Developing Learning Objectives and Assessment Plans at a Variety of Institutions: Examples and Case Studies

Abstract

More meaningful assessment plans are increasingly expected at colleges and universities in the United States. These plans are implemented with the intention of providing faculty with data that can be used to improve courses and programs. This attention to objectives, outcomes, and continuous improvement has emerged in the latest version of the guidelines from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Professional Training (CPT) (1). The new guidelines request a department's most recent self-evaluation and a plan for acting upon the recommendations (1). With both university-and discipline-based calls for data-driven course and curriculum improvement, it seems safe to assert that most chemistry faculty members will be involved in some form of enhanced assessment prerogatives for the foreseeable future.At ACS's 232nd National Meeting, eight faculty presented information on the progress toward more effective assessment practices within their program or institute (2-9). 1 Table 1 provides a partial list of some of these departments and their assessment Web sites. As a method of disseminating current practices, this article reports assessment practices and trajectories of six chemistry (and biochemistry) departments, one chemical engineering department, and the ACS Examinations Institute represented in the symposium. Given the focus of the new ACS CPT guidelines on student outcomes, faculty who are not well acquainted with assessment practices may find examples and case studies useful.

Investigating Faculty Familiarity with Assessment Terminology by Applying Cluster Analysis To Interpret Survey Data

“…1 Moreover, departments are increasingly expected to report course and program-level measures of student learning for internal accountability and external accreditation. 2 One barrier to the implementation of assessment efforts lies in a perception by many chemistry instructors that the field is laden with the use of jargon terminology, that tends to obfuscate the otherwise laudable goals of improved measurements of student learning. 1,3−5 It is not particularly surprising that chemistry education practitioners remain somewhat uncomfortable with terminology with origins in education research.…”

Results from a National Needs Assessment Survey: A View of Assessment Efforts within Chemistry Departments

“…2, 3 Towns 4 reported an analysis of assessment plans within chemistry departments and derived descriptions for how the development of learning objectives and assessment plans were carried out. This study suggested that assessment plans vary based on the number of students being assessed, the level of assessment (course-level and programmatic), and institutional resources.…”

Teaching and assessing ethics and social responsibility in undergraduate science: A position paper

“…Although this is a small sample, this suggests that CTLO 5.3 requires change in a typical chemistry degree to ensure that it is taught and assessed. Consistent with this assertion, a US study recommended ethics to be addressed because it was lacking in first and second year chemistry units at Purdue University (Towns, 2010), and a UK medical degree was also found to be deficient in the learning outcome of ethics (Robley, Whittle, & Murdoch-Eaton, 2006).…”