According to Faculty, the Most Important Reasons for Doing Assessment at an HBCU

Abstract

Since the emergence of assessment as a critical force in higher education, “faculty involvement” has repeatedly been identified as essential, yet approaches to assessment have been less than welcoming to faculty and tend to be more accountability-driven than learning-focused and improvement-driven. Past research on the perceptions of faculty regarding outcome assessment has tended to focus on the negative—why faculty are not interested or do not participate. For our study, we were interested in HBCU faculty perceptions regarding assessment, but from a positive perspective. Faculty were asked to distinguish importance among 15 items documented in the literature as benefits to doing assessment. Results indicate that faculty see assessment as taking care of accountability issues but also helping with curricular and program revisions. Interestingly, they see assessment as less likely to facilitate faculty discussions about curriculum. Implications for conducting assessment and further research are discussed.