An effective system of assessing student learning includes measures at the senior level, near graduation, providing information about what students are able to achieve at the end of the program. For many undergraduate programs, senior-level direct measures connect with a culminating course where students demonstrate skills and knowledge in their chosen academic field. For the […]
The Office of Assessment of Teaching and Learning (ATL) is pleased to offer an assignment design workshop this May, “Clearer Assignments Promote Better Student Work,” designed to assist instructors in designing and refining assignments to more effectively foster and assess student learning, while increasing possibilities for student success. A well-designed and transparent assignment can promote student […]
Focus groups provide a way to get feedback about student experiences, perceptions, and motivations, and can provide insight into the ways a curriculum can be most effectively designed to support student learning. In Spring 2017, ATL worked with Dr. Desmond Layne, Director of Agricultural and Food Systems (AFS), to pilot a new focus group activity […]
On March 28, Academic Outreach and Innovation (AOI) and the Office of Assessment of Teaching and Learning (ATL) hosted a faculty development workshop, “Capstone Courses: Developing and Refining the Culminating Experience for Seniors”. A WSU faculty panel of participants in last summer’s Capstone Assignment Design Charrette with Dr. Pat Hutchings shared their experiences developing and refining […]
The Office of Assessment of Teaching and Learning (ATL) is pleased to offer two assignment design workshops this May, designed to assist instructors in designing and refining assignments to more effectively foster and assess student learning, while increasing possibilities for student success. Developing powerful, clear assignments is one of the most consequential intellectual tasks that […]
The Office of Assessment of Teaching and Learning (ATL) is pleased to offer collaborative assignment design charrettes and mini-workshops to WSU faculty and departments, adapted to meet goals, needs, and individual or group contexts. Developing powerful, clear assignments is one of the most consequential intellectual tasks that faculty undertake in their work as educators. Assignments […]
How are students doing on WSU’s Undergraduate Learning Goals? Are UCORE Capstone (CAPS) courses providing students an opportunity to integrate and apply what they have learned throughout the curriculum, bringing closure to their undergraduate experience? To answer these and other questions, UCORE CAPS Instructors completed UCORE CAPS Course Assessment Reports to gauge student learning at […]
WSU faculty had a unique opportunity over the summer to enhance high-impact culminating senior experiences for students. On May 25-26, WSU hosted a two-day workshop with Dr. Patricia Hutchings, senior scholar with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), and previously senior scholar and vice president at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of […]
Each spring, WSU’s Landscape Architecture seniors get the chance to experience a landscape outside of the classroom and to interact with the people who live in, work in, and care about that landscape. Their senior capstone course is a service-learning studio that challenges them to generate designs in response to the needs of a particular […]
Should more producers utilize bovine growth hormone to meet the 100% expected increase in global food needs by 2064? This is the sort of question tackled by students in Agricultural and Food Systems (AFS). In the AFS senior capstone course, students are provided with the opportunity to apply scientific inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving […]