When considering which student learning outcome to assess first, the reading department chose to tackle “read, analyze and synthesize written and visual material.” The faculty chose an assessment they have used for years in the reading classes – a pre- and a post-test article summary. They had used this individually in class, but hadn’t looked at it across the department’s curriculum.

The faculty met to determine the various elements they felt important to assess to achieve that outcome and created a rubric as a tool to help with scoring. To address inter-rater reliability, each summary was scored by two different faculty not involved in that specific class. If there was more than a 1-point deviance between these scorers, a third person also scored the summary.

The data for fall 2009 were collected and a few changes were made in the rubric for the spring 2010 semester. Dianna Rottinghaus, assistant professor, reading/AAC/EAP, explained that faculty didn’t know what to look for at first. “But every semester we asked – are we measuring what we want to measure, are we looking at what we want to look at, or is grammar getting in the way [of assessing the analysis of content]?” she said.

The rubric was fine-tuned as faculty learned more about the assessment process. Charis Sawyer, chair and professor, reading/AAC, said, “You learn by just jumping in. We just said we’re going to do this. It has been a process of fine-turning the rubric where the resulting data become better and more meaningful.”

The faculty administered the post-test at the end of the spring 2010 semester. The department met at the beginning of the fall semester to look at the pre- and post-data and analyze the results. They were looking forward to the discussion to see how they can continue to improve their students’ learning.