final version of the self-study document - Keuka College's Middle ...

the goal that the course will address, we are better able to get a complete picture of our
program and how well the courses are working together in its entirety to meet the goals
outlined in the assessment report.” Using this smaller grouping of courses, this year’s
assessment results showed that the English majors were generally not meeting the target
criteria for success for achieving the above learning outcomes, as measured against
rubrics implemented for the 2011-2012 academic year. In their final recommendations,
the English faculty concluded that they need to revise the assessment tool and/or reevaluate
the benchmark for success if the tool continues to be utilized for assessment:
“Based on these results, however, the English Program will be working in the 2012-13
year to re-evaluate the program overall and determine how the structure of courses in the
program work together to meet these program goals. In these discussions, we will
attempt to determine whether current assessment methods are inadequate or inapplicable
or whether we need to revise our program itself and its current goals” (Appendix 4.38
English Program Assessment 2012).
Program Assessment Example: Business
Accredited by the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE),
the Business program, Keuka’s largest, regularly assesses its student learning outcomes
across all programs and delivery models. In the campus-based traditional program, direct
measures of student learning are the semester-long project in the capstone course BUS
444 Strategic Management and a comprehensive business exam covering the functional
components of business, administered at the completion of the capstone course. Analysis
of the poor results for meeting the target benchmark for the financial management
component of the comprehensive business exam led to the decision in 2009 to hire a
finance/accounting tenure track faculty member, replacing a series of adjuncts, and to
build additional finance content into the BUS 444 course to reinforce prior learning.
Completing the assessment loop of this change to the program, the Business faculty note
in the 2012 report that students continue to struggle with this content; they have identified
the need to review the assessment tool itself to determine if the content taught matches
the expectations within the comprehensive exam. With regard to not meeting the target
goal of 88% for the capstone project, the Business faculty note that the average grade had
dropped from 87% to 86%, but point out that they had “introduced a much more rigorous
comprehensive grading rubric for both the oral and written portions of the comprehensive
term project, which resulted in the drop of 1 % in the average grade, but yielded much
more impressive written papers and oral presentations” (Appendix 4.39 Business
Traditional Program Outcomes Assessment 2011-2012). Their final analysis of the term
project grades indicates the same underlying issue identified with the comprehensive
exam, namely that they need to address the financial analysis and forecast sections of the
term project. Indirect measures employed in the traditional Business program include ten
NSSE items that measure students’ engagement in effective educational practices, with a
target goal of 3.0: analysis, synthesis, application, evaluation, critical thinking, written
and oral communication, and using computing and information technology. In their
analysis of results, the Business faculty noted success in achieving the target goals and
future improvement plans: “The four survey questions that showed the most
improvement, writing and speaking clearly and effectively, have been the focus of
campus-wide efforts to improve these skills. There is a continuing effort to have students
Page 19 of 31 Chapter 4: Inst. Effectiveness & Assessment