Action Plan
Program assessment activities and results are intended to inform regular faculty reflection and discussion about effective teaching, learning, and curricula, and ultimately contribute to decision-making to support student learning.
Decisions may include intentionally choosing to continue current effective practices, building on the program’s existing strengths, and/or making changes to the program. Importantly, use of assessment can occur at any point in the process of collecting, analyzing, or discussing direct and/or indirect assessment.
Developig and executing an action plan focused on improved student learning is the most important step in the Assessment Cycle.
Value of Use of Assessment
Program assessment activities and results can provide valuable information to faculty and program leadership to assist in making informed decisions and taking actions to provide students with the best possible educational experience. While all forms of program assessment can provide useful information for program improvement, using assessment of specific program-level student learning outcomes to inform decision-making is crucial to supporting quality programs and student achievement.
In this context, using assessment to inform decision-making can:
- Help programs demonstrate or build on academic strengths
- Help programs set priorities for improvement and feasible action
- Allow programs to act on matters of vital interest, including curriculum design, instructional practices, student development, and issues of equity
- Support accountability to others (e.g, external accreditors) about educational quality and program improvements
- Offer a meaningful and systematic collaborative process for shared decision-making and actions, with involvement from, and intentional consideration by, program faculty and leadership
Use of Assessment at UND
UND programs (curricular and co-curricular) are responsible for regularly using assessment activities and results to support decision-making related to curriculum, instruction, assignments, and program assessment processes. That is, program faculty are expected to use their assessment system to collect evidence related to student performance on program-level student learning outcomes to inform decisions about the design and delivery of high-quality undergraduate curricula.
At UND, we aspire for all curricular and co-curricular to develop assessment-focused Action Plans that:
- include specific strategies, based on assessment results and interpretation
- address at least one student learning outcomes and/or improvements to the assessment process
- outline a detailed reassessment plan
Additional Resources regarding Use of Assessment
Baker, G., et al. (2012). Using Assessment Results: Promising Practices of Institutions That Do It Well (PDF). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).
Jonson, J., et al. (2014). An Integrated Model of Influence: Use of Assessment Data in Higher Education (PDF). Research & Practice in Assessment.