- Academic Program Reviews
- Student Assessment Plans
- Evaluations of areas such as :
- Faculty
- Student Services
- Library
- Student Academic Assistance Center(SAAC)
Program Reviews
In terms
of Academic Program Reviews, NHU did
develop new guidelines in 2005 that were
accepted by the Faculty Senate and the
University President. Embedded
in the reviews are the requirements for
faculty and student evaluations as well
as historical data in terms of enrollment,
retention and graduation rates (Appendix
1T).
Since
the University’s
Institutional Proposal of 2004, the Liberal
Studies program has undergone its academic
review based on the new guidelines. The
report on liberal studies written by
two external reviewers (Appendix 1U)
will be summarized and presented in the
Faculty Senate in November of 06. The
Provost will then also have a meeting
with department chairs to discuss this
report and future ones in more depth. Two
more academic programs are also currently
going through program reviews. The
Business Program (Appendix 1V) had three
external reviewers come to assess the
program in October of 2006. The
Teacher Education Program will undergo
an external evaluation in November of
2006 (Appendix 1W).
It is
anticipated that the reviews will send
their comments before the beginning of
2007. Additional
Program reviews are scheduled for the
future:
Computer Information Science |
Spring 2007 |
General Studies |
Fall 2007 |
Translation & Interpretation |
Spring 2007 |
Student Assessment
In spring
2005, the department chairs, in coordination
with the provost, organized an academic
assessment work plan to establish learning
outcomes for each program. In
addition, the department chairs worked
with their faculty to clarify their mission,
vision and goals.
The student
assessment plans have not been developed
or implemented as of Fall 2006. However,
an initiative on Assessment Vision, Principals
and Goals was developed and adopted by
the Faculty Senate in July, 2005 (Appendix
3A). Unfortunately,
after adoption of the document, the faculty
attention dwindled and the work was not
begun. However,
the document presents solid Assessment
Principles that are guided by the University’s
mission and recognizes that competency
for doing assessment requires training
and consistent monitoring from faculty
and student services staff. The
goals are primarily to support student
learning and enhance faculty teaching. The
document was also guided by the AAHE
Best Practices in Assessment. The
principles that NHU will work on to establish
its review on educational effectiveness
are
- The assessment of student learning begins
with educational values.
- Assessment is most effective when it
reflects an understanding of learning as
a multidimensional, integrated, and revealed
in performance over time.
- Assessment works best when the program
it seeks to improve has clear, explicitly
stated purposes.
- Assessment requires attention to outcomes
but also, and equally, to the experiences
that lead to those outcomes.
- Assessment works best when it is ongoing,
not episodic. Assessment is a process whose
power is cumulative.
- Assessment fosters wider improvement
when representatives from across the educational
community are involved.
- Assessment makes a difference when it
b begins with issues of use and illuminates
questions that people really care about.
- Assessment is most likely to lead to
improvement when it is a part of a larger
set of conditions that promote change.
- Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities
to students and to the public.
Evaluations
NHU
has conducted evaluations on some services
that students are receiving such as Library
Services (Appendix 3B), the Student Academic
Assistance Center (Appendix 3C) and the
Summer Bridge Program (Appendix 3D). The evaluation
of the Student Success Program will be
done when it completes it’s first
year of funding in 07. NHU recognizes
that such evaluations are necessary in
order to determine where work needs to
be done to support students in achieving
their educational goals.
The
attention to faculty evaluation has increased
since WASC came to the campus; however,
consistency and timeliness continues
to lag behind the good intention of using
evaluations to help faculty improve pedagogy
and student learning. Currently,
every faculty member is, in fact, evaluated
for courses they teach (Appendix 3E). The
evaluation is done electronically toward
the end of each module. Unfortunately,
not all evaluations have been discussed
with the faculty and the University needs
to make progress by discussing the results
with each faculty member. This
is of particular importance for the renewal
of contracts for the adjunct faculty.
Peer
evaluations are also a recognized method
of offering feedback, mentoring and capturing
best teaching practices in a collegial
manner. The
faculty, in conjunction with the Provost,
adopted a different peer review form
in the fall of 2006 that provided better
and usable feedback to the professor. The
goal is to conduct these peer evaluations
at least once a year and to do so in
the middle of a module so that the process
can allow mid-course improvements. This
is also a source of evaluation that will
be considered in the reappointment of
adjunct faculty as well as renewals of
faculty contracts.
Full
time faculty submitted portfolios that
allowed for self-reflection and an assessment
of professional development. The
portfolios were a factor in awarding
multi-year contracts. The
value of this portfolio process will
be evaluated by the Provost and Chairs
and have a resolution by the time of
the next WASC educational effectiveness
visit. What has become
clear is that multi- year contracts have
given faculty a sense of stability and
a longer term investment in the University
and its students.
Next Steps
In conclusion,
the University will need to harness its
central attention to the issue of educational
effectiveness. It is
our intention to develop and formalize
the implementation of our quality assurance
system. We
believe that we have the foundation to
do this by using the assessment vision
and goals and identify what needs to
be done with student assessment plans. NHU
will use the program review model to
improve educational offerings programs,
personnel and address the problems that
have arisen. The
notion of a program review for the SAAC,
and Student Services should be also assist
the alignment toward quality assurance.
In
terms of faculty, we must insure that
they are evaluated as specified in the
faculty handbook, and review the portfolio
to determine if it serves the awarding
of multi-year contracts. Based
on faculty evaluations, we will need
to determine professional development
and training needs to help insure educational
effectiveness. This
is particularly true of adjunct faculty
who are doing the lion’s share
of teaching on the campus. Their
orientation and more frequent meetings
to discuss issues of learning and teaching
related to the University’s
core mission will be critical if we are
to make deep progress in educational
effectiveness.
The
University will also have to establish
better mechanisms to address enrollment,
retention and graduation outcomes and
problems that are arising given the new
student population profile. Data
will need to inform our future decision
making at all levels of the campus.
