Abstract:

Drexel University is a private, non-secular university located in Philadelphia, PA which is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. The university educates more than 25,000 students, awarding Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees from both online and traditional classroom programs. The faculty of each school and college exercise control of the curriculum which led to doubling of enrollment over the last two decades at the University. With growth comes the responsibility of ensuring that the overall educational experience of the students is of high quality. Through the Office of the Provost, a culture of assessment has been created to ensure that the collection of reliable data which informs better planning of programs and measurable improvement in the Drexel student experience.

This paper/presentation will highlight the efforts of three distinct schools and colleges within Drexel to develop a sustainable and scalable comprehensive process to establish evidence based assessment practices. The process establishes rigorous and measurable cycles of learning through alignment of institutional, program and course level objectives to student learning outcomes. In addition, the paper/presentation will illustrate the application of direct and indirect assessment towards developing interventions leading to quality student learning outcomes.

These three distinct schools have been drawn together to collaborate by their common work applying Quality Matters (QM) course design standards. With several QM standards tied to the alignment of course level objectives, module level objectives and learning activities to assessments, the natural progression is to map to program and university level outcomes. This process creates a complex matrix of learning that can be used to examine student learning outcomes, identify gaps and potential interventions via a micro (assignment) or macro level (university as well as a variety of points in the program which can be used to provide data informed decisions.)

Keywords:

Assessment, learning outcomes, program alignment.