Introduction

What Really Matters?

Raymond J. Rodrigues

Director of Assessment

This handbook is designed to provide you with the basic information you need to develop your assessment plans and implement them. It begins with a brief introduction to each of the sections. Next is a step-by-step guide to developing learning goals for both academic programs and courses, leading toward the assessment plan. We’ve designed this section to support the efforts of our Curriculum Committee. I recommend it for all faculty developing new courses and programs or revising existing courses and programs. Then the handbook provides advice, guidelines, and selected literature on assessment. I also recommend that you explore the rest of the assessment website to see what other colleges and universities are doing in their majors, their core curricula, and other areas such as student affairs. I’ve tried to find key documents and articles that can help all of us conceptualize our assessment efforts and make them worth our time and efforts.

What really matters? What do you really want to know about how well your students are learning and what they are retaining after leaving your courses? That’s the key question I hope you will ask yourself as you find ways to determine how to help your students learn more effectively. Assessment shouldn’t be a mechanical process to satisfy external evaluators only. It should help all of us provide the best possible education that we can for our students.

Talk to your colleagues, too. Some exciting activities are occurring on our campus as faculty examine the achievements of their students beyond their courses themselves. Some have discovered things that they never expected, but those discoveries have led to better assignments for students, course revisions, and meaningful conversations among faculty and among students and faculty.

I honestly believe that Skidmore College leads all of its peers in determining what our students are learning and in learning where the gaps may be in their education. We have something to show others and should be proud of our accomplishments in this area.