"The effectiveness of an institution rests upon the contribution that each of the institution’s programs and services makes toward achieving the goals of the institution as a whole." (Middle States Commission on Higher Education)

QTA continues its contributions to that end through the following accomplishments:

Monitor the implementation, review results, and provide recommendations of current core curriculum assessment practice.

Members reviewed existing assessment measures and the recommendations from the 2016-17 Core Report to identify the following advancements to current core assessment:

• To strengthen the recommendation section of future Core reports, it was determined the need to identify the responsible party, request annual updates on progress, reduce the number of recommendations, and remove open-ended content.
• Information Literacy will be incorporated in the updated Core Curriculum assessment through the foundations of critical thinking and communication, specifically in the evidence, synthesis of information and evaluation areas. Additionally, the assessment of information literacy skills embedded in ENL 111 will continue.
• Required Student Outcomes (RSOs) in CSC 124 will be reviewed and/or revised to identify overlapping content, currency of course material, and weaknesses.
• Continue current written communication assessment methodology but review the specified page requirement.

Research, review, and recommend assessment processes for the foundation core goals specified in the proposed framework.

QTA members, working with the Core Curriculum Review Committee, designed Critical Thinking rubrics for applied technology and research-based curriculum. Faculty members from the individual schools piloted the rubrics in the spring of 2018. Valuable feedback, collected from a focus group, will be implemented into a second pilot assessment to be conducted in the 2018-19 academic year.

QTA leaders met with academic leaders in information technology and communications to discuss the need to design a common rubric for oral communication and technology. Rubrics should be completed by Fall 2018 and will be piloted by the academic schools in Spring 2019.

Study the revised MSCHE assessment processes to guide continued campus compliance with the Standards for Accreditation and Requirements of Affiliation.

To gain a thorough understanding of the standards, QTA members first reviewed the MSCHE’s training video, “New Standards & Requirements: A Guided Review.”

In Spring 2018, members produced document roadmaps to demonstrate compliance for Standards I, II, III, VII. Information for Standards IV, V, and VI will be collected over the summer and incorporated into a roadmap as part of the group’s work in the fall semester.

Several QTA members attended MSCHE’s workshop, “The New Standards: Integrating Periodic Assessment Everywhere.”

Collaborate with administrative units as they continue to develop their assessment practices.

QTA members presented an assessment workshop, “Create Meaningful Assessment Reports,” for administrative unit leaders and staff. The workshop was well attended with full capacity. Attendees completed a pre-post survey. Additional workshops will be developed based on their feedback.

Continue to offer assessment-related professional development for internal stakeholders.

QTA members are actively involved with providing assessment-related professional development for faculty, academic, and administrative leaders. The annual Academic Program Review training included a session on course and program level assessment.

The annual Assessment Academy in Fall 2017 had four assessment focused sessions on the new core model, core assessment, common assessment tools, and a case study from automotive electrical courses.

The QTA co-chairs reviewed the expectations for the Annual Assessment report and quality control suggestions for course-level assessment at a Deans’ Council meeting. QTA members continue to be the point of contact for individual school questions and concerns that can be addressed by the committee.

Promote the President’s Award for Outstanding Assessment of Student Learning to the campus community.

The committee agreed to award the 2017 Outstanding Assessment of Student Learning to the well-deserved physician assistant program. Academic leaders were encouraged to recruit faculty and staff application to the award if strong assessment practices were identified during their review of assessment results for the annual assessment report.