New 3-Year Assessment Plan Cycle

Overview

Because all courses should be assessed regularly and systematically, the Academic Senate adopted a new assessment cycle in May 2017 in which all active courses are to be assessed on a three-year cycle. Review the Academic Senate resolution on the Academic Senate website.

Therefore, by the end of spring 2020, each instructional department should arrange all active courses on a three-year assessment cycle using the template. Each department should select the template that aligns with their respective program review cycle by reviewing the Instructional Program Review Schedule. For example, if your department submits a program review every even year, then your department should follow the even year assessment template. This way each department can align their assessment plans according to when their program review is due. 

 

 

 

If needed, your dean can work with your department to identify courses that aren’t offered every semester, as well as courses you may want to bank or delete. Your three-year calendar should be submitted to participating department faculty members, your Dean, and Jessica Kaven, our college’s Faculty Assessment Coordinator (kavenj@smccd.edu or 650-306-3347). All department templates will be posted on our assessment webpage.

Please note that the template includes a list of ILOs located in the bottom row. If one of your courses maps up to a given ILO, please select that it will be assessed as you may be asked to participate in its assessment by the college.

What do you need to know about the new 3-year Assessment Plan?

• All active courses must be assessed within each department. This excludes courses that are not offered due course cancellations, banked courses, and ones that have been deleted. However, if a course is cancelled and offered at another time, the course is considered active and must be included in your assessment plan.
• The SLO(s) that will be assessed for each active course should be selected by the department. There are no requirements related to when and how many SLOs must be assessed per course so long as at least one is assessed when the course is up for review.
• Although a course might be offered every semester throughout the 3-year cycle, the course only needs to be assessed at least once within the timeframe. Some departments may choose to assess a course more often, while others can choose to assess a course only once during the three years.
• If a course is only offered once every year or two, the department’s assessment plan must reflect this. Make sure that the assessment plan reflects the departments long-term course offerings. When a department updates when a course is offered, the 3-year assessment plan must also be updated.
• As a department, when and which PLO should be assessed should also be indicated on the assessment plan. At least one PLO should be assessed within the 3-year cycle. One consideration may be to align when the departments PLOs will be assessed with when the program review is due (e.g., fall before program review is due); this will allow each department to discuss and report on PLO results as it is one of the questions in program review.
• All department 3-year assessment plans will be posted on the college’s assessment webpage.
• All assessment results must be inputted to TracDat. Additionally, it is the department’s responsibility to update all SLOs in TracDat from Curricunet (unfortunately, these systems do not “talk” to each other) and make sure the course list is current. Should a department was to add or delete a course from TracDat, please contact our college’s Instructional Technologist, Allison Hughes (hughesa@smccd.edu or 650-306-3213).