Guide for Developing Co-curricular/Administrative Department Evaluation/Assessment Plans

A brief note on the difference between evaluation and assessment.  We are reserving the term “assessment” for activities more specifically related to student learning outcomes.  The term “evaluation” relates to all other activities that we develop goals and objectives for, measure outcomes for, and work to improve those outcomes to ensure that we are meeting our goals and objectives.  Thus, depending on the department you work for, much of what you will be doing to measure and improve outcomes will be evaluation if such activities do not relate directly to student learning outcomes.  If some of your department’s activities do related directly to student learning outcomes, there will be components of assessment involved. 

If it makes it easier for you, don’t get hung up on whether it is assessment or evaluation; rather, focus on the notion that you are trying to achieve and enhance your department’s goals and objectives and that you are collecting evidence that allows you to do so.

An evaluation/assessment plan is a document that specifies how departments evaluate attainment of department goals and objectives and how the information obtained from that evaluation is used to improve the department.  The following steps will allow you to develop and implement such a plan.

It is important to involve all members of the department in the following steps, if at all possible, to ensure that there is broad ownership of the mission, goals/objectives, and evaluation/assessment process.

1)   Develop, review, or revise the department mission statement.  A mission statement should:

a)     aim to focus the work of the department by clearly stating the purpose of the department.

b)     align with the university’s mission to “… enable all its students to develop intellectually, spiritually, ethically, socially, artistically, and physically in order to enrich their own lives and the lives of others.”

c)     Indicate that the department’s efforts are somewhat unique from other departments within the university

d)     be agreed upon by the staff in the department

2)   Develop long-range department goals.  Goals should:

a)       state desired outcomes of the department (what you are trying to accomplish or what you care about)

b)       have an obvious relationship to the department mission

c)       direct activities in the department

Example: Achieve excellence in service to students, faculty, and staff by providing timely responses to inquiries for information.

3)   Develop specific objectives for each goal in the department.  Objectives should:

a)       be specific statements describing behaviors the department expects to occur in pursuit of its goals

b)       be measurable (objectives should be observable)

c)       comprehensively cover each departmental goal (at least one objective should be developed per goal)

Example: All inquires for information will be responded to within one 24-hour business day.

 4)           Develop a list of measures or evaluations/assessments.  These measures should:

a)       yield useful results (the evaluations/assessments will actually measure the intended objectives)

b)       be realistic (simple but elegant is much better than complex and unworkable).  Make sure the department will be able to develop/purchase/administer/analyze the measures.

c)       be comprehensive.  Taken as a whole, the evaluations/assessments should measure as many objectives as possible.

d)       represent, to the extent possible, multiple methods of measuring objectives

Possible Measures: performance measures (e.g., the example immediately below), surveys, interviews, focus groups, standardized tests (e.g., the Student Satisfaction Inventory that the institution administers every 3^rd yar).

Example: Keep a log of response times at random intervals throughout the year.  This can be especially easy with e-mail responses, as they have a time stamp

5)   Develop an evaluation/assessment timeline.  This timeline should:

a)       specify when, where, and by whom evaluations/assessments will be administered

b)       specify a plan to gather data/evidence (not always numbers) from each evaluation/assessment

c)       identify how the department will analyze the evaluation/assessment information

6)   Gather the measures or evaluations/assessments.

a)       Before you create an evaluation/assessment, search for similar evaluations/assessments already produced

b)       Select the best evaluation/assessment based on the following criteria:

Efficiency:  A good evaluation/assessment requires a relatively small amount of resources to yield useful information

Directness:  A good evaluation/assessment provides direct evidence of the attainment of departmental goals/objectives [Note: a direct measure of customer service would be measure the amount of time it takes to respond to inquiries for information by keeping a log or examining time stamps on an e-mail.  An indirect measure of customer service would be to ask customers how they feel about the response time to their inquiries – it may provide useful information, but it will be different than the direct measure.]

Usefulness:  A good evaluation/assessment yields information that will be used by the department for future improvement

7)   Administer/conduct the evaluations/assessments according to the department timeline.

a)       Involve as many people who rely on and use the department as possible in the department evaluation/assessment activities

b)       Collect data from the evaluation/assessments (as described in the timeline)

c)       Evaluate the merits of each evaluation/assessment (should this evaluation/assessment be used in the future?)

 8)  Analyze the information obtained from the evaluations/assessments.

a)       Analyze data from each evaluation/assessment separately to see if department goals/objectives are being met

b)       Aggregate data from multiple evaluations/assessments to provide an overall indicator of progress

c)       Track data from similar evaluation/assessments over time to identify trends

9)   Communicate assessment results.

a)       Gather staff to discuss information obtained from the evaluations/assessments

b)       Discuss areas of relative strength and weakness as well as recent trends

10)  Evaluate the department (and the evaluation/assessment plan) based on results from the evaluations/assessments.

a)       Identify potential areas of improvement for the department and work toward these improvements – this is what it is all about.

b)       Modify objectives, evaluations/assessments, or the timeline to improve the department evaluation/assessment plan.

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