You might wonder what happens to all of that peer-review data once the final flurry of emails have gone out to assessment coordinators, department chairs, associate deans, and deans. Peer-review of assessment documents requires a considerable amount of time and effort each year, and it yields both high-level insights into institutional assessment processes as well as feedback and suggestions to faculty within academic programs and core courses. The feedback provided by the members of the AASC and GECC generates reflection and conversation within departments, programs, and courses about achievements and potential improvements for current and future academic years and assessment cycles. In addition to these conversations, our team in IAA continues to analyze and use the data collected to determine next steps and improvements.

Our assessment templates and peer-review rubric are structured to follow the institutional assessment process, so the scores provided by peer-review help us to gain an institutional perspective of overall strengths and weaknesses. A scan of the charts above show that for core course assessment, the green and blue bars that indicate “acceptable” and “exemplary” scores are increasing across rubric traits. For 2020-2021, combined acceptable and exemplary scores increased on seven out of eight traits. And, a review of peer-review scores for our academic programs shows that not only are more programs achieving “acceptable” and “exemplary” in all stages of the assessment process, but the percentage of programs at the “beginning” stage is steadily decreasing as well. These results tell us that our assessment processes and documentation are steadily improving for general education and academic program student learning outcomes. This improvement is the direct result of efforts put in by hundreds of faculty teaching and contributing to assessment throughout our institution, led by committed assessment coordinators who capture and summarize those efforts each year in a cohesive student learning outcomes assessment document.

I also notice from looking at these peer-review results that the early stages of the assessment process represent institutional strengths. For academic programs, mission statements, student learning outcomes, and curriculum maps are particularly strong. Core courses show similar strengths for core area alignment and learning activities and engagement. Where we see the greatest opportunity for improvement as an institution is in the use of our assessment results to develop and implement meaningful action plans to improve student learning.

This brings me to a phrase we’ve been hearing around the office a lot lately: