University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, April 13, 1988
5
Regents to discuss assessment plans
By Brenda Finnell
Kansan staff writer
Students, parents, legislators and taxpayers are all investors in higher education, committing money to universities through fees, budget allocations and taxes.
But a college education is not an ordinary product. Measuring its quality is not easy.
Like the purchasers of any product, many of these investors expect consumer satisfaction.
Kansas also has seen an increased interest in assessment.
In recent years, universities around the country have been developing and improving assessment programs designed to determine whether educational goals are met.
"There's a public that is clamoring for more information about outcomes," said Stanley Koplik, executive director of the agency. "We have to respond to phone calls."
The Regents will consider a plan prepared by its staff and one prepared by the Kansas Council of Chief Academic Officers, an organization with representatives from each regent's school with each Regent's school needs to identify their goals and needs and the methods for assessing them.
"A successful plan has to have specific objectives so you know what it is you want to measure." he said.
Koplik said a cohesive assessment plan was necessary because legislators wanted to see evidence of quality at universities.
We have to respond to those calls.
In an attempt to answer the demand for accountability, the Regents tomorrow will discuss developing a set of governing principles for assessment.
Although assessment measures already exist at Regents schools, Koplik said that there should be more assessment and that results should be measured in a consistent way so they could be compared.
"We can't just say, 'Trust us and give us more money.' " Kolkish said.
Jane Hutchinson, Wichita junior and director of the KU chapter of Associate Students of Kansas, said assessment was a good idea.
"When we have an assessment that clearly shows that KU needs more support, I think the Legislature will have to respond," she said.
Different goals
Both Kopik and Del Brinkman, vice chancellor for academic affairs, emphasized that the plan the Regents decided to approve should not dictate
specific assessment methods for the universities. The Regents plan should develop a framework to give universities similar ways of outlining and reporting their results, they said.
"No one really wants to lock anyone into a certain kind of device and say 'You will all do certain kinds of testing.'" Brinkman said. "That's still considered to be a prerogative of individual campuses and, on those campuses, a prerogative of individual units."
Brinkman said individuality was important because of the different goals of universities and of departments within universities.
"Some of the best academic units at the University have always known how well they're doing," he said. "They have different ways of measuring because they have different goals."
Judit Ramaley, executive vice chancellor, said she supported assessment but objected to any plan for assessment techniques for all universities.
"It's sort of finding a middle ground between the ideal and the pragmatic," she said.
Assessment is a constant soul-searching process for a university, said Deb Teeter, director of institutional research and planning.
Most faculty and administrators agree that universities should be accountable for providing a quality education, but they express concern about the costs of assessment and the type of assessment that might be developed.
"We can't all use exactly the same methods." she said.
"I think there is general agreement that we need to have a consistent, thorough assessment program," Brinkman said. "How far we go with that is limited by money and agreement from all persons involved about just what assessment goals should be and what way we ought to go about reaching them."
Some evaluation already used here
The assessment program at the University of Tennessee costs the university about $250,000 a year. But the university's state financing is performance-based; it must have an extensive program to show improvements in order to receive money.
Assessment is not cheap.
Cost concerns
By Brenda Finnell Kansan staff writer
Although the Board of Regents is planning to adopt new assessment guidelines, assessment itself is not new.
Standardized tests for students also are not cheap. The Academic Profile, a test sponsored by the College Board and Educational Test-
Kansan staff writer
"In every field, there are issues that become fad issues or buzz words," said Judith Ramaley, executive vice chancellor of the University of Kansas. "It is a topic that has become widely discussed over the past four or five years."
Schools and departments also evaluate student performance through a variety of measures such as teacher evaluations, alumni surveys and dropout/ retention studies.
Departments and schools at KU regularly undergo Regents-mandated program reviews and external review conducted by accreditation agencies. The graduate also conducts program reviews.
In addition, some professional school students, such as those in social welfare or education, are evaluated through licensing exams.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the fall began an
For assessment to be meaningful, it should happen in the department, where faculty are designing the objectives of the major and are seeing whether the objectives are being met.'
— Susan Twombly assistant professor
of educational policy and administration
assessment program designed to study the effects of the new core curriculum, which went into effect in the fall.
Susan Twombly, assistant professor of educational policy and administration, is heading the evaluation committee, which developed the four-year plan.
"All measures were designed to improve the quality of the liberal arts education," said Howard Baumgartel, associate dean of liberal arts and sciences. The evaluation is designed to measure that quality.
The college is planning to use the
To fully finance the plan would cost $147,000. Baumgartel said the college and the office of academic affairs had committed more than $30,000 for the first year of the program.
Academic Profile test in the fall. The Academic Profile measures general education knowledge. Twomby said it would be given to several humanities, social science and math classes with large percentage of juniors, who are the last graduating class under the old curriculum.
The tests would be given during the 1989-90 school year to juniors under the new curriculum. The results from students studying under two sets of requirements could then be compared, Twomby said.
But tests such as the Academic Profile should be only a small part of assessment, Twombly said.
*For assessment to be meaningful, it should happen in the department, where faculty are designing the objectives of the major and are
seeing whether the objectives are being met," she said. "If they do it in the department, they are going to have more of an investment."
The college evaluation effort includes plans to talk to department chairmen to consider the impact of the new requirements on departments and to determine what changes, if any, have been made.
for example, we want to see whether the English department is putting so much energy into early enrollment in math and English that it is taking resources away from the major." Twomby said.
Charles Himmelberg, chairman of the math department, said he would be interested in seeing how students had adjusted to the new curriculum and the effects of student attrition.
Del Brinkman, vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the liberal arts evaluation was important since the liberal arts program was a core university program.
Brinkman said, "What we're doing in the college program becomes an important assessment of how the university is handling some of the basic education of all students."
ing Service, costs about $8 a student for the short version and $15 a student for the long version, according to a report prepared by the Kansas Council of Chief Academic Officers.
Testing the freshman class of Regents universities each year would require more than $90,000. If progress were assessed by retesting, the yearly test cost would be $180,000.
Such testing would be only one component of assessment, but some wonder how universities could afford any additional expenses when faced with increasing enrollments and decreasing budgets.
"I frankly don't know what the payoff for additional assessment is," said Dave Shulenburger, associate dean of business.
tors. The University recognizes many of its problems but is too underbudgeted to solve them now, he said.
Shulenburger said that he did not blame the Legislature and the Regents for asking for accountability but that he thought money spent for assessment might better be used to provide additional courses or instruc-
tamaley said that when institutions faced tight budget circumstances, administrators and faculty faced difficult decisions about how much money to allocate to assessment.
"It's a balancing act that each university has had to tread through very carefully," she said.
Methods of assessment
Methods of assessment
Schools and departments at KU already practice assessment through such methods as teacher evaluations, alumni surveys and licensing exams. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is also beginning a four-year assessment of its new core curriculum.
test-driven curriculum could develop if that happened, she said.
Evelyn Swartz, chairman of the University Senate Executive Committee, said the Regents must keep those measures in mind and not narrow assessment to just testing. A
Carr Locke, dean of engineering,
said that he was in favor of assessment
but that he also was concerned
about the types of tests.
The School of Engineering bases most of its assessment on the success of its graduates who enter graduate school or the job market, Locke said. The school conducts graduation and placement surveys.
"If people like a product, they come back for more," said Locke, referring to the corporations that return to interview each year.
Some educators also said that in an effort to impress money-allocating legislators, universities might merely present test figures that really don't reflect a college education.
"My own opinion is that there are lots of abuses," said Susan Twombly, who heads the evaluation committee in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "A lot of people are rushing
and spending lots of money on standardized testing just to show legislatures some kind of numbers. That's misplaced logic, I think."
Brinkman said he would appoint a committee to advise his office about how KU should meet the proposed Regents recommendation. The committee members will try to avoid high costs and recognize that a college experience involves more than learning basic skills, he said. Maturity and personality development are also important.
"A broader view of education is what we want to protect in all this but what we also want to measure somehow. And that's difficult to measure. That's why assessment is such a tough thing to deal with." Brinkman said. "But we can't ignore it, because there are certainly those who are paying the bills who want to make sure that the experience we are providing is a good one and that the whole aspect of learning is occurring."
ALL STUDENTS Elections for Student Senate Are TODAY
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