Designing and Implementing a Collaborative Assessment Process Kim Williams | Drew Smith | Fred Steier | Janna Jones | Terri Flateby | Bill Cummings | Charla Bauer | Jay Baglia | Sandy Cooper

Formulate a definition:
A definition of the Learning Community helped us to recognize our goals.

The Learning Community is an innovative, interdisciplinary, two-year program. A diverse group of students and a team of instructional and advisory faculty work together to fulfill most of the General Education Requirements, with an emphasis on writing and information literacy. It is an academic and social community that employs a unifying theme and active learning to develop higher order thinking skills and collaborative inquiry. The Learning Community is a supportive environment that fosters a respect for multiple perspectives and personal and community responsibility. Faculty and students continuously and self-reflectively work to build and improve upon the unique environment of their Learning Community (LC).

Identify Goals
From the definition, we derived the following goals:

Each LC student will

find satisfaction with the LC experience

engage in higher order thinking

work collaboratively

actively participate

respect multiple perspectives

fulfill a substantial portion of the General Education Requirements

adopt interdisciplinary approaches

make links across disciplines

become information literate

become responsible for his or her own learning

accomplish writing outcomes

 

Each LC faculty member will

teach actively

work to make links across disciplines

design a curriculum that satisfies a substantial portion of the General Education requirements

actively pursue interdisciplinary approaches

teach collaboratively

employ active teaching strategies

engage in professional service and publication regarding the LC

practice professional development within and outside your discipline

improve area of expertise

become more cognizant of other areas

improve teaching

remain committed to constantly improving their teaching

serve actively outside the classroom on LC development

respect multiple perspectives

develop and implement processes for achieving writing and information literacy goals

use on-line communication tools/strategies

encourage higher order thinking skills

Set Objectives
After an active on-line discussion, the Assessment Team set objectives which reflected priorities of the current LCs.

Student Objectives

Satisfaction

• social and academic needs and expectations met
• prepared as writers for further work
• prepared for upper-level work of their own reference
• expectations in relationships with faculty and other students are met

Writing and Information Literacy

• achieve a level of comfort in writing
• understand purpose and audience
• articulate and demonstrate the use of a process for writing and information literacy
• use of conventions that meet the expectations of the audience
• demonstrate several cognitive levels, including knowledge, comprehension, application, and analysis as defined in Bloom's taxonomy of educational goals
• recognize information needs
• locate information
• use information

Faculty Objectives

• develop and implement processes to achieve writing and information literacy goals
• active participation in all aspects of the LC
• use on-line communication
• be involved in creating and evaluating writing and information literacy assignments
• participate in writing and information literacy instruction

Make the Objectives Operational

The next step was to determine a way to assess our success in meeting the objectives we had selected as priorities. The Assessment Overview charts the objectives, methods, and schedule for LC assessments.

Our own goal was to provide timely and useful feedback to the LC faculty and advisors. To help achieve that goal, this Web site is an ongoing effort.

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updated by Charla Bauer October 4, 1998