Course-based assessment: engaging faculty in reflective practice

摘要

The College of Engineering (COE) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has begun to implement course-based assessment as part of our curricular continuous improvement program. The targeted faculty are those who are developing innovative courses supported by the Foundation Coalition (FC), a collaborative project funded by National Science Foundation. We began in Spring, 1999, and have since tried five different strategies-taking faculty to a two-day assessment workshop, a general lecture on embedding an assessment-based continuous improvement loop into courses, a written set of guidelines, individual meetings with faculty, and an interactive half-day workshop. We discovered that faculty accept and implement assessment-based continuous improvement in their classes once they understand that (a) it is in their control, (b) it can be done in ways that are cost-effective in terms of time, and (c) that it can reduce frustration in teaching because it makes visible aspects of courses that can be improved.