BVA Community Conversation: Collaborative Leadership for Student Learning Outcomes Assessment

Facilitated by Joshua Potter (KU), Wendy James (USask), and Pat Hutchings (BVA & NILOA)

Few areas of higher education have developed as quickly as the assessment of student learning outcomes. What in many cases emerged as an isolated task connected with accreditation at the institutional level has now shifted to the level of academic departments, where it can be leveraged as a tool of curricular improvement, strategic planning, and student success. But for academic departments unpracticed in this type of work, assessment remains a significant undertaking.

Accordingly, this Community Conversation focuses on the role that centers for teaching and learning (or CTLs) can play in guiding departments toward useful forms of assessment that make a difference in the quality of teaching and learning. Toward this end, and drawing on earlier work in the Assessment Working Group, the attached resource is intended for leaders of both CTLs and academic departments interested in productive, long-run collaboration on vital assessment projects. As you will see, it sets forth a number of principles and characteristics of such collaborations, but also pulls together short, informative first-hand narratives of practice from several BVA member campuses: University of Kansas, University of Saskatchewan, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Queen’s University, and University of California, Los Angeles.

Before this resource is posted on the public BVA website, we are eager to host a conversation where we can all learn from one another’s experiences. We are hoping that you will be able to skim the resource ahead of time and come to the conversation with stories to share about building departmental leadership for assessment in your setting. We are also interested in hearing from you about the applicability of the resource’s guidelines on your campus, and we welcome any additional campus narratives for inclusion in the resource itself.

BVA_CTL_Assessment_Resource draft