Reflections: Assessment Is Not About Exposing the Faculty
It’s about building trust for
increasing learning outcomes
Laura Helminski speaks with
Higher Education Digest
Consider the following common scenario. When you
enter a fitting room, close the door, and try on new clothes, you trust those
brief moments in the room are private. What you reveal in those few seconds
between outfits is between you, the mirror, and the closed door. The feeling of
being naked and exposed doesn’t happen. You assess if it is a good fit. There
is a natural trust the door will remain closed without cameras capturing your
every move.
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Reflecting on learning assessment work indicates
a similar need for trust. Faculty members often feel this process focuses on
“opening” the door to the classroom, leaving them exposed. Faculty refer to the
“transparent” classroom door as an unfair and unreasonable approach to
increasing learning outcomes. Building trust in a learning assessment involves
gaining support for teaching and learning outcomes as opposed to revealing the
personal interactions between the teacher and students.
Higher Education Digest speaks with Laura
Helminski, Chair, Communications and Reading Department at
Rio Salado College, Maricopa Community College
District, Phoenix, Arizona to get her perspective on campus-wide assessment and
accountability.
Higher Education Digest: How do you
foster support for assessment?
Laura Helminski: Assessment work must be
understood, agreed on, and supported across the entire institution. It is
important to understand that faculty may feel singled out and they will
question why their processes should be revealed more than others in the
institution. This creates an unequal face for assessment and less “buy-in.”
In Parker Palmer’s book, Courage to Teach,
he says, “Good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
He discusses teaching as the most personal thing we do in public. The very
nature of teaching is self-disclosing. Sharing data from this experience with
the community is like stripping away only one part of the process for all to
see. For assessment work to be effective, it needs to involve all processes and
the whole institution, not just the faculty.
Everyone needs to be involved in assessment,
including deans, department chairs, faculty, and students, to ultimately ensure
increased student learning outcomes. Everyone needs to understand that the
benefits to the students are realized when a systemic approach is used.
HED: What are the elements of
assessment/accountability?
Helminski: In this context, accountability
could be defined as revealing our actions – that is, documenting and analyzing
our work processes. The main elements of accountability involve:
-
Agreeing on learning outcomes that align with
the institution's mission.
-
Creating an assessment framework everyone
understands.
-
Devoting resources, time, and money to
accomplish assessment.
-
Developing a plan to improve learning outcomes
from assessment data.
HED: How do you get the necessary data for
accountability?
Helminski: Obtaining the right data for
specified goals and desired outcomes is tricky. For a long time at
Rio Salado College, we focused on
getting sufficient data, but wound up with ‘so what’ data facts that the
faculty felt we could not readily use for increasing learning outcomes. For
instance, we collected data regarding the increased number of general education
credits a student takes and level of writing skills the student had. That
became a conversation of ‘so what’ – because we determined that was significant
only if students are taking all their general education at one college, where
the impact on writing is more measurable. With students enrolled in general
education classes ‘swirling’ across multiple colleges, that data became less
relevant to our assessment goals. The same thing occurred in conversations
regarding the value of demographics data as data that could really help us
increase our students’ learning.
Meaningful data asks questions such as: What is
the student’s skill level in terms of a specific goal, for example, critical
thinking? How are the students using the skill set? Is it measurable? And, what
can we focus on to improve the use of this skill and increase student’s
learning?
HED: What are some of the challenges of
assessment?
Helminski: One of the biggest challenges
is assessing over-extended and stressed students. Compared to the past, there
are more part-time students working full-time. Complicating matters, many of
these part time students attend classes at multiple institutions. Their
lifestyles make consistent effort in assessment and improvement difficult.
I believe that the biggest change in the past 25
years is not technology, but stress on the students. Many students barely have
the time to study and attend classes; they don’t have the luxury to be
full-time students. Despite the heavy workload, students indicate interest and
value in knowing their skills and their learning. They need to be more involved
in assessment than in the past. They want to know not just how they are doing,
but how their teachers and the service areas and other departments are
performing. They have become avid consumers.
HED: Have you noticed increased pressures from
Federal and state agencies in terms of assessment and accountability?
Helminski: Yes. The increased interest in
learning outcomes not only comes from Federal and state agencies, but it’s also
being driven by changes in the mission and focus of accreditation agencies.
Governing boards also want to understand the data
regarding students’ skills and what degrees mean. This generates conversations
about what resources are needed, which provides an opportunity for faculty to
explore ways to improve curriculum, teaching, and student learning outcomes.
Plus, new voices are willing to join in these conversations and are asking what
support they can provide. It’s now more of a collaborative process than in the
past.
This is a wonderful opportunity and a chance for
all constituents including faculty, staff, administration, students, parents,
government agencies, and business partners to work together.
HED: How has continuous quality improvement
affected assessment?
Helminski:
With the continuous quality
movement in higher education, the definition of quality itself has changed.
Colleges can manage what quality means. An A grade is no longer just accepted
on face value. A 4.0 in the classroom does not guarantee success in the
workplace. Learning outcomes can be documented, analyzed and improved, through
activities that are based on quality principles and practices.
Now the quality question is: How do we “live” and
do our work versus what is the the number of resources? Continuous quality
improvement provides a framework as well as best practices for improving
student learning.
HED: How do you approach campus-wide
assessment without the faculty feeling “naked and exposed?”
Helminski: It’s not a single-minded focus
on faculty. Campus-wide assessment is an all-inclusive commitment from class to
class and department to department. The entire student experience needs to be
understood. For instance, the rate of retention isn’t just a discussion for the
administration or Student Services; the faculty need to be part of this
discussion and committed to working on retention in collaboration with other
people. With approaches like this, the mission of the college comes into play
on a day-to-day basis and is no longer just stuffed in a file drawer. This
mission lives and is present in core meetings.
A campus-wide assessment initiative i is not a
case of creating the transparent classroom and leaving the faculty exposed. It
involves all constituents working together, trusting one another to be
committed to improving learning outcomes for students and to the institution’s
goals and mission. Eventually, the institution reaches the point where faculty,
students, and all departments become comfortable with the process of continuous
quality improvement and trust their privacy is protected.
Laura Helminski is a faculty member at Rio Salado
College in the Maricopa Community College District in Phoenix, Arizona. She has
taught communication, reading, and English courses at the community college
level for 27 years including distance learning courses since 1987, and Internet
communication and reading courses since 1996. She is the Faculty Chair for
Communication and Reading, the Chair of the Student Achievement Committee since
1990, co-chair of two Accreditation Self Study committees, and a Learning
Organization trainer and facilitator. She was a past Faculty Senate President,
and recently completed 15 years as Faculty Development Coordinator. Laura has
been named to be the faculty chair of the Maricopa Community College District
Student Academic Achievement and Assessment Committee for 2004-2005. She has
also presented national webinars on “Introduction to the Continuous Quality
Improvement Approach for Effective Student Assessment” for Datatel.
Laura has worked with educators in many states on
changing organizational cultures, and on increasing student achievement. She
has completed extensive training and research in Systems Thinking and Learning
Organization theory and applications. Laura has facilitated numerous faculty
development sessions, and has given presentations across the state and country
on organizational change in higher education. She was Rio Salado College’s
Faculty of the Year for the 1991-92, and Innovator of the Year in 1988. In
2003, she received the Association of Community College Trustees' Western
Region William H. Meardy Faculty Award.
