Academic Program Review

Frequently Asked Questions:

To what extent are plans expected to be made public? How public? To administration? Whole university? How public will the results of all the assessments have to be? Will students or officers of the student government have access to portfolios after they are submitted to the Provost?

There are two questions to be answered. The first concerns the stage of development of the assessment plan, while the second concerns the wishes of a department or program. The Office of Curriculum, Accreditation, and Assessment and the Steering Committee will provide a secure/confidential web site where drafts of developing assessment plans may be posted for review. When plans are submitted to the Provost and approved, it is hoped that departments will feel confident enough to allow a public posting on the Program Review website. However, it a department chooses to not post their program review documents, we will comply with their request. Nevertheless, like all other documents that do not involve personnel or student privacy issues, these documents, whether posted or not, are, technically, available for public review.

Any group may review those plans that are listed on the Program Review web-site. It is expected that all assessment plans will reflect the highest quality of investment and excellence. Posting one's assessment plan allows a department/program to tell its own story about how its faculty defines quality, excellence and productivity, and how they promote their articulated learning outcomes. In an atmosphere of engaged exchange, we have much to show for the existing quality of education at NKU; we also have much to be proud of as we demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement. This is the right direction for higher education.

Will faculty actually use the results?

How will the results of assessment translate into action/implementation?

For the program review process to be successful, it is critical that information obtained via assessment be used to improve your program. Because we are dealing here with programmatic assessment rather than student assessment, the data obtained should be shared with faculty and departmental administrators. Information collected will most likely consist of a variety of different types of data, including survey data, course assessments, student exam scores, job placement data, etc. This information should be systematically examined as it pertains to each program outcome and objective. A faculty retreat to analyze and discuss data may be one way to find a concentrated amount of time to really work through the data.

Once data have been analyzed, the program faculty should ask whether the program has met each of its outcomes and objectives. Faculty should generate a response for any outcome or objective that is not being met, which may consist of a reason for failure to meet the outcome/objective or an action plan for improving program performance. Any action/implementation plan should be assigned an expected date for completion. Dates for a follow-up of the action item should be assigned.

Will the faculty make changes in their course development and teaching in response to these new outcomes?

It is assumed that they would, given that they in collaboration with their colleagues have agreed on what is most valuable-that agreement is, in fact, the statement of outcomes.

Or, will the faculty cooperate in carrying out assessments, processing results, and making suggested improvements? Without this universal cooperation, the program will not become a rational, consistent, and coherent process as it could be.

It is unrealistic to expect "universal cooperation" in any faculty driven process. The lack thereof should not be considered a failure. For those faculty who see this process as the means to the end of improvement in courses and programs, they will embrace and learn from it. For those faculty who see this as another distraction from their "real" work and fail to see any rewards for participation, they will mostly likely participate very little, if at all. It is incumbent upon the faculty engaged in the process, department heads, and deans to demonstrate the positive rewards of this assessment process.

Show me examples of positive results from the program review process. This section will be updated and examples posted after the initial round of program review reports.

Changes to programs brought about by the program review process.

The most valuable contribution to programs.

How will the results be implemented that are needed in order to support the program review process?

Implications for resources

In a period of declining resources what is the process supposed to accomplish? Enrollment in certain majors continues to increase and some programs are limiting the number of students who can declare the major despite interest. We need more teaching faculty. The Program review process does not appear to address that problem.

The Program Review Process is not here to generate resources but to establish best practices that lead to the adoption of an assessment culture at NKU. As a result, questions about resources are, at least on the surface, not appropriate for discussions of academic program review. (They are more appropriate in discussions with your dean or in your strategic plan.) Nevertheless, this culture of assessment and continuous improvement, especially at the program level, may actually help you generate the resources you need. First, the goal of establishing this culture of assessment and continuous improvement should improve the quality of curriculum development and the quality of course delivery. Then, the results of assessment-based program review can be used as evidence of need or evidence of success-both topics that are valuable in conversations with alumni and other potential donors.

How will we sustain the resources that are needed in order to support this process?

Program Review is neither an incentive provider nor a funding mechanism. However, we believe your department will see the value of the assessment process when you have tangible results of what you are doing well and what you can improve. The commitment making the University a learner-centered institution and to quality teaching at NKU is profound, and this process provides substantial evidence of that quality-as well, possibly, as evidence of shortfalls that seek strategies for improvement. At that point the incentives become internal, building on the professionalism of the faculty and their ongoing commitment to undergraduate educational excellence.

What do I really need to do?

Why do more than the bare minimum?

Program Review is more about meaningfulness than efficiency. Perhaps we should commit just the bare minimum effort so that we can evaluate how vibrant and effective our programs actually are and where any gaps in our understanding of our students' learning and, consequently, our programs' strengths and weaknesses are. Some labor-intensive assessment strategies might provide minimally useful information, while the best strategies might provide a basis for improvement while not requiring person-years of effort. Our best plan, therefore, is to determine what we already know about our students' abilities and what kind(s) of evidence we have for that knowledge. Then, we can build an assessment plan that will help us find other valuable information, identify the appropriate sources of that information, and determine what we will do once we have that information.

How much do we have to do? And what's to keep us from just pronouncing that we are meeting our objectives and outcomes?

The question is really not how much do you have to do, but how much do you want to do as a Department or an Academic Program. The purpose of creating objectives and outcomes is to help you develop tools so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your program and its impact on the students at NKU. In your courses, you develop sets of objectives and/or outcomes so that you can evaluate your own teaching effectiveness. Teaching is a continuous process of self-improvement by the instructor of his/her abilities as a teacher and of the effectiveness of the course. The same approach applies to developing objectives and outcomes for an Academic Department or Program in that these are the tools for evaluating your overall academic program.

How often will we be required to participate in the program review process?

Currently, the program review cycle is every five years.

Is participation required?

What happens if we refuse to do this?

While accreditation may be at stake for some programs, we believe that an assessment process provides the ultimate enticement for those who are truly committed to student learning: a way to know whether what we are doing matters.

The faculty at NKU are excellent teachers and researchers and that, consequently, they are eager to know in some definitive ways that their students understand and can apply course or program content. This process of academic program review not only allows the faculty to know that they are making a difference, but also allows them to determine what a student should be able to know or do and the resulting evidence that would be most meaningful to them.

Faculty who "refuse to participate" may quickly find themselves outside a meaningful discussion of learning in their discipline at NC State. We are eager for all faculty to engage in the discussion of what their profession "looks like" when evidenced in their students.

What help and guidance is available ?

The Office of Curriculum, Accreditation and Assessment will be available to help by providing information and resources to help you formulate in words what you want students to come away with. The Office can also help you create an appropriate assessment plan, based on your stated objectives and outcomes. Additional help may be available in the future, such as hiring a facilitator for a day to help consolidate our thinking into a useful system/document.

How can I motivate my staff/faculty to be more involved in this process in an on-going way?

The answer often lies in what the chair plans to do with the results of the assessment process. If you create, through your actions, an environment where assessment is valued, where decisions based on assessment results hold weight, where appropriate rewards and recognition are provided, where staff has the creativity and support to assess their programs in meaningful and manageable ways, your staff will soon realize how valuable assessment is. Then their motivation will come from within.

How do we improve the department's handling of the process?

It is important to have as many departmental faculty involved in the program review process as possible. You might start with a general faculty meeting at which one of the faculty members (with support of the department head) explains what the Program Review is all about and the steps that will be necessary to complete the process. Then you may form subcommittees, each dealing with one of the aspects of the Program Review, such as the writing (or editing or revising) the departmental mission statement, and then formulating the program objectives, the student outcomes, and then the assessment plan.

By forming subcommittees, you will be able to maximize the number of faculty involved in the endeavor. Sending out frequent email messages to the entire faculty in order to keep them up-to-date on the latest developments and deadlines. As the work of the subcommittees progressed, I put this material on our departmental web site so that the entire faculty would be able to provide their input. When it came to making an initial assessment of the student material that we had collected, we also formed subcommittees once again, and each subcommittee was responsible for submitting a final report. The more faculty that are involved, the more representative the process is of the programs under review.

How can we easily submit information for this program review ?

You are likely to have quite a bit of information collected in order to analyze the effectiveness of your program. It won't be necessary to submit all the information in the program review document, however, you may want to have it available on a website. The easiest way to submit information will be via e-mail, or on a CD. If your file is very large, you may have to break it into sections in order to e-mail it.

Who is driving the program review process? SACS? The University's administration?

Although numerous readers (e.g., accreditors, University administration, faculty, prospective students and faculty, donors, peers from other institutions) may read your review, this process is faculty-driven. The program review process focus is on continuous improvement. Further, the process should be integrated with other departmental concerns, notably student outcomes assessment, institutional effectiveness, and accreditation.

NKU counts on your faculty expertise in understanding and pursuing the kinds of information that are most meaningful to you in your efforts to understand or clarify your program's objectives (what do you intend your graduates to be able to do or know), how well your program is meeting those objectives via observable and measurable student learning outcomes, and what evidence you have to substantiate those outcomes.