Congratulations to all 2009 Summer Assessment Grant Recipients on their successful efforts toward improving student learning in their program. Following are summaries of the assessment work that grant recipients completed.

Holli Levitsky – Jewish Studies, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
The Jewish Studies Program completed its first year of the academic minor in 2009, so Holli’s goal for this project was to develop an assessment plan for the program and develop rubrics to assess student work. As a first step, Holli created an assessment committee for the program. The committee developed a plan to involve faculty teaching Jewish Studies courses in aligning course and program outcomes, and identifying student work that reflects achievement of program-level outcomes. The committee also examined capstone projects from graduating seniors and developed rubrics to assess program outcomes. These initial steps have helped to establish a manageable course of action for meaningful, ongoing assessment of the Jewish Studies Program.

Edmundo Litton – Specialized Programs in Urban Education, School of Education
The LMU/LA CAST Program in the Department of Specialized Programs in Urban Education developed a laptop initiative in 2007 aimed at integrating teaching and learning strategies with technology both inside and outside of the classroom and promoting digital equity. Edmundo’s project examined this initiative by assessing a student learning outcome of the LMU/LA CAST program. He conducted phone interviews with alumni and current students and used a rubric to examine examples of work students developed for use with their own K-12 students. Using the findings from both sets of evidence, he was able to identify ways to enhance students’ ability to integrate teaching and technology in the program. Edmundo plans to present his findings to program faculty to discuss how the program can close the assessment loop for this outcome by making changes for improvement.

Vanessa Newell – Production, School of Film and Television
The goal of Vanessa’s project was to analyze collected evidence of student learning in the Production Department and facilitate a dialogue between faculty on strategies for improvement. Vanessa analyzed data from a rubric applied to over 50 undergraduate and graduate capstone films and data from a pilot curriculum-wide knowledge survey administered in several sections of an introductory course. She plans to present her findings from both sets of data to program faculty in order to build a shared understanding of student learning in the program and develop strategies for improvement. As a final step in her project, she developed a central storage place for program assessment data, helping to make assessment of student learning in the program a much more manageable and sustainable process.

Jennifer Ramos – Political Science, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
Jennifer examined the alignment between the Political Science curriculum and the program learning outcomes. She worked with John Parrish and Richard Fox to create a curriculum map for the program by collecting and reviewing the learning outcomes on course syllabi, assignments, and other course related work. With these materials, they were able to determine where and at what level program learning outcomes are being addressed in the curriculum. After conducting a detailed analysis of the curriculum map, they were able to provide the program with baseline data from which faculty can now begin a conversation on how to ensure that students have ample opportunity to achieve program outcomes.

Aimee Ross – Freshman English, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
The Freshman English Program’s ongoing assessment plan uses multiple assessment tools. Aimee’s project focused on one component of this plan – the analysis of portfolios to assess several of the program outcomes. She collected scored rubrics from a sample of student portfolios and analyzed the data. Aimee then worked with K.J. Peters to interpret the findings and develop small, immediate steps to improve student learning. She presented her findings at the orientation for Freshman English Instructors and stressed the areas of the curriculum that should be addressed to improve student learning, helping the Freshman English Program to close an assessment loop.

Seth Thompson – Political Science, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
The goal of Seth’s project was to create a system for organizing and analyzing assessment data collected as part of the Political Science assessment plan. Each year the program administers a multiple choice exam in two introductory courses and one senior seminar to assess two of the program’s student learning outcomes. This pre-post testing allows the measurement of improvement over the course of the program. Seth developed procedures for preparing test data for analysis, documented procedures for conducting the analysis, and designed an archive system for the data. His project has ensured that collecting and analyzing data for this component of the assessment plan will not be dependent on any one individual.