Survey of Best Practices in Student Assessment, 2016 Edition with 145-page study gives detailed data from 70 colleges and universities about their assessment practices, including but not limited to departmental assessment, new program assessment, student career assessment, academic performance assessment and much more. The study also provides detailed benchmarking information on assessment offices and other administrative departments involved in assessment, furnishing data on salaries, staffing, budgets, technology use and strategies. In addition, the report looks into the degree of cooperation with assessment efforts from college administration and faculty.
The report helps its readers to answer questions such as: how are assessment offices allocating their staff time? How involved in assessment efforts are academic libraries? How are colleges using flipped learning? Competency-based classes? What kind of software or web-based packages are colleges using for assessment? The study gives data on more than 20 programs. The report also looks at the use of assessment consultants, outside assessors and the role of national associations for particular subject areas.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
• 76% of colleges in the sample require that new program proposals include a plan for measuring student success and outcomes.
• 76% of public colleges and 58% of private colleges in the sample had an assessment office.
• 55% of colleges with more than 10,000 students paid their assessment directors more than $76,000 annually while only a shade more than 22% of colleges with less than 1,500 students paid their assessment directors more than $76,000.
• 45.45% of private colleges had an assessment day or period while only 21.62% of public colleges had one.
• Less than a third of career services departments were thought to be “involved” or “highly involved” in assessment efforts.
• Many colleges were mentioned as role models and some were mentioned more than once and these were: Johnson County Community College, James Madison University, and Alverno College.