General Education Assessment Timeline and Cycle

Planning is an essential first step in the assessment cycle.

What learning outcomes do I intend to measure?

Faculty teaching General Education (Gen Ed) courses should reference the General Education curriculum map to identify the competency (critical thinking, written communication, quantitative reasoning, scientific literacy, civic engagement, or global cultural literacy) and its associated Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) aligned to the course. The Gen Ed curriculum map will guide faculty in ensuring the correct competencies and SLO(s) are taught within their course(s).

General Education Course Map

Written Communication & Critical Thinking
Quantitative Reasoning & Scientific Literacy
Global Cultural Literacy & Civic Engagement

Alignment and integration of learning outcomes are the keys to successful assessment planning. Alignment is a process that ensures ILSLOs, CLSLOs, assessments, and course learning experiences are well connected. Adjustments to course learning outcomes, recalibration of assessment tools, or the inclusion of new learning experiences might be necessary to ensure proper alignment.

Planning then involves building your course(s) that provide students with opportunities to achieve these learning outcomes.

Plan Assessments:

The learning objectives will drive your choice of formative and summative assessment tools, determining which learning activities and instruction you plan for class time.

Formative assessments (Help Students to Improve)

These assessments are used to monitor student learning and provide feedback. They are often informal and less structured, including quizzes, outlines, drafts, games, projects, presentations, group activities, and more. Formative assessments are usually low stakes, meaning they have low or no point value and don't always need to be graded or marked. Formative assessments aim to improve student achievement of learning objectives and adjust teaching appropriately based on student needs.

Summative assessments (Students demonstrate what they learned)

These assessments are used to evaluate the sum total of skills or comprehension achieved at the end of the learning process (end-of-unit/module, chapter, or semester). They are often more formal and structured, including tests, final exams, reports, papers, and more. The goal of summative assessments is to evaluate student learning by comparing it against some standard or benchmark, and they are often high stakes, meaning they have a high point value.

Decide which course summative assignment will be used to measure and document how students accomplish the learning outcomes.

What is acceptable evidence of the student's understanding and proficiency?

Varying types: Quizzes and tests, case analyses, course projects, debates, essays, presentations, and more.

How do I know what assessment methods to use?

There are many tools and methods for assessing learning, but not all are appropriate for each of your learning objectives. The assessment tool you select should measure the learning outcome. Please reference Bloom’s Taxonomy domain (lower – higher order) and the verb used within the SLO to select the most appropriate assessment tool. Learn more about suggested assessment tools.

Plan Learning activities and instruction:

The last step in the planning phase is determining how and when students will be introduced to the SLO being assessed. What content must be taught (concepts, principles, facts) to students? In this step, faculty should identify materials and resources (examples, lectures, textbooks, articles, podcasts, videos, etc.) to present to students.

The second step in the assessment cycle is to execute the learning activities that were developed in the planning stage. Learning activities and instruction must be designed to stimulate learning to help students achieve the desired learning outcomes. The range of possible learning activities is wide and varied. Examples include but are not limited to Think-Pair-Share, self or peer evaluations, observations, concept mapping, games, brainstorming, exam wrappers, role-playing, modeling, and class discussion. Faculty should provide formative assessments to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback. Formative assessment allows for faculty and students to pivot, identifies areas for improvement, and gives opportunities for students to implement feedback.

The third step in the assessment cycle is to measure students' achievement of the SLOs.

Are the General Education learning outcomes being met?

The Gen Ed learning outcomes are identified as Intuitional Level Student Learning Outcomes (ILSLO) at Virginia State University. Faculty should administer a summative assessment instrument to measure the degree to which students have achieved the ILSLO. Summative assessments occur at the end of the learning process (end-of-unit, chapter, or semester) to provide a final evaluation. Examples include but are not limited to Exams, case studies, projects, written assignments, or presentations.

The fourth step in the assessment cycle is the collection of student summative assignments across the general education curriculum.

General Education Competency Assessment Year

Faculty should refer to the above assessment timeline to see which competencies (critical thinking, written communication, quantitative reasoning, scientific literacy, civic engagement, or global cultural literacy) are being assessed by the General Education Assessment of Student Learning Committee. If the committee is collecting evidence on a competency aligned with your course, you must participate and provide a random sample of individual student's work.
After administering the summative assessment, faculty should submit the student's work to the General Education Assessment of Student Learning Committee. Learn more about how to submit your course materials for assessment.

A clean, ungraded copy of the summative assessment should be submitted. The reviewer will not need to see the instructor's grading comments. The General Education Assessment of Student Learning Committee has developed rubrics that will be used to score student assignments to measure the degree to which students have achieved the Institutional-level SLO.

Note: Faculty should still assess their course-level student learning outcome and submit their results using Nuventive. The same assessment tool may be used for both.

General Education Competency Non-Assessment Year 

If the General Education Assessment Committee is not collecting evidence on a competency aligned with your course, faculty must still complete the assignment cycle yearly and submit course-level assessment results using Nuventive.

The sixth step of the assessment cycle requires teaching faculty from the general education curriculum to discuss findings.

The Director of General Education will share the assessment data with the Department Chairs, assessment coordinators, and Gen Ed faculty. After the review process, faculty will be invited to a workshop to provide feedback on the data. The workshop will be designed to allow faculty to have focused conversations about general education outcomes and draw on the results of prior assessment data. Faculty will be asked a series of questions to reflect on the assessment process and draw conclusions. The results will inform faculty development, teaching, and student resources, improve alignment with SLO, enhance the assessment process, and or strengthen the rubric. A final report will be rewritten, submitted to SCHEV, and posted on the OPIE website.

The improving phase allows departments to review the committee’s recommendations. Departments will be asked to pick one thing to work on for the following year and submit an action plan

The last step in the assessment cycle is the application phase. Departments will be asked to pick one thing to work on for the following year and submit an action plan.

How will we use the results to make changes?

Assessment's main value is using the information to improve the student learning experience. Therefore, after interpreting data and drawing conclusions, it is important to close the loop by making the appropriate adjustments.

• Develop a plan of action for Continuous improvement.
• Use what you learned to revise teaching or curriculum materials
• Reflect on the cycle and prepare for next year's assessment.
• Do the improvements we make work?