1. The ACE program requires that faculty collect samples of student work. How much work needs to be collected for assessment purposes?
ACE: 4 Governance & Assessment (See Section VII) indicates that instructors for each ACE course should provide their department/unit with a reasonable sampling (at least three) of students' products from graded assignments identified as assessing students' achievement of the appropriate ACE learning outcome. Instructors should also provide their departments with their own assessment of those products.
Faculty needing assistance in developing assessment procedures should consult with their appointed ACE Course Facilitators. Resources can also be found on the ACE Assessment website.
The periodic recertification of ACE courses (See ACE: 4 Section VIII) requires that over time the department provide evidence that ACE courses have given students the opportunity to demonstrate achievement of the learning outcome(s) and that the department/unit has used that assessment evidence to improve courses. At the institutional level, assessment evidence will be used to determine whether the ACE program meets institutional objectives. It will NOT assess the effectiveness of individual instructors or courses.
2. What are the responsibilities of the unit chair/head regarding ACE?
The ACE document (#4, Section 3, B and Section VII, B) charges the department chair or head (or unit head in the case of colleges without chairs or heads) with the following responsibilities for ACE certified courses.
"A signature from the unit chair/head affirming that the Unit will:
See that the syllabus for each ACE-certified course clearly indicates the ACE Outcome(s) for which the course is certified, the opportunities the course will give students to acquire the knowledge or skills necessary to achieve the Learning Outcome(s), and the graded assignments the instructor(s) will use to assess the students' achievement of the Outcome(s).
Collect and assess in coordination with the ACE assessment cycle a reasonable sample of students' products and provide reflections on students' achievement of the Learning Outcomes for its respective ACE-certified courses.
Review and aggregate samples and summary assessments across course sections and semesters.
Draft a summary assessment across courses/sections that addresses:
General trends in the kinds of assignments used to assess student achievement of the appropriate ACE Learning Outcome(s).
General trends in students' achievement of the ACE Learning Outcomes.
The kinds of modifications that might improve student achievement.
Provide the results of these aggregated assessments, along with samples of student work, to the college's dean's office or the college committee responsible for program assessment."
3. One requirement asks that faculty and the department keeps and assesses a reasonable sample of students' work. How is "reasonable sample" defined?
The ACE program gives the departments/units the responsibility to determine how the learning outcome(s) need to be assessed. It is expected that this decision will be guided by both content (i.e. appropriate methods for assessing learning in the content area) and context (i.e. assessment methods that are practical for the context) of the course. Differences in content and context across ACE courses make prescribing a reasonable sample of students' work difficult, if not impossible. What a reasonable sample might be for a large introductory biology class, for example, will not be a reasonable sample for a 400-level English class. The General Education Advisory Committee that created the ACE documents entrusted departments with the power to determine what works for them and the integrity to make good faith efforts to collect that work and reflect upon how students are achieving the outcome(s) for which the course receives ACE-certification. To assist in decisions about "reasonable sample" the following considerations are provided.
Does the sample provide appropriate representation of:
the number of students enrolled in the course?
the type of students enrolled in the course (i.e. class level, college enrolled, major)?
how students in the course performed on graded ACE assignments?
If a department/unit offers multiple sections of an ACE course, the department/unit can determine whether assessment evidence should be collected from all or a sample of those course sections and what sampling method is reasonable. For this decision, the following considerations are provided.
Does the sample from course sections provide an appropriate representation of:
the type of instructors (i.e. graduate students, adjuncts, lecturers, faculty) assigned to course section?
the type of pedagogy used across course sections?
the type of students enrolled across course sections?
The representatives of each of the undergraduate colleges on the University-Wide Assessment Committee are acutely aware of the need to minimize the burden on faculty and department/unit chairs and heads, while at the same time make assessment efforts meaningful. In the fall semester 2009 faculty and department will be offered assistance in making these decisions as well as making assessment part of the ACE program manageable. As the program builds, we will also provide more guidance about how the reflections about the assessments should be reported.
4. Why are faculty, departments/programs, and colleges being asked to gather information about and assess the ACE program, and how might ACE assessment benefit: (a) students, (b) course instructors, (c) departments/programs, (d) colleges, and (e) the institution?
Student Response:
The ACE program was developed with a focus on students and their learning. It is important that students understand both the relevance of their general education courses and how those courses are integrated within (not separate from) their major and life beyond graduation. With that in mind, ACE was based on statements of what students would learn as a result of the program. These statements, and how courses address them, can help students be more actively engaged in their learning process because the learning objectives are more explicit and visible. Our commitment is to not only share with students what we want them to learn, but also to gather information to determine if that learning has occurred, and if it has not, to determine how the program can be improved. To this end, faculty, departments, colleges and the institution will collect and assess samples of student work to inform programmatic discussions. This process of assessment demonstrates the institutions commitment to a quality education and to helping students achieve the learning outcomes we value for them.
Course Instructor Response:
The purpose of assessment is to improve student learning and help faculty develop into better teachers. Assessing work at the course level can help faculty and instructors provide more meaningful learning experiences that help students achieve learning outcomes. Discussions within the department can encourage improved understanding and integration with courses in the major or program. Sharing the assessment techniques in and between units can also provide faculty and instructors with adoptable ideas about how courses certified for the same outcome are contributing to student learning.
To minimize the intrusion on faculty teaching time, effective assessment can often be achieved by basing the assessment on existing work from the course. If you need help so that this process is not overwhelming, please contact your programs ACE assessment coordinator.
Assessment is NOT intended to evaluate the worth of individual instructors or courses. Findings will be aggregated when they are reported and will not include instructor identification at the college or institutional levels. The intent of course-level assessment is for the instructors to investigate for themselves what approaches help students achieve ACE learning outcomes as well as how the course might be improved.
Departments, Schools, Programs and other Academic Units Response:
Assessment of the ACE program is focused on student learning across the institution. It does NOT gather information about individual teachers or compare the relative educational successes of multiple instructors or units. The potential benefits of conducting ACE assessment at the unit level include the following: Units determine what resources are used and how they are used for instruction and assessment in ACE courses; Achievement of learning outcomes is determined by the unit and not compared with other units or measured by generalized examinations; Assessment results could be used for attracting new students and their parents by the unit, college and institution.
The UNL faculty have developed the ACE program so that the unit determines the specific educational goals for students in its ACE-certified courses, and determines the manner in which the achievement of these educational objectives is assessed. Rather than merely providing a one-time snapshot of student accomplishments, the assessments generated by ACE courses provide feed-back about whether unit-defined outcomes are being achieved. Within the unit, assessment provides a basis for discussions about teaching and learning that highlight effective teaching practices as well as possible improvements.
College Response:
ACE enhances the undergraduate experience by providing all students with the opportunity to develop important reasoning, inquiry, and civic capacities. The ACE assessment process provides a common focus across all colleges on student achievement of key learning outcomes. This provides assurance to colleges that all students, regardless of UNL college enrollment, have the opportunity to achieve the ACE outcomes and that student achievement of the ACE outcomes in each course has been assessed and reflected upon by faculty members.
Ultimately, the evidence of student achievement of the ACE outcomes gathered as part of the ACE assessment process serves to enrich discussions on continuing improvement of educational programs by revealing promising assessment practices and areas for improvement that can be shared across units. The ACE assessment process also encourages the development of college structures and processes that might also be adapted for investigating college-specific learning outcomes.
Assessment data gathered as part of the ACE assessment process will NOT be used for evaluation of individual faculty members, courses, departments, or colleges. Rather, the purpose of the ACE assessment process is to gather programmatic evidence of student achievement of the ACE outcomes followed by thoughtful reflection and discussion regarding the strengths and the areas of improvement of the ACE program and ways the ACE program as a whole can be improved. The program does not relieve units, colleges or the institution of responsibility for student education, but rather provides on-going process that will be used for continual incremental improvement in student learning.
Institutional Response:
The ACE assessment process can foster continuous, on-going and collective discussions across the institution about the general education outcomes and how well our students are achieving them. Discussions prompted by ACE assessment will foster four benefits:
Developing a sense of student learning for ourselves prepares us to respond to external constituents who are interested in what students learn as a result of their UNL education.
Providing information for professional societies and employers about how student learning at UNL aligns with evolving national standards.
Providing evidence for making decisions about how to improve the program over time allows it to evolve instead of stagnate, requiring another reform initiative in the future.
Engaging in honest inquiry into the ACE program and our work as educators also demonstrates that as a research institution we are committed to scholarly inquiry of student learning to improve the institutions educational program.
5. I teach an ACE course and need to submit samples of students' work. I've heard that a tool was developed in Blackboard for uploading and storing these. How do I access the Blackboard Assessment tool?
The Blackboard ACE Assessment tool is accessible through the Course Tools in the Control Panel of the course for which your samples pertain. A step-by-step guide to accessing and using the tool is available here: Submitting ACE Evidence Samples Using Blackboard.
7. I teach a course that is considered a cross-listing of another course, and have access to both in Blacboard. Under which course should I submit my collected samples of student work?
When your course was proposed to be a part of the ACE program, the homedepartment/program for the course (that is the department that is home to the course submitted), electronically signed off and agreed to certain responsibilities that accompany an ACE-certified course (see Question #2 in this section). For this reason it is appropriate, and will eliminate confusion, if you submit your samples of student work under the the homecourse. For example, if you teach CLAS 252, which is a cross-listing for ANTH 252, you will submit your samples under ANTH 252, the home course.
