This file describes what program assessment information each faculty member is required to submit, each term, for each course taught, to the ABET/SMALCs assessment coordinator (currently transitioning from Ted Baker to Robert van Engelen).
Eventually, we would like all of this information submitted via
the website http://www.cs.fsu.edu/abet/,
but as that site is still not complete, until you receive further
notice, please submit materials by direct e-mail to
baker@cs.fsu.edu. Please send either pdf file attachments
or links to where we can find the files on your website.
At the beginning of each term, for every undergraduate course, you should submit your syllabus.
At the end of each term, in every undergraduate course, you should submit a report containing your comments on how the course went this term. This end-of-term report is advice to the next instructor of the course (possibly yourself), and to the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. It should give a general overview of the course including how well the curriculum worked, what didn't work, how well it served the students, and any additional comments, including suggestions on curriculum adjustments and ways to improve the overall program. You are free to use your own format for the report, and to keep it short if you do not have much to say.
Examples of questions you might address in your report include the following:
The above two items are required for every undergraduate course. In addition, if your course is one of those in which ABET/SMALCs "outcomes" are assessed, you must submit additional information (listed further below) for each of those outcomes. Similarly, if your course is one for which Computer Competency or Oral Competency is assessed, you must submit additional information for each of those outcomes.
Additional information is required from the faculty members teaching the courses we have designated for assessment of program outcomes to satisfy requirements of our accreditating bodies (SACS, ABET) and the State of Florida (SMALCs).
These agencies want to see evidence that we have a formal feedback process for continuous self-improvement. (The underlying thinking is similar to Total Quality Management (TQM), the Capability Maturity Model in Software Engineering (CMM), and ISO 9000.) As such they will not be satisfied that we simplhy gather data for them, but that we gather data and make use of it internally to manage the quality of our program, and that we document this process in a way that they can review it.
These assessment requirements are based on the concept of measureable "outcomes" with respect to our students. Our department has defined several specific "student leaning outcomes" that we have promised to assess regularly, which are intended to cover some higher level "program outcomes" (referred to by letters "a" through "j") that are imposed by ABET. For a full description of our student learning outcomes, follow this link, or follow the individual links embedded in the table further below.
For each outcome associated with your course, you need to provide the following:
Each of these items is explained in more detail below.
You need to read this, before the start of the term.
Program outcomes are statements that describe what students are expected to know and be able to do by the time of graduation. Student learning outcomes are more specific outcomes, that provide evidence of the program outcomes. For a listing and explanation of the student learning outcomes that our department as contracted to monitor/assess, how we have agreed to assess them, and their relationship to the ABET program outcomes, look under the specific year under the heading "Program Outcomes" at http://www.cs.fsu.edu/ugcc/. /p>
Submit a PDF file containing the statement of the assignment, or a copy of the exam questions, on which you based your assessment of how well the students achieved the given outcome.
Submit a PDF file containing the rubric that you used to assess how well the students achieved the given outcome. This rubric should be "common" (i.e., the same) among all sections of a given course, across all instructors and all campuses. The instructors of the course should agree on this. Once agreed upon, it should be passed on from one instructor to the next, until the instructors again meet to revise it.
A rubric is a scheme for assigning a grade or score to a student or a piece of student work. Its purpose is to break the evaluation process down into a series of smaller decisions, which can be made more objectively and consistently. For a very good example, see the second page of Daniel Chang's rubric for Oral Competency.
Most instructors use rubrics for grading student work. However, please keep in mind that when we are assessing our SMALC/ABET student learning outcomes, we have a different purpose. Therefore, the rubric you use for assessing the SMALC/ABET outcome should either be separate from the one you use for grading, or a subset of it, so that it only covers the SMALC/ABET outcome, and does not bring in extraneous matters.
Submit, as a text file delimited by tabs, a table of the scores of the students on the assessment, one line per student. Please do not include student names or any other identifying information. Include just students who appeared on the final grade roster (no drops). It may be a text file, or an Excel spreadsheet. If you recorded detailed scores separately for each item on your rubric, each row of the table will contain the scores on the individual rubric items, followed by the overall score. The following are two of many possible formats. The first uses letters for the scores ("I" = ineffective, "E" = effective, "H" = highly effective), and the second uses numeric scores for the items, and then converts them to the I-E-H scale for the summary.
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Submit, as text or PDF, a few sentences of commentary on the results of the assessment. The purpose of these comments is to you have analyzed the results of the assessment, reflected on them, and learned something from them that we will apply to improve the quality of our program and/or the assessment process.
Your comments may be read by:
You should comment separately on each SMALC/ABET outcome that you are required to assess. There is no required format. The following are examples of the kinds of things that it would be appropriate to include:P
If things are going well, you may not need to write much.
These comments/recommendations are likely to overlap in content with your basic course report. If so, you don't need to duplicate the details. Just write them down once here, and refer to this in your course report.
This is a requirement imposed on us by the University and SACS, which applies to the following courses:
For background, see http://facsenate.fsu.edu/Liberal-Studies-Competency-Forms/Computer-Competency.
You must submit:
Note that the table here is not quite the same as that for the SMALC/ABET outcomes. Instead of the I/E/H scale, for this assessment you should report a letter grade on the assesssment, and the number of interest is how many achieved a grade of "C-" or better on the assessment. A student should not receive a grade of "C-" or better in the course unless she/he has achieved a grade of "C-" or better on the oral competency component.
This is a requirement imposed on us by the University and SACS, and applies only to CIS4250.
For background, see http://facsenate.fsu.edu/Liberal-Studies-Competency-Forms/Oral-Communication.
You must submit:
Note that the table here is not quite the same as that for the SMALC/ABET outcomes. Instead of the I/E/H scale, for this assessment you should report a letter grade on the assesssment, and the number of interest is how many achieved a grade of "C-" or better on the assessment. A student should not receive a grade of "C-" or better in the course unless she/he has achieved a grade of "C-" or better on the oral competency component.