Faculty Involvement

The Importance of Faculty Involvement

As an educator, understanding how students are grasping concepts within a program should be a primary concern. Implementing backward design into a course is a useful way to ensure that students are learning effectively. Backward design is a concept developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe that encourages faculty to recognize program learning goals before developing assignments and instructional design. By doing this, instructors are routinely reminded of the purpose for students to grasp concepts in the course and will evidently ease the process of creating assignments and planning instruction methods thereafter.

This process will also make it easier to conduct program assessment and will lead to stronger, more conclusive results. Collecting assessment data informs faculty of student performance and results in evidence to support curricular and other programmatic improvements, so it is important that assessment directly connects to the program goals.

Below are helpful tips for faculty to understand how they can help with assessment at each institutional level:

At the school level:

Follow updates on the AACSB Continuous Improvement Review process that happens every five years
Review the accreditation and assessment newsletter (sent every term) to receive updates about accreditation, trends in assessment, and professional development seminars

At the program level:

Communicate with program chairs to understand curriculum maps to clarify where outcomes are introduced, developed, mastered
If you see your course at the mastery level on the map, ensure that you have an assignment that address the program learning outcome

At the course level:

Align student learning outcomes on your syllabus with program learning outcomes
Encourage students to understand why they are asked to do certain assignments and remind them of the program learning outcomes

By following these steps, assessment can be a smoother process. Being active in the assessment cycle helps program chairs and associate deans understand what improvements need to be made within a program. These improvements will make Graziadio's programs more competitive.

How Faculty are Chosen to Assess

Step 1: Potential Courses are Identified to Assess in

Assessment team and academic directors meet to identify which courses in the curriculum map and which instructors can potentially assess next term

Step 2: Mastery Level Courses have Priority

Courses that show mastery of a particular outcome in the curriculum map are given special attention because assessment is normally done at this level

Step 3: Instructors are Contacted to Assess

After instructors are identified, the assessment team or the academic director asks these instructors to conduct assessment in their courses

Step 4: Assessment is Planned with Instructor of the Course to be Assessed in

The instructor responds to either agree to do assessment or to either create a new assignment to address the outcome or identify another outcome and assignment to assess

Step 5: Creation of Assignment in LiveText

The assessment team then creates the assignment in LiveText and notifies the instructor that they are set up to assess

Step 6: More Guidance on LiveText

For more information about LiveText, navigate to the LiveText page on this assessment guide