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How Do We Know What They Know?Evaluating Student-Learning Outcomes in an MPA Programsubmission of Pre- and Post-Instructional Assignments from each core course.These papers require approval only from the course instructor, which limits thepossibility of a second faculty member imposing additional, non-course-relatedrequirements on them. Obviously, the primary superior quality of the Pre- andPost-Instructional Assignments is that the Pre-Instructional Assignments create abaseline that is used to compare them with the Final Skills Self-Assessments.This provides a more accurate and complete basis for the analysis of skillacquisitionin each core course.Part IIIPart III of the SLP required the submission of professional developmentdocumentation. This could include documents such as training certificates andpromotion letters. Unfortunately, this requirement did not give students orfaculty any opportunities to assess the students’ development while in theprogram. Also, many students lacked physical documentation of training whilein the program. Therefore, Part III also was revised to include at least twoexamples of written work that was completed in the MPA program. Students areinstructed to include projects that provide examples of their best work while inthe program. These projects are reviewed by faculty for the purpose ofdetermining the students’ writing competency skills. These papers are reviewedby all PPA 697 faculty, as part of the SLP approval process.Part IVPart IV — the final part of the SLP — focuses on the outcome of the PPA697 course (either the five case studies or the research project, depending onthe student’s choice). At this point, case studies already have been reviewed bythe core content faculty, and are reviewed again for assessment purposes by thePPA 697 advisor. Compiling all four parts of the SLP results in a holisticassessment document that also serves as a collection of work completed in theMPA program. Students may then use the SLP to document their skill sets andwriting abilities for present and future employers. Each semester, a randomsample of portfolios is reviewed by the departmental Assessment Coordinator,and in the future they also will be provided to members of the departmentalAdvisory Board for review and comment. The feedback from these communityleaders and public officials will help inform changes to the necessary skills andconcepts covered in the MPA program.CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONSThe purpose of this paper is to report initial findings from a new assessmentsystem in a large MPA program. Even though the data are preliminary, and arefrom a system that has been in place for only one academic year, the findingsindicate some success. First, results of the Final Skills Self-Assessments aresignificantly different than results of the Initial Skills Self-Assessments for allJournal of Public Affairs Education 281
How Do We Know What They Know?Evaluating Student-Learning Outcomes in an MPA Programcore content areas. Despite the fact that the samples are from two differentgroups of students, all students were admitted under the same criteria.Therefore, there should not be significant differences in the samples’characteristics. The significant differences in these responses indicate thatstudents who are exiting the program have a higher-level perception of theirskills in all core content areas than students who are entering the program.In terms of skills-acquisition in the core courses, a small sample of Pre- andPost-Instructional Assignments from a Public Budgeting class seem to indicatethat students improved their abilities to analyze a local city budget as a resultof the course. However, this finding is preliminary, and must be augmentedwith analyses of Pre- and Post-Instructional Assignments from all core coursesin the future.Students also appear to be performing well on the PPA 697 case studies,because none of them received a grade below a C+. However, there were largevariations in grades between the core content areas. Again, more data need to begenerated before conclusions can be drawn regarding the ability of students toapply core content skills to relevant public-sector scenarios.While all of these results are very preliminary, CSULB’s new holisticapproach to assessment presents the opportunity to expand assessment effortsof the department by involving more stakeholders in the assessment ofstudent-learning outcomes. Assessment mechanisms alone are inadequate toassure a comprehensive assessment of student-learning outcomes. Involvementof stakeholders is vital to any assessment system, because they must beengaged in the process in order for it to be successful. This involvement willbe fostered by rotating the Assessment Coordinator role throughout alldepartment faculty members. Engaging community members is a difficulttask, but it could be made easier by beginning the engagement process withmembers of the departmental Advisory Board.Assessment is a process, rather than a result, and development of theassessment system is based on feedback from all stakeholders. Hopefully, asmore stakeholders are engaged, their constructive feedback will continue tofurther refine and develop this holistic assessment system.REFERENCESAngelo, T., & Cross, P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. SanFrancisco: Jossey Bass.Banta, T., Lund, J., Black, K., & Oblander, F. (1996). Assessment in practice: Putting principles to workon college campuses. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.Brown, G., Hirschfeld, T., & Gerrit, H. (2008). Student conceptions of assessment: Links tooutcomes. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 15(1), 3-13.Denton, C., Swanson, E., & Mathes, P. (2007). Assessment-based instructional coaching provided toreading intervention teachers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20(6), 569-590.282 Journal of Public Affairs Education
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