses and programs to ensure that each of the core competencies is being sufficiently focused on.