How can faculty add assessment to their already heavy workloads?
Faculty members are already engaged in informal assessment of student learning. Through the creation of learning goals that are aligned with program goals, and classroom activities that develop and assess student performance of those learning goals (tests, projects, papers, etc.), instructors are actively assessing their students learning. These are the traditional parts of any course structure, and they are very important. In a given program, faculty will function collectively to set program goals and objectives, to create methods and measures for collecting evidence of student attainment of those goals, analyze and interpret selected samples of student work. In addition, the faculty in the program will programmatic decisions based on the interpretation of the results of the evidence collected. The initial work of creating an assessment system that minimizes faculty workload and time is the most time-consuming; however, once a system is in place and running, the amount of time and eff
