National Licensure, Certification or Professional Examinations
The assessment of student achievement serves two important functions. First, it helps establish that a college is accountable for its mission. The skills, knowledge, aptitudes, and values that every student is expected to possess upon graduating from Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College are intrinsic to the institution and distinguishes it from others. Second, assessment must be an integral part of a plan for institutional improvement. The development and implementation of the Assessment Plan is evidence of a college-wide commitment to on-going improvement of student learning. It was important to remember while developing this document that NCA did not want to know how we were doing; NCA wanted us to know how we were doing. In having a "working" Assessment Plan, the college is better able to allocate its resources to achieve the results that members of both the college and the general community expect from the institution.
The Academic Assessment Plan was outlined to include four segments:
General Education Plan - The General Education Plan will clarify the institution's strengths and weaknesses in preparing students who are Certificate or Degree seeking. It will measure overall general standards in student learning for grades 13 and 14.
Degree Program Plans - The Degree Program Assessment Plans will measure the competency of students in a particular field, enabling them to perform effectively in the Applied Science, or transfer successfully as juniors (grade 15) to a four-year institution.
Remedial/Developmental Plan - The Remedial or Developmental Plan will assess student learning prior to college-level coursework through grade 12.
Certificate Plan - The Certificate Plan will measure the student's ability to perform the duties set forth by Individual Certificate objectives.
The measures and methods developed as the Means of Assessment for the Academic Assessment Plan are as follows. Benchmarks have been established through Rubrics to measure learning from the overall student population:
To
determine what a student has learned, a test or assignment is given at the
beginning of a course or program and a similar test or assignment is given at
the end. Pre/post testing is effective for measuring both cognitive learning and
attitudinal development.
There are two types of tests: norm-referenced and criterion-referenced examinations. The former describes performance in comparison to others while the latter describes student performance directly and judges that performance by some pre-set standard.
C. National Licensure, Certification or
Professional Examinations
These tests are developed to assess general knowledge in a discipline. Like other standardized tests, these examinations need to be supplemented by other measures of student learning. Some 2+2 programs will lead to this type of examination after the student has matriculated to a four-year institution.
This portfolio consists of items specific to the Degree Program. This portfolio is student specific and allows for advisors and students to review academic achievement in concert. The college is developing a Career/Job Placement Center that will be in place as the Assessment Plan is implemented. This office will assist students in both paper-based and electronic portfolio development.
The Institutional Portfolio consists of the collection and review of student work (artifacts) produced throughout the curriculum. Twice yearly, faculty teams using holistic scoring criteria (rubrics) conduct reviews. The Institutional Portfolio allows for in-depth analysis, which may include demographic breakdowns on variables such as credit hours earned, prior courses completed, etc.
Surveys and interviews are used to gather students’ opinions about their educational experiences and experts’ opinions about the students’ competence. Data gathered by these measures are considered an indirect assessment of student learning since they measure satisfaction with an educational experience rather than knowledge and skills acquired. Nonetheless, information from these sources enhances the information gathered from the direct measures of a student’s academic achievement.
In developing this Plan, it was intended that the results from the Means of Assessment be used to continue, modify, or reinforce aspects of the Academic Program to foster continuous advancement in student learning. Assessment focuses on Academic Programs rather than individual faculty performance. Assessment in this context is, therefore, not a faculty evaluation system. Moreover, assessment measures may not by themselves be used to impede student progress toward graduation.