* Continued Development
of General Education Assessment.
OSU is in its third year of implementing a new general
education
assessment plan that was developed in 2000. The process
uses three methods (institutional portfolios, university-wide
surveys, and a course content database) to evaluate
the extent to which students are achieving the articulated
learning goals for the general education program. The
methods are beginning to yield interesting results,
particularly in assessing students’ written communication
skills, and these findings have prompted the General
Education Advisory Council to increase its standards
for writing assignments in Humanities and some other
general education courses. In 2002-2003, the Assessment
Office and faculty on the General Education Assessment
Committee presented OSU’s general education assessment
program at the annual meeting of the Higher Learning
Commission of the North Central Association and at
the Assessment Conference of the American Association
of Higher Education.
* Assessment Council Reviews of Outcomes
Assessment Programs. The OSU Assessment
Council completed its third year of reviewing the assessment
plans and reports for academic units in spring 2003
and has now completed at least one review of all OSU
academic programs. These reviews have resulted in greater
communication and understanding of what outcomes assessment
is about and what academic units should be doing. Almost
three-quarters of all academic units have revised their
assessment plans or otherwise demonstrated greater
commitment to outcomes assessment in their programs
as a result of feedback received from the Assessment
Council Reviews.
* OSU Results from the 2002 National
Survey of Student Engagement.
In spring 2003, the Assessment Council and Office of
University
Assessment invested considerable effort in reviewing,
communicating, and developing recommendations from
OSU’s 2002 NSSE Results. An extensive website
has been developed to describe OSU’s NSSE findings
and how OSU has acted on those results (www.okstate.edu/assess/nsse).
* Proposal for assessment of the
educational impact of Northern Oklahoma College (NOC)
remedial
coursework on OSU students. An
important Special Assessment Project in spring 2003
was the development
of an assessment plan for evaluating the impact of
remedial courses offered to OSU students from NOC at
their new Stillwater campus. This assessment process
will be tracked through future OSU Annual Assessment
Reports.
* 2003 Survey of Alumni of Graduate Programs. The
Office of University Assessment coordinated the second
university-wide survey of alumni of OSU
graduate programs in January 2003. Results from these
alumni surveys have become a cornerstone of the assessment
efforts for most OSU academic units and provide valuable
information about the career patterns of recent graduates.
* Student Affairs Assessment Reports. The
OSU Division of Student Affairs has initiated more
formal processes for assessment planning and reporting.
Starting in 2002-2003, annual assessment reports from
Student Affairs Units are included in the OSU
annual assessment report.
