Assessment of Student Learning
Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas believes that its assessment of student academic achievement is closely linked to and directly supports the mission and objectives of the institution.
The mission of PCCUA emphasizes a commitment to helping every student succeed. The college provides high-quality, accessible educational opportunities and skills development to promote life-long learning, and engages in the lives of our students and our communities.
What is Assessment?
Assessment is the ongoing process of establishing clear, measurable expected outcomes of student learning; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and using the resulting information to understand and improve student learning throughout the college.
Good assessment can promote quality at all levels of the institution by providing the necessary evidence to guide effective decision making in several areas such as programmatic changes, classroom teaching modifications, and institutional changes.
Three key purposes of assessment:
- To Inform - Assessment activities show a clearer picture of what is really happening in a program and informs others of contributions the program makes.
- To Improve - This evaluation is formative. Assessment activities provide a feedback loop to help shape or form better programs and services.
- To Prove - This evaluation is summative. Assessment activities provide evidence to sum up what a program is accomplishing and provides persuasive indicators to students, faculty, staff and the larger community.
Institutional Changes Resulting from Assessment
- Identification and prioritizing of assessment goals
- Adapting the referral form so that is used in a more comprehensive way (not just for absences)
- Establishing an Assessment Web Page for publishing assessment outcomes, information, and resources
- Publication of division and institutional assessment outcomes
- Increased interdivisional communication and cooperation to achieve assessment and other goals
- Examination of the current advising system
- Examination and modification of documents used to identify learning outcomes
- Clarification of divisional roles in assessment
- Increased knowledge of divisional and student service responsibilities toward student assessment
- Greater desire by faculty and administrators to gauge student learning outcomes and use information from the data to make decisions which contribute toward better instruction
- Cooperative effort of divisions within the College and an appreciation for each division's role in assessment
Annual Assessment Results
Graduate Survey Responses
Division and Department Annual Strategies and Planning