Casey Chaviano | December 2020
2020 has been a year of challenges and changes as we try to find new ways to stay connected in our personal and professional lives. One challenge the pandemic has brought us in the realm of assessment is in our ability to network and learn through others at conferences, in our own departments, and across Georgia Tech. As we learned with our Assessment Town Hall in September, assessment is a community effort that is done best when we work collaboratively, share ideas, and are open to learning from others—both our peers and our stakeholders.
In an effort to expand our own understanding of what it means to do this important work in higher education, the OUE Assessment Committee asked for opportunities to network with other universities and learn what assessment means to them and how we might reflect on our own practices to improve the improvement process. This month we were fortunate enough to get to learn with our neighbors at Kennesaw State University and explore the similarities, challenges, and triumphs of assessment in Student Affairs. As a part of this virtual collaboration, Justin Boone (Tutoring & Academic Support) and Kari White (Academic Engagement Programs) shared some of their lessons learned in their assessment process at Georgia Tech and Matt Khoury shared some examples from Kennesaw State. Much of our time together was also focused on general Q&A, exploring both important larger metrics and reporting as well as a more micro-lens of program evaluation through surveys, rubrics, and focus groups.
Our committee took some time after to comment on their experience. One area of discussion was around exploring student engagement across programs and better understanding which students we may not be reaching. Linda Green (Tutoring & Academic Support) described, “I enjoyed hearing new perspectives on how to assess student participation in events/workshops, and I hope we can mirror some of their strategies in our assessment.”
As part of our discussion, we explored some challenges faced in assessment in higher education. One key obstacle is creating a sense of community and safety in assessment—it can feel at times rather personal to explore our work in this way. Roberta Berry (Honors Program) commented, “It was great to connect with a sister university’s assessment team – a group of people equally dedicated to continuous improvement and equally engaged with the challenges of driving improvement by robust assessment. We’re already realizing improvements in OUE thanks to this kind of assessment. It struck me how much this is due to the intellectual community that Casey has fostered at OUE and now expanded to include our colleagues at KSU—how much we benefit from helping each other wrestle with the challenges of designing and executing outcome-driven assessment that yields actionable results.”
As we move into 2021, we hope to foster more opportunities to connect with other experts both inside and Georgia Tech and beyond. Future Assessment Committee topics will include a look at equity in assessment, trainings of GT Data and Technology, and hopefully more spaces to connect with friends of our assessment community.
