So you think this is easy.
My VP for Academic Affairs has recently tasked me with leading the development of a campus-wide end-of -course evaluation instrument to be delivered to all students in all courses by our new centralized online assessment software. As luck would have it, our Online Standards committee has been working on a set of questions designed to measure the effectiveness of design and delivery in our online courses. While the two efforts are obviously related they differ vastly in one crucial manner: Alignment.
The VCSU Standards of Excellence document lists nine principles of good design for our online courses as well as seven expectations of faculty in the delivery of their course offerings. Given these overarching expectations, it was fairly simple to develop survey questions to authentically measure these constructs. The Standards of Excellence provide us an unambiguous foundation of belief; guiding principles that provide clear evidence of what an effective course and instructor ‘look like’. In short, it paints a picture of what we want our courses (and instructors) to be.
At the university level, there is no shortage of documents and models describing what we strive to achieve as an institution of higher learning. There’s a mission and vision for the university (of course), as well as sets of both ‘guiding principles’ and ‘core values’. Additionally, VCSU has adopted eight student abilities that provide a framework for student outcomes. Furthermore, each division at the university marches to their own ‘orders’. For example, the School of Education and Graduate Studies boasts a mission, vision, a conceptual framework for both pre-service and advanced teachers, four ‘pillars’ of knowledge-based decision making, and three knowledge-base ‘domains’ for both the graduate and undergraduate programs. Many individual departments within divisions have developed their own guiding principles. The Tech Ed department for example, features their own, content-centered goals, commitments, and learning outcomes.
With all of these outcomes, it should be easy to develop assessment instrument right? In the words of the immortal Lee Corso: “Not so fast, my friend!”
When viewed individually, each of these documents represents meaningful and worthwhile aims for any institution. In the aggregate, however, they form a mountain of ‘objective-speak.’ For all of their altruism and earnestness, slick graphics, and flowery prose, they read like an avalanche of good intentions.
Clearly, the problem is not a lack of standards and objectives, nor is it a question of the quality of the ones we have. We, like many institutions, are simply struggling with a lack of alignment.
For all of its great ideas (and there are several), the website that lists our ‘defining commitments’ reads like an unfinished draft. The VCSU student abilities, while inarguably well considered, have not necessarily been universally accepted across campus as academic canon. Like the defining commitments, they exist ‘off to the side’, part of a long list of other ‘really good ideas’.
Some divisions, such as the School of Education mentioned above, maintain accreditations of their own, and therefore are well ahead of their peers in terms of internal goals and objectives. While their internal ducks are certainly queued, however, there is often a disconnect with the campus as a whole.
Absent a unified institutional assessment ‘voice’, how then are we to ascertain exactly what it is that a campus wide instrument is supposed to measure? The Online Standards of Excellence provided an invaluable toehold; a theoretical and ethical grounding on exactly what it is we consider quality in our course offerings. The campus-wide assessment, on the other hand is a whole different matter. Like a car out of alignment, every wheel is trying to go in its own direction. Not, it turns out, a very healthy proposition for the tires.
For me then, there is one question: Can institutional alignment be realized from the bottom up? Are we stuck in a holding pattern awaiting presidential edict, or can the lowly assessor lead the process necessary to affect authentic institutional assessment. Stay tuned…
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