From developing and managing outcomes assessment and quality enhancement plans to assessing student learning, LiveText has over eight years of experience assisting educational institutions in supporting both regional and national accreditation requirements. Learn how to use LiveText to develop and manage department and program assessment plans, as well as assessing learning outcomes in educational initiatives, such as writing across curriculums, course embedded assessments or any other student based activity. You will also have the opportunity to see samples of reports by learning outcomes, student and course assessments and curriculum maps.

Matrix surveys, like a primary election, can have different response forms for different groups, all funneling into the same database. Consider student course evaluation. Each course can have a unique response form, tailored to that course. Courses designated writing intensive can have response forms that include questions on that topic. If a room has been recently renovated, all the courses in that room can include questions about the use and value of its new facilities. To help further tailor the response form for a class, faculty can choose in advance from a menu of teaching/learning activities, so that their students are asked for feedback on the activities most important in that particular course. Matrix surveys also open new frontiers for the scholarship of teaching and learning, and for program evaluation. Learn more about matrix surveys.

Scantron is pleased to showcase the ClassClimate software. You'll be impressed with how this eliminates the time-consuming steps of other collection methods. Come see for yourself how campuses across the globe are using this tool to gather data by web and paper. Learn who has been using this system and why they find it advantageous to other methods. After seeing this demonstration, you may schedule a complimentary assessment for your campus. A tailored proposal will be generated and presented to document recommendations for an improved process.

While many programs, particularly in the arts, include creativity as an important learning objective, there are few tools available for assessing creativity. The literature on creativity will be reviewed and several approaches to assessing creativity will be discussed. Participants will work to develop a rubric for evaluating the creativity of a design. A rubric developed at the University of Baltimore will be described.

Role-play and case study will be used to introduce the SOAR project at NC State, which assesses non-academic factors for incoming students, including self-efficacy, hope, self-control, perceived stress, and goal orientation. Components of the project include a self-help resource website, adviser intervention, and individual student feedback, all aimed at helping students understand their strengths as well as consider areas for improvement. The presenters will discuss the development and implementation of the tool and share the results of the analyses to test how well these non-academic factors predict students' first-year academic success and engagement.

Moving towards a "culture of assessment" requires overt and subtle steps. One overt step is the development of standard forms for curricular renewal and expansion. Our Community College instituted a new Course Outline Form, with a specific emphasis on the link between Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment Methods; this workshop will outline how we implemented the new form, and the subtle steps needed to support its "assimilation" as part of our college's culture of assessment.

The solid partnership of the assessment and international education staff at one institution has led to the implementation of a robust program to assess the International Plan, a degree designator for most majors at a major research university. The analysis of existing and new data reveals interesting, preliminary information about the types of students who choose such a program that is relevant for creating new and improving existing programs, about the potential impact of international experiences, and about assessing a competency-based approach to internationalization.

In pursuit of generating general education assessment results, we may enthusiastically adopt methods that are convenient but artificial. We explore ways to 'find' authentic assessments and present summary reports that your grandma can understand. The benefits are a better integration of assessment with the curriculum, and a much easier time convincing faculty that you know what you're doing. With examples, colorful charts, and a manageable dose of epistemology.

Information about assessment practice in higher education is more prevalent than ever. Several journals and countless conferences provide guidance on ascertaining the efficacy of pedagogy and curriculum. Ultimately, these resources are intended to help institutions satisfy calls for accountability and to make more informed decisions to improve student learning. To a large extent they are succeeding. Nevertheless, some information provided through these forums is inaccurate, occasionally on fundamental topics. In this session we address several of these common misconceptions.

Demonstrating learning outcomes through program effectiveness has become more essential as pressures for accountability continue to mount. In addition, Student Affairs practitioners are increasingly cognizant that program improvement is a by-product of measuring student learning outcomes. The presenters will share with the audience the process by which they transformed a satisfaction survey to one which measures student learning outcomes. The application of Learning Reconsidered (2004) to the instrument development and planning process will be shown. Discussion will include how the results will be used to impact future programs. Participants will have the opportunity to explore and share their own experiences.

A common response to the increasing pressure to demonstrate evidence of their value added has been for higher education institutions the development of an assessment system. The efficiency of an assessment system is usually dependant on the challenge of creating a culture of assessment that facilitates shared values and meaningful change across schools and programs. This presentation will share results of a survey on challenges and facilitating factors that institutions, schools or colleges face while creating a culture of assessment and accountability. The presentation will also highlight strategies used and challenges faced in order to sustain a culture of assessment.

This presentation focuses on what outcome assessment issues were faced by the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Gannon University in meeting its ABET accreditation EC 2000 criteria in 2005, and how the department overcame the issues by using EvalTools® and eventually achieved a "clean bill of health" for its accreditation. In particular, we will address the following questions:

1) How would one identify the strengths and weaknesses in the curriculum for quality improvement?
2) How would one gauge the level of success of meeting the program outcomes?
3) How would one effectively track/document on closing the loop in outcomes assessment?

This presentation will walk participants through the basic components of doing outcomes assessment using a hybrid model based on the five-column approach (Nichols 2005). Participants will learn how to specify learning outcomes at the program level for any discipline, identify appropriate assessment "vehicles" and "tools," and "close the loop" on an annual cycle of outcomes assessment. Participants will also learn how to apply this model to doing general education assessment, as well. The last 15 minutes of the presentation are interactive where participants will be engaged in an "intended student outcome identification test" designed to help folks articulate appropriate intended student outcomes.

Assessment is a crucial component of institutional effectiveness, and it draws considerable attention from accreditation bodies. Too often, however, it is descriptive rather than transformative. The assessment loop, which should encompass evaluating practices, revising practices as a result of that evaluation, and then evaluating the revised practices, stalls at the first stage because of institutional and personal barriers. Identifying key-performance indicators and implementing some of the principles of Six Sigma can dissolve the barriers and help to complete the assessment loop. A case study illustrates how this can be achieved in the context of academic support.

The General Education Program at Delta College has been developing from a grass roots approach that was started in mid-90's. Since then the institution's General Education program has developed: 1) reports to help faculty identify appropriate prerequisite skill levels for reading, writing and reading. 2) A variety of rubrics to evaluate general education skills. This session will share our use of these forms of assessment including our specific use of rubrics to evaluate information literacy skills on our campus.

A block scheduled semester is used as a capstone experience with five weeks of the semester being on campus instruction and ten weeks being used for a structured and closely supervised internship. The mentor provides continual feedback to faculty through a weekly electronic evaluation instrument and a final evaluation of student performance. This evaluation is used to make curricula and program improvements.

This is a case study on how colleges with remote campuses can use multiple measures to evaluate a complete general education program. Though this model can be used for any campus program, and is not size dependent, it was specifically designed to measure a medium sized college with several campuses. The method is an iterative process of measuring in each of the predetermined areas, using multiple measures, such as tests, paper evaluates, grade rubrics, surveys, and external evaluation, which give an overall indication of the quality of teaching, and specific guidance for improvement.

Assessment professionals stress gathering and using information for program improvement. Executives, legislators, and prospective students and parents ask for small sets of measures that can be used to compare institutions and units within institutions. We show how accountability measures and assessment for program improvement are related and suggest ways to coordinate the two processes. Examples are drawn from individual academic departments, from campuses, and from university systems. Participants will have the opportunity to offer their own examples and to discuss practical problems of an integrated approach, such as limited time and resources.

There is a growing body of evidence that success in college is connect to strong emotional intelligence (EI). Parker et al. (2004) found that students with GPA's of 3.0 or higher had significantly higher scores on most of the EI dimensions compared with student with GPS's below 2.0. They found that the intrapersonal adaptability and stress-management abilities (as measured by the EQ-i) of students were important in contributing to students success. Emotional Intelligence skills, unlike cognitive abilities measured by traditional IQ, can be developed throughout life. Shutte and Malouff (2002) demonstrate growth in EI for students enrolled in a college-transition course that incorporated these skills. This session will look at way to assess EI using the EQ-i as well as other qualitative and quantitative measures.

This presentation will discuss how the presenter worked with faculty, staff, administration, and trustees to develop meaningful student outcomes assessment at two different institutions. The presentation will examine common barriers to assessment that were present at each institution and how those barriers were overcome. The presentation will also examine how each institution was unique and how the approach to developing a culture of assessment was successfully altered. The presentation will focus on assessment within the academic disciplines.

Systematic evaluations of faculty, courses, and curriculum by students are helpful to campus assessments and supplement other measures. Typically, useful evaluations are difficult to assemble and most often used for feedback only to teachers although responsibility for the classroom is widespread. This presentation will focus on CoursEval, a web-based and email-based evaluation system that offers customized reports for teachers and for others with responsibility for the curriculum. Several faculty and administrative reports by the College of Arts and Sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo, will illustrate the reporting power and assessment possibilities of student-generated evaluations.

In student affairs, the articulation and assessment of student learning is especially challenging given the complex psychosocial and cognitive constructs that are the hallmarks of our work with students. Both recent student affairs graduates and seasoned professionals seek to develop the skills and knowledge needed to successfully identify, measure, evaluate, and articulate students' co-curricular learning outcomes. During this session participants will be introduced to the ACPA Commission for Assessment and Evaluation's Assessment Skills and Knowledge (ASK) project and the NASPA AER KC Assessment Education Framework and using these projects, participants will be given the tools to build unique assessment education strategies for themselves, for their graduate students, and for staff development activities.

This workshop is an introduction to outcomes-based assessment and planning with a focus on assessing academic programs. It is intended primarily for people who are newcomers to outcomes assessment. By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to work with faculty to help them create program outcomes, generate assessment plans, implement assessment plans, and report assessment results.

Experiential learning opportunities of various sorts - service-learning, internships, undergraduate research, etc. - have in common the potential for significant student learning . and the challenge of generating and documenting that learning, often in non-traditional ways. Intentionally designing experiential learning opportunities in accordance with explicit learning objectives, including using structured reflection to help students achieve those objectives, is key. Assessment can be a powerful driver in such a design process, and it can lead to the development of strong tools for integrating experience and learning. In this workshop participants will examine, adapt, and apply nationally-recognized tools for generating, deepening, and documenting learning (developed by the NC State Service-Learning Program through a multi-year scholarship of teaching and learning project) to a wide range of experiential learning arenas.

In this workshop we will explore how using active learning strategies and student self assessment together can enhance your students' learning and engagement. This will be a hands on session in which faculty will have the opportunity to refine their already existing effective learning experiences and assessments. We will examine domains and developmental levels of self assessment, and create prompts for self assessment to elicit high quality reflection on learning.

Brief workshops can help faculty learn to collect feedback from their students in order to improve teaching and learning with technology in their courses. For example, suppose a faculty member wants more participation in online discussion: a 15 minute workshop can show how to devise a survey identifying barriers to participation, barriers that the faculty member can lower once they've been identified. This is an example of a Brief Hybrid Workshop: Brief (5-15 minutes long, so it can easily fit into a departmental meeting, brown bag lunch, or short online session); Hybrid (mix of face-to-face interaction with online resources); Workshop (learning occurs through active engagement and peer interaction). In this session, we will use several such workshops, hear about what happened when they were first tried at a college, talk about techniques for producing such workshop materials, and brainstorm about how to use and evaluate such a workshop program.

Student writing and thinking, both in the general education curriculum and within the disciplines, are critical undergraduate learning outcomes. Many universities are concerned about the decline in student writing and realize the importance of developing and expressing ideas through writing throughout the curriculum; the processes of learning to write as well as writing to learn are both emphasized. In this workshop, participants will learn how the Cognitive Level and Quality of Writing Assessment rubric has evolved into a system that helps users identify strengths and weaknesses in students' writing and thinking and assists with "closing the assessment loop." Appropriate for individual faculty members, assessment teams, and student peer reviewers, the multiple versions of the rubric, including the peer review tool, will be shared. The most recent online version for assessing writing and providing instructional feedback to students will be demonstrated. Participants also will apply CLAQWA to assess writing and thinking in students' papers, will learn how important writitng assignment constuction is to the development of higher order thinking, and will explore possibilities for using results to improve students' writing and thinking, both at the classroom and institutional levels.

This workshop will present a comprehensive overview of a performance based general education assessment model. Expected student outcomes, assessment methods, and institutional standards will be discussed. Participants will work in small "assessment teams" to evaluate actual samples of student work using the model's faculty developed holistic scoring rubrics.

Activities for disciplinary accreditation and program-level assessment of student learning may be likened to either a duel or a dance. Disciplinary examples from Widener University will be presented to depict ways faculty may balance accreditation requirements with local expectations for student learning assessments. Participants will share barriers they experience and explore additional ways to effectively coordinate accreditation and student learning assessment.

Document analysis can be a powerful direct measure of student learning. In this session, a writing center director and a TRIO program director will explore how to use document analysis to capture student learning in areas that help students negotiate college success. We will share why we decided to use document analysis and how this tool has become a productive assessment heuristic in our programs. We will help participants consider how document analysis may be useful to their programs and will provide an extensive handout that shares our successes and missteps, offers document analysis instructions, and features a bibliography.

This presentation will give you a picture of how a large metropolitan community college has implemented a comprehensive assessment plan. This plan includes institutional resources, faculty commitment strategies, faculty leadership and facilitator training workshops, and timeline strategies. We will present strategies that can be taken to overcome unique challenges that face community colleges in implementing an assessment plan. We have outlined a plan that will promote faculty, student, administrator and community buy-in.

As the numbers of students moving an across borders grow, assessing the impact of studying outside one's home culture, becomes more complicated. Professionals in international education face increasing demands to devise metrics for success. One key to a successful assessment effort is understanding the ways in which student attitudes, needs and expectations are changing and what this means for the ways in which universities manage these student populations. In this session the panel, using the metrics established for the International Student Barometer, will consider, from the perspective both of a single institution and globally, the parameters of experience of international students, how we can learn what is working and what needs work, and what we already know about establishing the best conditions for a satisfactory experience for the institution and for the student.

This session focuses on one college's continuous progress in assessing student learning at the baccalaureate level. In addition to improving assessment methods per se, our initiatives played a major role in driving fundamental changes in curriculum, faculty development, and budgeting/planning. More faculty are collecting direct evidence of student learning via course-embedded writing prompts, participating in closing-the-loop discussions, and writing grants, conducting research, and participating in learning communities supporting assessment and student learning.

You know the feeling. You're anxiously waiting the data from your last administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement. However, once it finally comes, you're suddenly overwhelmed by the massive amount of data it generates. This session will demonstrate how the Illinois State University Assessment Office has put NSSE, BCSSE, and FSSE data work for its programs. Lastly, this session will also discuss how ISU managed and locally analyzed the data and offer an approach to dealing with the analysis and interpretation of NSSE data.

Student services practitioners increasingly must use assessment for documenting student learning outcomes and program efficacy. Research suggests that a significant number of student services professionals lack the knowledge, tools, and resources for conducting assessment. This program presents a model for using institutional standards-based self-study to inform the development and implementation of a comprehensive assessment training program for student services personnel. By using a data-based, cost effective professional development model, the presenters' institution has improved the use and quality of assessment among its student services programs. Participants will have an opportunity to discuss possibilities for adapting the model to their campuses.

True institutional improvement cannot be obtained by a single program or effort. Three interrelated improvement endeavors - software supported program assessment, reform of general education, and improvement grants - at a large research university clearly demonstrated the value for simultaneously engaging in multiple improvement activities. In this session we will describe each of these improvement activities and describe the impact they have had on developing a culture of assessment and improvement. We will also explore the interplay and interaction between these efforts and provide opportunities to discuss and reflect upon how these approaches can be applied at your own institution.

At Butler University, all undergraduate business students complete two, 300-hour co-ops in industry. Each student submits a portfolio of 11 written assignments on the co-op, requiring students to synthesize across business disciplines. Beyond theoretical integration, students must relate theory to practice as they experience it in the co-op. In this session, Butler-CBA's associate dean will discuss how they retained an assessment specialist to carry out the mechanics of assessment, leaving faculty to focus on the strategic aspects of assessment, such as helping craft the College's mission, program objectives and student learning-outcomes (SLOs) and deliberating on actions to close the loop.

This session focuses on actions taken by one multi-campus institution faced with the challenge of demonstrating that its graduates had attained the institution's identified general education outcomes. The institution addressed the issue with several concurrent strategies in a short period of time. The primary strategy included the assessment of selected student artifacts in LiveText with a consistent rubric by faculty panels.

While many undergraduate majors have national disciplinary accreditation standards related to student learning outcomes that, in turn, serve as the foundation for regional accreditation, many majors in the traditional liberal arts, including the humanities, do not. Objectives of the session include clarifying some of the problems and possible solutions to assessing liberal arts programs not accustomed to engaging in formal, systematic assessment of student learning outcomes and practical suggestions to designing a workable assessment plan, including ways to meaningfully quantity what is primarily qualitative data.

A case study of the use of SAILS results with one cohort of Communication Studies students to better understand skill levels and target instruction. Interpretation and use of the results and how they are linked to the liaison librarian's instructional objectives for the Communication Studies students. A discussion of the importance of the results in terms of students' information literacy knowledge and how to prioritize instructional efforts will be presented. Ideas for collaboration between departmental faculty and librarians to improve students' knowledge of particular areas will be given. This session will demonstrate how the instruction-assessment-evaluation cycle worked at one institution.

Communication, collaboration and conversations are the three C's that can lead to, improve and sustain a culture of assessment at any institution. The presenters from Anne Arundel Community College, Maryland will share their experience of an institution-wide review of the progress and the effectiveness of the college's assessment process in the last decade. They will discuss the lessons learned, a comprehensive review of the college's core competencies and how they are identifying the barriers to improving the culture of assessment. Handouts illustrating strategies and ideas to address the three C's will be shared with the audience. Small group discussions will highlight strategies to address participants' own institutional barriers in the context of the culture of assessment.

This workshop explores the importance of self-assessment and provides the building blocks for faculty and staff to assess themselves, who then, in turn, can teach constructive self-assessment to students, who can use it in their life-long learning. Self-assessment is the foundation for institutional assessment and for the accreditation process.

Assessing writing as a general competency is a challenge when expectations vary across disciplines, and when multiple stakeholders may have disparate or conflicting agendas. This session presents a method for obtaining a rich understanding of student writing that embraces contextual considerations. Implemented at a large research university, the method produces actionable results and was designed to address concerns of multiple stakeholders, to be relevant across disciplines, and to be accomplished with limited resources. Presentation will focus on the elements of the method and how they may be implemented at other institutions.

Assessment and strategic planning are hallmarks of recent trends in higher education. However, we rarely hear the need for the coincidence of the two. Assessment of curricula without the larger vantage point of strategic planning is short-sighted, and can engender wasteful, unproductive loss of faculty time. Without assessment of the program initiatives of strategic planning, strategic planning too can lead to fruitless efforts, and perhaps most concerning, lower institutional morale. Through interactive activities, this session will teach participants how to integrate their assessment and strategic planning initiatives to achieve the academic rigor and fiscal soundness of teaching excellence.

Higher education institutions that collect extensive data on diversity issues are fairly common today. Less common are institutions that synthesize and integrate these data into holistic analyses, which in turn lead to specific program enhancements. This presentation will outline the efforts of the UNCW Division of Student Affairs to put together the "puzzle pieces" of diversity, using data from national surveys, division-wide assessments, programmatic evaluations, and learning outcomes research. The goal of this presentation is to convey the processes used to collate such data, as well as specific interventions implemented as a result of UNCW's efforts to address diversity needs.

The Student Outcomes Assessment Program at the University of Delaware has one central goal: create a culture of continuous academic improvement that is focused on student learning. Our Middle States Periodic Review Report stated "The University's approach to institutionalizing assessment of student learning outcomes should serve as a model for peer institutions." That approach centers on an Assessment Faculty Fellows program that develops faculty leaders. Nearly 50 faculty accepted appointments, representing all seven colleges. The program's success lies in recognizing that every unit has its own organizational culture, and using that culture to devise successful strategies for faculty engagement.

This session will survey best practices in course embedded assessment. In particular we will consider examples where the institutions leverage their existing Course Management System to function as a central hub for learning outcomes assessment. A systematic approach to learning outcomes management requires a coordinated effort across the institution. Course embedded assessments, such as rubrics, course surveys, and exams, provide a unique opportunity for faculty, writing across the curriculum champions, instructional technologists, and assessment coordinators to collaborate via a Course Management System such as Blackboard, Moodle, or Sakai. We will present several detailed case studies and develop a road map for different disciplines and situations. We will detail how institutions made changes to curricula based on the data created through assessment activities, closing the loop on continuous improvement for administrators, faculty, and students.

Recently several reports have placed general education core competencies at the heart of the current discussion regarding student learning. The reports cite critical thinking, writing, problem solving, and math/science skills as essential to our country's continuing success. We need more than narrow general education views (and assessments!) to meet recent challenges to our approaches and our results. Are we learning all we can? What approaches could give us better information for planning and improvement? This session examines three lenses for general education assessment, each of which gives a different view. Come see whether any lens(es) might be useful to you!

It is natural and normal to engage in incremental and well intended pedagogical changes in an attempt to address assessment demands and; more importantly, better help our students learn. This presentation advocates that genuine innovation and improvement in classroom learning entail far more than "gut level" change endeavors and cursory adherence to university assessment mandates. Moving assessment from compliance to commitment necessitates strategic, thoughtful processes that ascertain learning outcomes, utilize various measurement tools, establish and evaluate criteria for success, and initiate compelling changes to truly enhance student learning.

Do students really know who their advisors are after attending orientation? What do you want students to know about the role of advising by attending new student orientation programs? What's working well and what needs to be fixed in your entire orientation program? This program will describe and discuss the creation and use of an online evaluation process where the effectiveness of new student orientation is assessed in real time to immediately identify weakness areas, monitor academic advising and course schedule satisfaction, orientation staff performance, level of student engagement and satisfaction with program presentation topics.

Montgomery College, a three campus, community college in Maryland with 24,000 credit students, has instituted a comprehensive outcomes assessment model that involves all sections of high-enrollment courses using faculty developed, course embedded assessment instruments to assess both subject learning outcomes and general education competencies. Presenters will talk about the benefits of this approach, use of the data and the primary results of the process

First-Semester students (freshmen) study in England, Scotland and Ireland. Assessment has been ongoing and we have 5 years of data, comparing students abroad with cohorts at the home institution. Students complete surveys and participate in interviews and focus groups while abroad. Measures focus on attitudes and expectations while abroad, subsequent performance, retention, and (faculty members') perceptions of the unique contributions of these students to the home campus. Challenges to the assessment program will be discussed and the presentation will give participants enough information to begin or enhance a similar assessment program.

Critical thinking is one of the broad goals of a college education and one of the main goals of a seminar on ethics in science for first-year students at Miami University. This course has now been taught three times. Each time, the Assessment Fellows at Miami have looked at assignments from both early and late in the term to assess the students' critical thinking. Each time, the professor has modified the assignments, adding scaffolded assignments, to help the students learn critical thinking skills.

This session offers a case study of how one institution, Meredith College, has used program reviews to make informed decisions about curriculum revisions and program viability. A review of academic offerings called for by the strategic plan, combined with the existing program review process, has led to improved curricula, modified offerings, and even some reduction in programs. Presenters will share the College's program review model as well as its institutionally-mandated review of academic programs. Outcomes and benefits of these evaluation processes will be included. There will also be time for group discussion and questions.

To demonstrate effective ways to develop and evaluate learning outcomes for career development courses. As Career Counselors, we know what information we want students to learn however, this is often difficult to measure. UNC Chapel Hill has been teaching the EDU 131 course for numerous years. Each year we use the results to improve on the contents of the course and how topics are delivered. Through the use of a pre/post on-line assessment, we successfully measure the learning outcomes in four areas of Career Development: Self Assessment, Exploration, Promotion and Decision Making.

Does your institution have a common vision of assessment? Can those at your institution define the expectations of assessment at course, program and institutional levels? What are some barriers to achieving effective assessment? The purpose of this session is to engage participants in a thoughtful dialogue and to provide information to enable discussions at their home institutions. The presenter will share an outline of issues related to setting expectations and communicating a vision of assessment across campus, along with associated barriers and potential solutions. This session draws on the presenter's experiences, assessment literature, and discussions with colleagues across the country.

Educators know that assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in actual performance over time. Outcomes assessment is a key strategy of successful learning organizations and TaskStream offers a universal toolset for demonstrating learning achievement through portfolio-based tools. Following an overview of the TaskStream tools, we will discuss our experiences supporting assessment initiatives in the College of Education at Western Carolina University. Through the presentation, we will demonstrate how our proven, Web-based tools empower a more complete and accurate picture of learning and, therefore, a firmer basis for implementing continuous improvement.

This session will focus on how the school of Education at North Carolina A & T State University developed a comprehensive and systematic assessment system for state and national accreditation purposes and for student and program improvements. Discussions will be based on our detailed assessment results and how those results were used to: (1) meet National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), (2) meet North Carolina State Standards, (3) improve student's performance, (4) monitor and mentor graduates, and (5) change curriculum.

Learning in a Technology-Rich Environment (LITRE), the quality enhancement plan for North Carolina State University's re-accreditation portfolio for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, is an empirical research program aimed at enhancing learning and teaching with technology. In its present stage, the second phase of its implementation, LITRE is focusing on three innovative technology rich environments and investigating how these technologies can positively impact teaching and learning.

The introduction of learning outcomes requires a cultural shift in educational institutions. This process can be difficult for those who have developed a comfortable relationship with existing practices. At Durham Technical Community College, this shift has taken place in three stages that mirrors that of other colleges with whom we have worked. I have titled these stages revolution, evolution, and integration. The school is currently in the evolution stage. This presentation will focus on the specific processes involved in Durham Technical Community College's learning outcomes assessment process, including a discussion of variables that have eased the process for those most resistant to its implementation.

In 2005, Clemson University began a team-based undergraduate scholarship initiative, called Creative Inquiry, to encourage mentoring of students pursuing thematic discovery over multiple semesters. One such student research team will explain the development of assessment methods to collect and analyze data from this initiative, including the creation of rubrics, surveys of faculty and students, an inventory of course participation, an analysis of reports, interviews, and a review of student research posters. Additionally, how these results have been used and the connection to general education knowledge, skills, and abilities gained from this research experience will be described.

As institutions are required to demonstrate student learning, portfolios are becoming increasingly popular. While a majority of institutions use portfolios to gather data for evaluative purposes, fewer institutions use them to document student learning over time. Portfolios can help students organize their work, demonstrate progress and achievement, and encourage self-reflection. This process facilitates sense-making and connections among and between college courses. This presentation will share reviews and content analysis of portfolios to demonstrate how portfolios can be designed to help students engage in self reflection, demonstrate competencies, and enable institutions to gather data for program evaluation.

Many colleges and universities are now using the Collegiate Learning Assessment for assessment and accountability. A four-year CLA longitudinal study involving more than 30 institutions has now reached its midpoint. Auburn University and North Carolina A&T State University will share lessons learned from the longitudinal study so far in two different settings. Participants will become acquainted with the goals and research model of the project, the CLA instrument itself, implementation issues and the format of institutional reports. They will also have an opportunity for critical reflection on differences between assessment for improvement and for accountability.

During the spring of 2007, Winston-Salem State University's, First Year College adopted a new model to effectively transition newly admitted first year and transfer undergraduate students. In this session we will discuss how we successfully utilized existing assessment data to enhance and improve New Student Orientation (NSO). We will illustrate how you can go from a passive to active learning model where students participate, are engaged and can demonstrate increased student learning. We enhanced NSO and we proved it. Let us show you how to use both direct and indirect assessment measures to do the same.

Although knowledge of how to conduct assessment is imperative, the 'back-end' processes of engaging faculty and staff and developing and maintaining a culture of assessment are critical. The Assessment Practices Survey was developed to help the researchers understand how changes in the assessment practice are perceived by different groups within the institution. We asked the participants in two assessment workshops to complete the Assessment Practices Survey. Seventy-three participants completed the survey. In this program we will examine the responses of these individuals to a range of questions pertaining to how different administrative, faculty and staff groups perceive the assessment process.

The TLT Group's Flashlight Program is dedicated to helping institutions strengthen their culture of evidence. (If it's common for faculty, administrators and students to say, "Before we decide what to do, let's gather some facts," then your institution has a strong culture of evidence.) This session will discuss the efforts of the last several years at Johnson C. Smith University (Charlotte, NC) to create such a culture of evidence. For example, the University has a powerful strategy for using mini-grants to faculty to help them learn skills of assessment that they can use to improve their teaching. Learn more about the University' efforts in this direction.