Use your evidence

Action Plan

What will your program do to improve student learning?

Analyze the evidence

Start by cleaning up your evidence to remove any student not affiliated with your program. Certificate programs may need to include unaffiliated students as discussed in the Methods section. If appropriate, aggregate evidence from multiple courses, years, or sections (including residential and World Campus) to develop your evidence base. This is an opportunity to analyze quantitative (numerical scores or ratings) or qualitative evidence (observations).

Further, the findings of residential and World Campus students should be compared to see if there are differences in outcomes for these two distinct educational modes. It should be clear in the descriptions of methods and findings that both types of students are being assessed.

Compare with performance target

For each PLO being assessed, determine if students met the achievement level established by the program. For example, consider the performance target that “At least 90% will receive a score of 80 or higher on the communications section of the internship evaluation form.”

• • The target is “exceeded” if 90% or more of the students received a score of at least 80 points.
  • The target is considered “not met” if 89% or fewer of the students received a score of at least 80 points.
  • In some (rare) cases, the findings may not be clear and therefore, “inconclusive.” For example, the internship had to be cancelled that year.

Create an action plan with the program instructors

At this point, Assessment Leaders should host a conversation with their program’s instructors. Some programs choose to do this in regular department meetings, while others hold dedicated assessment meetings. Together, your program can decide to stay the course–implement curricular, pedagogical, or other changes–or change the assessment process. Whatever you decide to do, you will include your Action Plan and the rationale behind the changes in your annual report.

If students met or exceeded target

If you only assessed a single PLO, students meeting your target is a sign that you should assess another PLO in the next assessment cycle. It is unlikely that you need to collect more evidence if students are achieving the desired objectives. However, if students excessively exceed expectations, your program may consider reevaluating your assessment methods and creating a more ambitious target that better aligns with the needs of your students.

If students did not meet the target

There are many reasons why students may not meet your performance target including issues in the curriculum, student support, learning opportunities, PLO, or the assessment itself. Program instructors should carefully examine the evidence to determine how to support student learning. It may require a small change like introducing a new course module or re-wording a PLO. Sometimes larger changes may be necessary like developing a new course or changing the curriculum sequence.

If instructors are concerned with Mastery-level performance in high-level courses, you may want to gather evidence in required courses with Encounter and Practice achievement levels. Reviewing your curriculum map can help facilitate these conversations.

If the findings are inconclusive

There are many reasons that assessment evidence is inconclusive, but happily this is a rare occurrence. Perhaps an opportunity to collect evidence was unexpectedly cancelled, like an internship opportunity or an instructor was on emergency leave. These types of findings may lead to larger conversations with program instructors and administrators about wide-ranging topics beyond the scope of learning outcomes. However, there are still opportunities to adapt assessment methods by changing when evidence is collected, which students are sampled, or how learning is measured. Even if you don’t have any findings, you still need to submit an annual report.

Measure the impact of changes

Whenever your program implements changes, you and your instructors should determine how you will know if the change was successful. In most cases, this will mean repeating the same assessment method(s) to determine the effects of the change. Some changes (e.g., a more descriptive assignment prompt or the sharing of a rubric with students) may be expected to have an immediate impact and their effects can be determined the year they are made. Larger changes, like creating a course or reorganizing a curriculum, may take several years to implement and it will make sense to delay re-assessment. That is a natural part of closing the loop and you may want to examine the impact of changes through several assessment cycles to ensure your efforts are on track and worthwhile.

Answer the following questions on the IMPACTS tab in Nuventive to document your assessment impact:

Did you implement (or have you begun implementing) an action plan since you last assessed this PLO?

• • Yes
  • No

If you answered “Yes,” please answer the questions below.

Please select the category that best captures your actions since last assessing this PLO.

• • CURRICULUM – Revise, refine, add, or delete PLO statement; change prerequisites; add or remove required courses; replace existing courses; change course sequence; add internship, lab, or other hands-on learning opportunities.
  • INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT – Provide targeted professional development opportunities; increase number of TAs or peer mentors; add specialized support for faculty (library, technology, learning design etc.); promote dialogues and community among faculty.
  • PEDAGOGY – Change course assignments; add more active-learning components; change textbooks; increase opportunities for formative feedback and peer-assisted learning.
  • STUDENT SUPPORT – Increase tutors or tutoring opportunities; make more resources available; adjust or increase advising; add student support technology; encourage community building among students and between students and faculty.
  • ASSESSMENT METHODS – Change assessment methods; change where data is collected (e.g., courses); collect more data; improve reporting and dissemination mechanisms.
  • MAINTAIN CURRENT PRACTICE – Our action plan was to continue our current practice.

Keeping in mind that changes can take years to have an impact, please categorize the overall impact to date.

• • Positive Impact
  • Negative Impact
  • A Mix of Positive and Negative Impacts
  • No Impact

Briefly describe the changes made and the impact those changes have had on student learning since your last assessment of this PLO.

• • Open text response

Update your assessment plan

Your Assessment Plan is when, where, and how you measure learning outcomes and your Action Plan is a description of the steps you plan to take to support learning improvements. Examples of learning improvements can include, but are not limited to, changes in:

• • Curriculum – revise, refine, add, or delete PLOs; change prerequisites; add or remove required courses; replace existing courses with new ones; change recommended course sequence; add required internships, labs, or other hands-on learning opportunities.
  • Instructional Support – provide targeted professional development opportunities; increase number of TAs or peer mentors; add specialized support for faculty (library, academic technology, learning design, etc.); increase support to promote dialogue and community among faculty.
  • Pedagogy – change course assignments; add more active-learning components to courses; change textbooks; increase opportunities for formative feedback and peer-assisted learning.
  • Student Support – increase number of tutors or tutoring opportunities; make more resources available; adjust or increase advising; addition of student support technology; provide resources to encourage community building among students and between students and faculty.
  • Methods – change assessment methods; change where the evidence is collected; collect additional evidence data; improve evidence reporting and dissemination mechanisms.

Depending on your Action Plan, you may need to update your Assessment Plan. For example, perhaps you were originally planning to assess one of your five PLOs each year for the next 5 years. After the second year you discover student are not meeting the performance target for your Communication PLO. To support your students, your program’s instructors develop an Action Plan to add an oral presentation module to the capstone course. To measure the impact of that change, they want to reassess your Communication PLO next year, so you need to update your Assessment Plan. It is important to continue to cycle through your PLOs, so if you need to reassess one prior to the next cycle, you will most likely need to assess more than one per year.

How to enter your impacts and findings in Nuventive

How to enter Impacts in Nuventive

Step 1: Log into Nuventive using your Penn State Access ID and password.

Step 2: Select the program you want to edit from the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the white bar at the top of the page (e.g., Program – Accounting (BS) – Harrisburg).

Step 3: Click the left-hand menu (three-line icon to the left of the program drop-down) and navigate to ASSESSMENT >> Plan and Findings.

Step 4: Double-click the PLO of interest to open it.

Step 5: Click the Impacts tab.

Step 6: Click the green plus sign icon at the upper right.

How to enter Findings in Nuventive

Step 1: Log into Nuventive using your Penn State Access ID and password.

Step 2: Select the program you want to edit from the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the white bar at the top of the page (e.g., Program – Accounting (BS) – Harrisburg).

Step 3: Click the left-hand menu (three-line icon to the left of the program drop-down) and navigate to ASSESSMENT >> Plan and Findings.

Step 4: Double-click the PLO of interest to open it.

Step 5: Click the Findings tab.

Step 6: Click the green plus sign icon to the right of the Assessment Method of interest.

How to revise your Assessment Plan in Nuventive

If you decide to revise your Assessment Plan by changing your methods or which assessment you will measure a particular PLO, simply edit those sections in Nuventive under ASSESSMENT >> Plan and Findings.

For additional details, including screenshots, refer to the Nuventive Handbook for Assessment Leaders.