Guiding Framework
The Assessment Guiding Framework provides a means of viewing assessment practices as proactive, strategic, and completely mission-driven. As visualized by a continuous loop of equally important components describing the assessment process, the Assessment Guiding Framework assists practitioners in examining relevant questions.
- Starting with unit administrative reviews, this step is inextricably linked to strategic planning by evaluating whether and how individual units are fulfilling their mission.
- Moving around the loop, units devise an assessment plan by selecting a method for measuring how a program, practice, or service achieves an identified divisional student learning outcome.
- The plan walks the units through the assessment cycle beginning with articulating research questions and concluding with reporting how practice was improved as a result of interpreting the data.
- Next, administrators explore meaningful ways to work and learn the practice of assessment together as a collective group. One of the primary tasks of such a learning community or committee is telling one’s story, transparency, and disseminating data to stakeholders.
- Cycling around, the next step is to identify and understand the informational and data needs of the divisional leadership team, in order to inform their decisions and create meaningful context to strategic planning.
- Following, we revisit the basic question “What do we assess?”, but this time through the lens of strategic goals and outcomes.
- The framework places value upon internal and external partnerships, while identifying influential partners and for what purpose.
- Finally, we recognize within this framework the need for individual and organizational competency within assessment, and ask how we can learn and refine our practices.