Assessment Information for OWC-B Courses

This page provides information for instructors teaching courses carrying General Education credit for Oral and Written Communication, Part B (OWC-B).

The UWM Academic Program and Curriculum Committee, and our regional accrediting agency (the Higher Learning Commission), require some assessment data from each general education area to be collected and documented each year.  Further, the APCC requires that all GER approved courses have all of their outcomes assessed at least once every five years. HLC does not view COVID-19 as a reason not to require assessment.  If anything, an ongoing process of assessment is more vital than ever as a feedback mechanism that allows faculty to see how well students are learning what they intend during challenging times.  For more information about assessment requirements for General Education courses, please see the Assessment of General Education webpage.

 

In order to support the assessment of OWC-B courses, a process has been devised to help instructors of OWC-B courses more easily meet these requirements.  A group of UWM faculty created a standard OWC-B rubric that can be adopted (or adapted) for use by faculty, GTAs, or instructional staff teaching courses that satisfy the Oral and Written Communication, part B general education requirement.  The form below should be used to report OWC-B assessment data.

 

What this will require from instructors: 
  • 2-3 minutes to set up the OWC-B rubric in Canvas (the rubric can be imported easily and quickly).
  • About 20-30 minutes to complete the rubric for students enrolled in your OWC-B fall course, at the end of the semester.  Since you will have just completed grading, typically filling out the rubric in Canvas is a quick process using SpeedGrader.
  • Another few minutes to complete the OWCB data submission form in Qualtrics, in which instructors will be asked to consider what they think their assessment data means in the context of their discipline and course (or other relevant contexts, such as COVID-19), and to share their thoughts about how they might improve learning for their students on OWCB related learning outcomes in the future.

Using Canvas

Use these resources below to help set up OWC-B assessment in Canvas:

Using the OWC-B Rubric in Canvas (.pdf)

Using the OWC-B Rubric in Canvas (video tutorial)

Additional information

The purpose of assessment is to create a feedback loop that allows faculty to track and respond to patterns of student performance on key learning outcomes.  Neither instructors nor their students are being judged in this process, and instructors will be the only ones deciding what their assessment data means.

This process is not about grading, but helping faculty determine how well their students are achieving the goals of an OWC-B course (apart from other learning objectives your course has).  The rubric is not recommended as a grading tool.

The rubric is narrowly tailored to assess elements established by the APCC as required for OWCB courses, using broad language that can be applied across disciplinary contexts and courses.  It is developmental (based on AAC&U Value Rubrics), meaning that the highest performance level (Capstone “4”) represents expectations for a graduating senior.  For a course with many freshman or sophomores, a benchmark score of “3” and a target of 75% earning that score may be appropriate, while in a course with mostly seniors, the benchmark might be “4” and you might expect 90% of your students to reach that goal.  Instructors will decide where the goalposts are for their course.

When reporting assessment data at the end of the semester, the most important thing will be to document how the instructor responded.  Their interpretation of the assessment data will be the one that counts, and it will be up to the instructor to decide how to respond to it.

Customization

Instructors, or programs, are free to customize the rubric to better fit their course or discipline, so long as the assessment targets the outcomes required for OWCB courses.  Faculty are also free to devise and use their own assessment method for the OWCB component of their course, however keep in mind that assessment data should narrowly measure the specific outcomes being tracked, apart from other outcomes.  See GER Assessment Best Practices for more information about acceptable measures.  The Qualtrics reporting form is set up to allow instructors to report assessment data from the standard OWCB rubric, a customized version of the rubric, or data they’ve collected using some other method.

Submitting OWC-B Assessment Data:

This Qualtrics form has been created to facilitate the reporting and tracking of OWC-B assessment data (including faculty responses).  Please use this form to submit OWC-B assessment data after your course has ended.

Submit OWC-B Assessment Data (Qualtrics form)

Ongoing Assessment

While APCC guidelines do not require all OWC-B courses to report assessment data each time they are taught, assessment works best when it is ongoing.  This allows instructors to use assessment to identify trends in student performance, make changes to their courses, and then follow up to evaluate the effectiveness of those changes in subsequent semesters.  For this reason, instructors teaching OWC-B courses are encouraged to consider collecting and reporting assessment data for at least one OWC-B outcome each time they teach their course.