EHHD_ED_GR_MEd_CI_REPORT_Year_0

Assessment Plan – Year 0 Report

College: Education, Health, & Human Development
Department: Education
Submitted by: Gilbert Kalonde

Indicate all majors, minors, certificates and/or options that are included in this new assessment Plan.

Part 1. Program Learning outcomes

Program Description (from Catalog):

At the Master's level, the Curriculum and Instruction program offers two options. The Professional Educator option is fully online and the Educational Researcher option is  a blended-online and onsite option.

Professional Educator Option: Students in the Professional Educator online program will share strengths, develop new instructional strategies, study theory and best practice, as well as examine current issues in education and consider implications for teaching practice. Students who complete the Professional Educator option of the Curriculum & Instruction Master’s degree are expected to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of a master teacher. For the Professional Educator option, all courses are offered in a 100% online format.

Educational Researcher Option: Students who complete the blended-online and onsite Educational Researcher option of the Curriculum & Instruction Master’s degree are expected to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of a professional researcher. Most courses in the Educational Researcher option can be taken online.

Assessment Planning Chart with Identified Artifacts

Part 2. Development of Assessment Plan

Threshold Values:

Outcome achievement in MEd in C & I is defined as met if students earn a final grade of B (80%) or better for the courses being assessed that academic year.  This will be considered meeting the “Acceptable” threshold. Consequently, during AY 2022-2023, final grades will be collected for each course included in the original assessment plan that are to be assessed (EDCI 514 and 531). The rubric provided in the “Assessment Method” section of this report details the threshold values in more depth. 
 
This threshold value reflects an adjustment from previous years in which outcome achievement was considered met if at least 80% of students were rated “Acceptable” or higher on every category of the scoring rubrics used in each of the courses. This previous threshold was couched in an assessment plan that included faculty collecting a random sample of the assignments from the courses being assessed, blinding them, and having those assignments scored by two faculty members using the course’s prepared scoring rubric. Ultimately, this plan was deemed too time consuming and resource intensive. As a result, the threshold values (and subsequent overall assessment plan) has been adjusted this Fall 2022. The intention is that this threshold value is less time-consuming to measure, hopefully yielding results of far more utility. 

Methods of Assessment & Data Source:

Like the threshold values for meeting program outcomes, this assessment plan for the MEd in Curriculum and Instruction reflects an adjustment from previous years’ assessment plans that were deemed too time, resource intensive, and constraining. Instead of randomly selecting assignments from those courses, and having faculty collectively contribute to assessing those assignments with a rubric, this new plan focuses instead on course grades. The rationale behind this adjustment is that it required the same assignments be used every single semester, especially given validity and reliability concerns.  Further, the previous approach prevented individual faculty members from having the freedom to design course assignments as they see fit (instead of being beholden to the previous semester/instructor’s assignments) while still aligning to the intended outcomes. If courses are aligned to their course outcomes, the final course grade should serve as indication of students meeting or not meeting those course outcomes.

Time for Collecting and Analyzing Data

The MEd program assessment schedule is in three parts: 1) Curriculum, policies, and procedures review; 2) Learning outcome revision; 3) Learning outcomes and course assessment.

Curriculum, Policies, and Procedures Review

During this process, faculty will convene several times a year to review the graduate student handbook, and revise any policies and procedures to best meet the needs of students.

Learning Outcome Reviews

During this process, faculty will convene once a year to review courses and their learning outcomes. Collectively, faculty will update any outcomes and/or course assignments to ensure alignment between any assessment data and the program’s learning outcomes will also take place. 

Learning Outcome and Course Assessment

During this process, final course grades will be collected for each of the courses to be assessed that year. Final course grades will be blinded, and the program leader coordinator will analyze those data to determine if the threshold for program outcomes was met, and students earned a final grade of 80% for the courses being assessed that academic year.

Updating of the assessment plan will happen in three parts: 

Curriculum, Policies, and Procedures Review: In advance of reviewing courses and their learning outcomes, the Curriculum and Instruction program put forth considerable effort during AY 2018-2019 focused on developing a consistent graduate course rotation and Graduate Student Handbook (Appendix A). Because of the influence each of these dimensions of graduate education have on meeting the program’s learning outcomes, the faculty agreed that effort put forth toward refining our course rotation and developing a student handbook was energy well-spent. Faculty met every other week during the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 to develop a graduate student handbook and refine and formalizing policies for the all graduate students, including MEd and EdD. In addition, departmental leadership developed a consistent graduate course rotation (Appendix B). This will help graduate students and advisors better anticipate and plan when courses are being offered. Ultimately, we recognized that we could not collect valid assessment data without first formalizing the curriculum, including the course rotation and policies and procedures for the program. This curriculum, policy, and procedure review will be a routine element of our assessment plan moving forward. In the last program assessment of 2017, the Curriculum and Instruction program committed to reviewing policies and procedures, including curricular alignment, that influence program learning outcomes. These efforts examined alignment between the EDCI 506 and 575 capstone/professional paper courses, two distinct courses but with considerable alignment that support student success. In addition, this review include analyzing and revising current departmental polices as they relate to the EDCI 575 capstone paper project. These efforts were initially launched in the Spring 2019 and will continue throughout AY 2019-2020 and beyond. 

Learning Outcomes Review: Once a year, C & I graduate program faculty will convene to review courses and their learning outcomes. This process will follow the schedule provided below in the “Timeframe for Collecting and Analyzing Data” section and will focus on confirming that courses still align with the program’s learning outcomes. At this time, any updating of those outcomes and/or course assignments to ensure alignment between any assessment data and the program’s learning outcomes will also take place. This alignment will ensure the courses, and the course grades, are indicative of student learning at the program level. The following table outlines alignment of courses to learning outcomes:

PART 3. Program Assessment

Data will be collected by from identified course instructors of record to share outcomes/anonymize data
Scores/data will be presented to entire Curriculum and Faculty for assessment.
Faculty will review the assessment results, and makes decisions on how to respond.
If acceptable performance threshold is met, a faculty response will be required. Possible Responses:

1. Gather additional data the following academic year to verify or refute the results.
2. Change something in the curriculum to try to fix the problem.
3. Change the acceptable performance threshold.
4. Choose a different assignment to assess the outcome.

Faculty can respond to assessment results even if the acceptable performance threshold has been met. 
A summary of the year’s assessment activities and faculty decision is reported to the Provost’s Office in the Department’s Annual Assessment Activities report

How will assessment artifacts be identified?

Artifacts will be collected from courses like EDCI 504, 506, 514, 531 and 575. The final paper EDCI 575 is the capstone for non-research option students. The EDCI 575 is assessed to cover professional paper for evidence of professional understanding of research and profession. This professional research paper synthesizes students’ work over two semesters on a problem in the profession surrounding K-12 learning, administration and pedagogy. This paper can be from 20 to 50 pages depending on the topic and data involved and collected. This paper showcases findings and analysis of data as evidence of knowledge of professional solution to their problem of focus in K-12 schools.

How will they be collected (and by whom)?

Data for the program will be collected by the Graduate Programs Coordinator, Course Instructors, and a group of faculty who constitute the Faculty Committee to as appropriate. Data may include course and project-specific grades as well as results of final papers and presentations. 

Who will be assessing the artifacts?

Program faculty, in collaboration with the Graduate Programs Coordinator, Director of Accreditation, and Department Head, will be assessing data on an annual basis to identify areas for program improvement. Additionally, program learning outcome assessment scores for the specific artifact assignment will not influence the student’s earned grade in the course.

Part 4. Program Assessment Plan

All plans must include assessment rubrics (the methodology of how student artifacts are to be assessed, and a threshold for student success attainment.

Part 5. Program Assessment Plan

1. How will annual assessment be communicated to faculty within the department? How will faculty participating in the collecting of assessment data (student work/artifacts) be notified?
   • Faculty, staff, and graduate students in the program meet bi-weekly to discuss programmatic matters. The assessment reports will be communicated in a Fall department meeting each year. This will be communicated ahead of time through the weekly Monday Minutes communication that is sent out to the department community.
2. When will the data be collected and reviewed, and by whom?
   • Data will be collected each semester and reviewed on an annual basis by program faculty and the Assessment & Alignment Committee within the department. This committee consists of faculty and staff within the department.
3. Who will be responsible for the writing of the report?
   • The report will be written by program leadership with input and feedback from the faculty.
4. How, when, and by whom, will the report be shared?
   • The report will be shared by program leadership with the faculty at a fall department meeting. It will be sent to faculty ahead of the meeting in order to provide time for them to preview and prepare to provide feedback at the faculty meeting.
5. How will past assessments be used to inform changes and improvements? (How will Closing the Loop be documented)? 
   • As part of each cycle’s assessment, we will set goals for continuous program improvement. These goals will be revisited throughout the cycle to determine what progress is being made toward the goals and what additional adjustments need to be made to continue progress.
6. Other Comments:

Final Course Grade Rubric 

Appendix A