OAPA Tools & Publications
We offer a number of tools for designing and conducting assessment, including "how-to" handbooks on various topics, survey examples, and descriptive examples of a range of assessment options.
- Syllabus Construction Tool
- Student Outcomes: The Impact of Varying Living-Learning Community Models.
Author: Martha L. A. Stassen, Director of Assessment, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Research in Higher Education, October 2003, Volume 44, Issue 5, p.581, 33pp
This study explores the effect of three distinct living-learning community models on a variety of student experience and academic performance outcomes. Central to the analysis is an investigation of whether there are differences in outcomes for learning communities with different missions and structures, all three of which fall into the "Linked Course" learning community design. Even in the least coordinated, most basic, learning community model, students show more positive outcomes (first semester GPA, retention, first-year experience) than non-learning community students. The fact that simple structures that facilitate student interaction around academic work (even without coordinated faculty involvement) have a positive effect for students of all preparation levels provides encouragement to campus leaders with limited resources who are working to develop methods for improving the undergraduate educational experience on their campuses.
- Making Assessment Matter: Effective assessment can indeed inform teaching and learning: NEA Advocate article by Martha L. A. Stassen, Director of Assessment, and Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Director, Center for Teaching. Describes results from their work with the Hewlett General Education Fellows program at UMass Amherst.
- Diverse Democracy Project
- Moving Forward . . . Looking Back: An Alumni Survey of the Class of 1993
- The Patterson Pilot Program: Evaluation of the First Year (1996-97)