This semester presents unique challenges to our campus.  Assessment of our programs and general education courses, in many cases, cannot proceed as normal.  For other courses or programs, the new environment may have little impact on assessment, or offers new opportunities to use it as a means to reflect on and narrate our successes and challenges this semester.

Where circumstance allows it, program and general education assessment data should still be collected.  Programs and those teaching general education courses should use their best judgement about whether and how to collect assessment data this semester.  Programs that have collected assessment data from Fall 2019 can report that as their 2019-20 program data.  The OWC-B assessment pilot will continue, however instructors who feel that they cannot participate are free to opt-out and participate next fall instead.

We understand there are concerns about collecting assessment data under these circumstances.  However,

• UWM’s system of assessment is low-stakes in that neither students nor programs are directly affected by the results of assessment work.  Instead, while accreditation requires that we document assessment work, it provides an opportunity to check in with how our students are doing and to reflect on our teaching and the circumstances that have affected student learning.  At UWM, the audiences drawing conclusions about the meaning of assessment data, and deciding how to respond to it, are programs or instructors themselves.

• Assessment activities can illuminate areas of learning impact that we didn’t anticipate:  Indirect measures, such as student self-evaluations on particular outcomes, done in GER or other courses throughout the remaining weeks of the term, could present new opportunities for faculty to track and respond to where students are struggling most.  Direct measures at the end of the term could help faculty better reflect on and narrate the actual impact of this semester’s unique circumstances on student learning.

• Many normal program assessment measures, both direct and indirect, are not significantly impacted.  Program assessment reflects more than the learning of one semester, but implicates learning over the entire course of study.  Thesis defenses, even conducted remotely, still involve faculty evaluation that can be captured on a program rubric.  Program exit surveys still allow graduates to provide useful feedback on their learning and experience over their course of study, and can be distributed electronically.  Data pulled from course-embedded sources, like exams or assignments, can still be collected if those activities are still being done, even if programs interpret, frame, and use the data in a different way than they would have before.

• The new Qualtrics reporting forms, for both program and GER assessment, give faculty the opportunity to contextualize data and explain how it has helped them understand and respond to student needs.

Departments may wish to make exceptions for instructors whose courses have moved online, and who are feeling overwhelmed by the transition, from collecting assessment data.  However, collecting assessment data online may also, in some circumstances, be easier and less time consuming than it was before.  Rubrics can be set up at the course level, or even the program level (where they can be downloaded into multiple courses) fairly easily.  The OWC-B assessment rubric is already available campus-wide in Canvas.  See the UWM assessment webpage for more details.

Departments should use their best judgement about continuing to conduct program or GER assessments this term, but should try to do so wherever possible.