Assessment Examples
Assessment and the Development of the Communications and Information Technology Program
In 1999, Bay Path began the process of revising its General Education core curriculum with the goal of implementing programming that would enable faculty from all disciplines to integrate three focal themes of the college’s mission, communications, information technology, and leadership, across the curriculum. Over a two-year period, faculty met formally in structured workshops with curriculum consultants as well as informally in small group meetings to explore the nature of technology and communications skills required in the workplace, to determine overall student learning outcomes (SLOs) necessary to develop such skills, and to design a core of at least five required courses to help students master those skills. The College applied for and received a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation to help fund a project to integrate communication and technology skills into the curriculum; to redesign courses in each major to build upon the core curriculum by incorporating specific communications, information technology, and leadership skills needed for success in specific fields; to provide training and support to faculty; and to help fund the addition of state-of-the-art technology and computer laboratory classrooms. As a result, the College redesigned core requirements and established a distinctive sequence of courses within the General Education core, the Communications and Information Technology (CIT) program, specifically designed to help students master a wide range of communication skills, both oral and written, as well as provide opportunities to master information literacy. Faculty collaborated to develop specific student learning outcomes for each of the five core communications courses and developed guidelines for the assessment. Formal assessment was designated to occur at three major points in the program and oral and written projects were designed to assess student proficiency in five rhetorical outcomes (content, context, purpose, audience, and organization). A 4-point scoring rubric was developed to provide a consistent means of evaluation for each assessment point. The 15-credit communications core was introduced. In the fall of 2000 and has since undergone several more revisions, all based on the results of the assessment of student learning outcomes, feedback from students, and feedback from faculty.
One major change that has occurred since the beginning of the CIT core has been the extension of the CIT program into the upper-level curriculum, and the establishment of the Senior Year Integrated Experience, integrated capstone courses within each discipline that provide students the opportunity to synthesize the concepts they learned in core communications courses of their degree programs. Through a three-year grant from the Teagle Foundation, faculty designed and developed a junior-level communications course with discipline specific sections, and Senior Year Experience courses for each discipline. Faculty sought external input to help guide them in the development of the curriculum and identification of student learning outcomes. In order to better understand the skills that graduates need to successfully compete in the workforce, Bay Path faculty designed and administered a series of 10 communication-specific questions to local field practitioners. The college sponsored a series of in-service faculty development programs and workshops and brought in experts in communications and writing-in-the-disciplines to help guide the curriculum development.
Throughout the entire process, student learning outcomes have been established for every one of the CIT courses. In 2004, faculty piloted the assessment plan for the junior level CIT course. Students were evaluated on assignments embedded in the course curriculum, an oral presentation and a written paper. Based on the same 4-point scoring rubric of five major elements of communications, including attention to content, context, purpose, audience, and organization, students showed substantial improvement from the first year to the junior year in all five aspects. While the overall results of the assessment were favorable, faculty noted areas for improvement, including the need for further refinement to be more discipline-specific. Faculty and college faculty librarians collaborated to develop a series of CIT 300 level courses, the Advanced Writing and Research series, focusing on communication and information literacy skills within specific majors, including CIT 300 - Communicating for Leadership; CIT 303 - Communicating in Criminal Justice; and CIT 306 - Communicating in Psychology. These changes were implemented in the fall of 2005. It is notable that the Council of Independent Colleges selected Bay Path College’s core program to serve as one of the model programs in its 2005 workshops on library models and information literacy skills in the curriculum.
