Creating an Assessment Plan
The key to a good assessment plan is to keep it manageable and sustainable. To do this, focus on only one or two learning outcomes at a time. Pick the most important learning outcomes to assess now, and then plan to begin assessment of one or two additional outcomes each year.
Create an assessment plan that is brief, but specific, and allow up to two years for the complete assessment cycle. As you plan, keep the following in mind:
- The purpose of assessment is to improve student learning.
- Your plan will need to include sufficient time for design of assessment tools, data collection, data analysis, preparing a report of the findings, interpreting findings and making curricular or programmatic changes.
- Remember to specify who does what when.
There are two basic ways to format your plan; choose the format that is most comfortable for you.