• Historical Perspective
• Characteristics of Assessment at CSU Stanislaus
• Principles of Assessment of Student Learning
• Institutional Infrastructure for Assessment and Quality Assurance
• Relationship of Assessment Initiatives to the University’s Mission
• Relationship of Assessment Initiatives to Strategic Planning
• Institutional Effectiveness
• Assessment of Administrative Support Units
• Assessment in the Divisions
• University-wide Assessment of Student Learning
• Direct Assessment Methods and Measures
• Assessment of Disciplines and Programs
• Assessment of Student Learning in General Education
• Oversight of Program Assessment of Student Learning
• Student Role in Assessment
• Dissemination and Documentation of Institutional Improvement
• Assessing the Assessment Program

Characteristics of Assessment at CSU Stanislaus
Since that time, the University has continued to develop a conceptually strong assessment program that has the following characteristics in design and execution.

Processes for developing and implementing the assessment program result from widespread participation of faculty, administrators, staff, students, and the external community.

1. Assessment data are designed and used in positive ways for improving student learning and institutional effectiveness. Program or departmental assessment data are not used to make comparisons among university units or between individual faculty.
2. Working definitions of assessment reflect the University’s values and are consonant with the University’s principles of assessment of student learning.
3. Priorities for assessment are derived from the University's mission, relate to the University’s strategic goals and priorities, and address WASC accreditation standards.
4. Assessment activities are incorporated into and are integral to the University’s processes and structures.
5. Decisions are based on multiple indicators of effectiveness and consider the results from both qualitative and quantitative methods.
6. Results of assessment guide institutional decision-making and are used in institutional planning, evaluation, and resource allocation processes.
7. Appropriate resources are provided in terms of expertise, time, and money to promote assessment activities—both for centralized university-wide activities and program-specific assessment efforts.
8. Dissemination of assessment efforts and results is planned and implemented.

Principles of Assessment of Student Learning
The University’s commitment to assessment honors a positive learning environment and the preeminent role of faculty in the fostering and assessment of student learning. Through the document Principles of Assessment of Student Learning (2004), the University affirms the compelling need for meaningful assessment practices in effective education, emphasizes the primary role of faculty in developing and implementing assessment measures, asserts the importance of separating assessment of student learning from faculty evaluation, privileges formative over summative assessment, and values assessment for the enhancement of teaching and learning.

Institutional Infrastructure for Assessment and Quality Assurance
In fall 2004, CSU Stanislaus restructured its organizational approach for assessment (2006), of institutional quality. The Office of Assessment and Quality Assurance, led by the Associate Vice President for Assessment and Quality Assurance, was created to provide vigorous leadership and coordination for university-wide assessment and quality assurance. In addition, a university-wide assessment leadership team, comprised of assessment coordinators from academic and administrative units, has been formed and is under review.

This new structure allowed the Office of Institutional Research to focus on enhancing the amount and sophistication of its institutional research capacity, especially in support of the assessment of student learning. Institutional research is conducted by many units, with assessment tailored to specific program needs. Specific roles and responsibilities for institutional research throughout the University define and illustrate the myriad of methods and information used to evaluate and improve quality.

Relationship of Assessment Initiatives to the University’s Mission
Working definitions of assessment at CSU Stanislaus were developed, and assessment initiatives were implemented within the context of the CSU Stanislaus mission, vision, and values statements (2005). Each of these documents provides the philosophical underpinning in which learning is preeminent. For example, the mission makes clear the University’s commitment to creating a learning environment, fostering diversity, and promoting lifelong learning. The vision proclaims the University’s efforts to become a major center of learning for the Central Valley and beyond. The values reinforce the University’s belief in the centrality of learning and its on-going commitment to a genuinely learning-centered university. It is the University’s strategic plan that displays the University’s mission, vision, and values in action and serves as the basis for the University’s assessment initiatives.

Relationship of Assessment Initiatives to Strategic Planning
Under the leadership of a new president, the University revisited strategic planning in 2005-06. The Strategic Plan, Framing the Future (2007), displays the University’s commitment to the principles articulated in the mission, vision, and values statements, and frames our future through three key themes: student engagement, development, and student achievement; support for teaching and learning, scholarship and service; and the University and the community. Under the leadership of the Provost, and with monitoring by the President and the President’s Executive Cabinet, implementation began with the 2007-08 academic year. The budgetary process ensures a direct link to the strategic plan and the allocation of specific revenue sources to support the stated priorities. Similarly, the Office of Institutional Research will provide ongoing assessment of the strategic actions, including information from campus leaders about the effectiveness of the actions and the quality of outcomes.

Institutional Effectiveness
Two key documents describe how the University examines institutional effectiveness. The document Ten Methods to Examine Institutional Effectiveness (2008), details the methods used; assessment of student learning at the classroom, program, and university levels; evaluation of instruction; academic program review; support unit review; specialized program accreditation; institutional accreditation; examination of institutional issues; and accountability/external reports. This document also identifies the primary purpose for each method and three goals (assessment of student learning, evaluation/review, accountability). Who's Responsible for What (2008) details the roles and responsibilities for assessment for each of the ten methods. The development of this document has resulted in a common understanding of assessment and alleviated much of the concerns of the faculty with regard to the uses of assessment information.

Assessment of Administrative Support Units
The University conducts comprehensive periodic reviews of each of its academic and administrative support units through its Support Unit Review Policy and Procedures (2008). Support Unit Review provides a vehicle to integrate rigorous assessment with ongoing strategic planning and resource allocation. Important functions of the Support Unit Review are (1) to meet the requirements of administrators for comprehensive information concerning the effectiveness of their units; (2) to determine if resources are being utilized as effectively and efficiently as possible; (3) to determine if the unit is effectively supporting the mission of the University, particularly as related to student learning; and (4) to make improvements as a result of this assessment of unit effectiveness.

Additionally, Quality Improvement Initiative on-line surveys are used by CSU Stanislaus and throughout the CSU system to promote continuous quality and productivity improvement in academic and administrative support units. Supported by the CSU Chancellor's Office, the Quality Improvement Initiative offers strategies for quality enhancement through outcomes assessment and performance measures.

• Assessment within the Division of Academic Affairs
  Within the Division of Academic Affairs, the document Organization of Assessment in Academic Affairs (2008) describes how assessment for student learning is organizaed within Academic Affairs. Whether assessing individual courses, programs, departments, or colleges the goal is to promote student learning based on the goals reflected in the University's mission. In addition, administrative units participate in the Support Unit Review porcess at least once every five years.

• Assessment within the Division of Business and Finance
  The Division of Business and Finance has employed the methodology of Balanced Scorecard (2006), a performance management system, to assess individual processes and procedures, customer services, and employee relations. The Balanced Scorecard was selected as the method to provide assessment information for verifying the division’s support of and contribution to the University’s mission and strategic plan. The information is used to align vision and mission with customer requirements and day-to-day work, manage and evaluate business strategy, monitor operation efficiency improvements, build organization capacity, and communicate progress to all employees. The unit uses critical success factors to chart the path to successful outcomes and performance measures to track both strategic and operational progress.

• Assessment within the Division of University Advancement
  The Division of University Advancement employs the Support Unit Review process for evaluating its achievement of goals related to fundraising, university relations, public affairs and alumni affairs.

• Assessment within the Division of Student Affairs
  The Division of Student Affairs conducts audits of its effectiveness by employing standards from Council of Assessment Standards as part of its Support Unit Review. As a result of the unit’s self study and external review, action plans are formulated for enhancing quality of administrative units, student affairs programming, and student learning through co-curricular activities. In addition, the Student Affairs annual retreat focuses on program enhancement through assessment, including an evaluation of the WASC standards with regard to support for student learning through co-curricular programs.

University-wide Assessment of Student Learning
The Inventory of University-Wide Assessment Methods (2008) describes university-wide assessment initiatives (direct and indirect) and specifies the purposes of the methods, types of data, and uses of information. The University uses local, system, and national surveys for providing assessment data. These surveys are employed as a means to secure helpful information about our students’ learning inside and outside of the classroom, to understand better the profile of our student body as they engage in both curricular and co-curricular activities, and to secure information that helps make informed decisions regarding the University’s effectiveness. The University identified peer institutions as a method for placing institutional data in an external context and for making comparisons to similar universities. CSU Stanislaus identified peer institutions most similar in mission and relevant characteristics such as classification, student enrollments, fees, faculty, and accreditation. For example, local surveys of undergraduate (Graduating Senior Survey) and graduate students (Graduate School Program Survey) at time of graduation and of alumni (baccalaureate and master’s) are administered by the Office of Institutional Research.

In addition, the CSU system periodically administers student surveys. One example is the Student Needs and Priorities Survey (SNAPS), last administered in 1999. Students rated their satisfaction level in the following areas: instruction and learning environment, campus services, advising, reasons for enrolling, obstacles to obtaining educational goals, desired learning opportunities, transition to university, and diversity. The University added questions about general education and the data were analyzed in both aggregate and disaggregate (by demographic and characteristics) forms.

Another example is the National Student Satisfaction Inventory (Noel-Levitz), a standardized national instrument designed to collect information to support University efforts to increase student success and the retention of students. This survey, administered in 1999 and 2008, provides national norms for comparison of our student responses with those at other similar universities. This inventory elicits student responses on both importance and satisfaction for the following areas: academic advising, campus climate and life, support services, instruction, financial aid, safety, student centeredness, and general education.

National surveys administered at CSU Stanislaus include the National Study of Student Engagement (NSSE), administered in 2003, 2004, and 2006, and planned every three years thereafter. This instrument is designed to measure the degree of student engagement in college activities that research studies have shown are positively correlated to student learning and personal development. Using comparative data from other similar universities, CSU Stanislaus is able to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses as perceived by the students.

In 2007, CSU Stanislaus administered the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) which parallels the NSSE. The FSSE is designed to measure faculty expectations for student engagement in educational practices. The results of this survey will be used as comparative data to assess the alignment of faculty and student perceptions.

In 2007 CSU Stanislaus, in cooperation with Indiana University, administered the NSSE and FSSE to graduate students and faculty. These surveys paralleled those administered to the undergraduate students and faculty. When combined, CSU Stanislaus will have a complete picture as to the strengths and weaknesses identified by students and faculty.

Beginning 2005 and again in 2007 the Library administered the LibQUAL+ survey. This survey is an indirect assessment used to improve and market library services. Beginning 2008 the Library will replace the LibQUAL+ survey with the Quality Indicators (QI) Survey provided by the Chancellor’s Office. The QI survey will be administered every year through 2010.

The University also gathers university-wide data which is published in the Fact Book, and the Institutional Evidence Portfolio. Other university-wide data that illustrate program quality include professional accreditation—the number of programs accredited and reaccredited by disciplinary accreditation agencies for which accreditation is available; employability—the number of students who are employed in their chosen fields/profession; and post-graduate study—the number of students completing master’s and doctoral degrees.

In addition, the CSU System’s Accountability Report contains such data as enrollment management information (applications, admissions, retention, graduation, and time to degree), facilities utilization, university advancement, and community and school partnerships.

Direct Assessment Methods and Measures
The overall goal for the assessment programs at CSU Stanislaus is to build on the traditional indirect methods for assessing quality (surveys, focus groups, and interviews) and to employ a wider variety of methods to assess student learning and institutional quality, including direct measures of student learning. Leadership for this effort is provided by the Faculty Coordinator for Assessment of Student Learning, the Assessment of Student Learning Subcommittee, and the Assessment Council.

As a means of direct assessment, CSU Stanislaus has piloted and plans to administer the iSkills (Educational Testing Service) in 2008. This assessment is a direct measure of students’ cognitive and technical skills through engagement in real-time, scenario-based tasks. The test specifically measures higher-order student achievement of information retrieval and competency, one of the seven student learning goals of general education.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), administered in 2006-07 and 2007-08, is an instrument which allows for a direct measure of student learning by combining two types of testing instruments, real-life performance tasks and writing prompts. These are used to measure student learning in the areas of critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication. The CLA will be administered at least every three years.

CSU Stanislaus also administers a locally developed writing assessment to measure student achievement in written communication. The Writing Proficiency Screening Test (WPST) (2008), is administered to all students before their junior year. In this test, students are given an hour and a half to write an essay to demonstrate their writing ability and competence for enrolling in a junior-level writing proficiency course. This test is administered 3 or 4 times each year.

Assessment of Disciplines and Programs
In its 1998 application for reaccreditation to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, CSU Stanislaus’ major theme was the development of a learning-centered environment. In its reaffirmation of accreditation, WASC indicated a need for increased efforts at measuring and improving student learning. Since the report was issued in 1998, academic departments have substantially increased efforts at measuring student learning and using the feedback from those efforts to improve learning, teaching effectiveness, curricula, and student progress in major programs.

Each academic department has employed assessment directly related to the department’s student learning goals (2008). Departments’ descriptions of requirements for graduation are available in the CSU Stanislaus catalog as well as the individual department websites.

In academic programs, faculty are beginning to complement indirect program assessment with the direct assessment of student work embedded in coursework. For example, some programs have added capstone courses in which faculty construct assignments that allow faculty to observe directly students’ demonstration of the course and program learning goals. Other programs use capstone courses to provide settings for students to demonstrate their cognitive, affective, and performance achievement through course simulations or field-based settings. Service-learning courses are another vehicle for examining student learning through field applications and reflective analysis.

Some departments have designed assessment methods at prescribed points in the major that allows graded course assignments to be used simultaneously by the program faculty to evaluate students’ collective performance. The use of scoring, templates, and rubrics for evaluating students’ individual and collective learning is also evidenced in the departments’ assessment practices, as is the increased use of student portfolios. Some departments have built into their periodic reviews faculty discussions of achievement levels for successful demonstration of student learning outcomes. This collective and collaborative review of student learning by departmental faculty is essential for ensuring the highest level of student learning.

Assessment of Student Learning in General Education
Along with their work in the major field of study, undergraduate students are required to demonstrate achievement in seven General Education Goals (2000), prior to graduation. General education is central to the mission of CSU Stanislaus and its explicit commitment to a quality liberal education. The purpose of general education is to provide a common educational experience for students, regardless of major field of study. The faculty are committed to ensuring that the general education program cultivates the knowledge, skills, and values characteristic of a learned person.

The General Education Program at CSU Stanislaus is comprised of the traditional General Education Program , and the Summit Program . The traditional program has been offered in its current overall design since the early 1970’s (although the number of units and specific courses has changed over the decades). Currently, the General Education Program requires students to complete 51 semester units, including nine upper division units, of selected courses within seven broad disciplinary categories. The Summit Program, approved in May 2004, after three years of pilot, provides an alternative to the traditional general education program. Built around a cluster model, the Summit program encourages engagement as upper-division students work in cohort groups for 2 or 3 classes.

The document Leadership and Administrative Support of the General Education Program (2008) displays the structure in support of general education, with duties for assessment specified for governance committees and administrative officers. Assessment of General Education (2008) provides a chronological overview since 1999 of the growth in number and the maturity of the assessment measures undertaken to demonstrate the quality of the general education program and student learning.

Assessment results for general education are communicated through meeting minutes and annual reports of the General Education Subcommittee. In addition, the University Educational Policies Committee, the General Education subcommittee, the Assessment of Student Learning subcommittee, and the academic administration review the results of general education assessments and recommend appropriate actions for improvement to the Academic Senate and the President.

Oversight of Program Assessment of Student Learning
The University accomplishes the systematic review of program quality and student learning through a variety of processes.

Academic Program Review
Every seven years, academic departments and programs conduct academic program reviews (2008), in accordance with university policy. Revised in 2004, this review process establishes the centrality of the evaluation of student learning goals, uses the results from assessment of program quality and student learning goals to plan future program development, provides greater responsibility for assessment at the college level, adds a mandatory meeting with the provost at the conclusion of the process to review findings, and links program review with strategic planning and budgetary decisions. An assessment of the effectiveness of this revised academic program review is scheduled for 2008/09, three years after its implementation and the completion of two cycles of review.

Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement
An overall assessment of the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) is undertaken every five years to ensure students are developing the core learning competency with respect to written communication. In addition, each Writing Proficiency course is reviewed every 5 years. GWAR is based on a model of writing-across-the curriculum.

Assessment of Graduate Student Learning Goals
Graduate programs have developed and subscribe to overall graduate learning goals. To ensure the quality of the advanced programs and student learning experiences, the Graduate Council has established six learning goals that are to be achieved by each graduate student. Assessment of Graduate Student Learning Goals (2008) provides an overview of the methods, results, and uses of assessment data for graduate programs.

Student Role in Assessment
The campus Assessment Plan states that “students are partners with the faculty, staff, and administration in the learning process.” The University systematically conducts assessments in which students’ participation is central; for example, measuring student learning outcomes in the major and general education, submitting course and program evaluations, and conducting student satisfaction surveys. In addition, representatives of student government are members of the Assessment Leadership Team and all four of the self-study Inquiry Circles.

Dissemination and Documentation of Institutional Improvement
The websites for the Office of Assessment and Quality Assurance, and the Office of Institutional Research, provide information and summary of assessment results, as well as examples of how results were used for improvement. Assessment results are reviewed by faculty, staff, students, and administrative officers through formal governance committees, system administration, and accrediting agencies.

Further, CSU Stanislaus participates in the Voluntary System of Accountability. In 2008, this web display will include a College Portrait that provides three types of information: student characteristics, including admission and graduation data; students' perceptions of their experiences as reported on the National Survey of Student Engagement; and student learning outcome information related to critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication as evidenced on the Collegiate Learning Assessment.

Assessing the Assessment Program
The University employs periodic review of its assessment program (2008), both internally and externally. The reviews examine the University’s structures and resources in support of assessment, progress in enhancing the number and quality of assessment methods, documented uses of assessment information for improving student learning and institutional quality, campus values related to assessment, and perceptions of the quality of the assessment program. The President’s Executive Committee, the Provost’s Council of Deans, and governance committees review the recommendations resulting from these reviews and take appropriate actions to enhance quality and efficiency. The recommendations and actions are posted on the Office of Assessment’s website. The most recent review in 2007 was conducted by Dr. Mary Allen, a respected expert on the Assessment of Student Learning.