Northcentral University

12 Elaine Willerton, PhD | Assessment Director, SSBS Esteemed Colleagues, In this edition of the newsletter I thought I would provide a brief update on two recent developments on assessment at NCU. Part of a good assessment cycle, is reviewing your processes and results. This year we've paid a lot of attention to numerous assessment practices with an eye toward improvement. First, some of our full-time and adjunct faculty contributed their time and perspective to focus groups developed by the Office of Institutional Assessment to gather information on Institutional Learning Outcomes rubrics. The initial results were useful and identified a number of areas for improvement. While the institution is continuing with this project, we have already begun doing a few things at the school level to address certain issues. • Lack of alignment between assignments and learning outcomes rubrics was a concern for some of the focus group participants. As a first step to ensure proper alignment, the placement of assessment rubrics in new and revised courses is done in consultation with the curriculum development team. • Knowing where rubrics (both assessment and grading rubrics) were located in courses was another common question. As new and revised courses are developed, we are including information about rubrics in the faculty teaching guide. This information can also be found in the assessment map for each program which are stored on the SSBS Assessment page on FRANK. • There were many questions and misunderstandings about rubrics in general. A number of resources have been created to support faculty, including step-by-step videos and quick guides. These can be found on the SSBS Assessment page on FRANK, as well as in the SSBS faculty lounge on The Commons. Second, an Assessment Summit was held in Anaheim, CA in April, prior to the WASC Academic Resource Conference. NCU leadership, along with assessment directors, took time to revisit some of the assessment practices that have been in place for a while. Consensus was reached that it was time for some practices to be updated to better fit our current composition and capacity. As a result, the Provost named the champions of four workgroups. • A governance workgroup was charged with exploring the combining of the institutional assessment and curriculum committees. These are both subcommittees of the academic affairs committee. • A reporting workgroup was charged with proposing revisions to the academic program review and five-year program review process and templates. • A survey workgroup was charged with proposing revisions to the current institutional policy on student- and faculty/staff-facing surveys. • A rubric workgroup was charged with exploring current rubric tools and practices at NCU and making recommendations for any needed changes.

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