NDSU Geosciences Assessment of Student Learning

Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat, Department of Geosciences, North Dakota State University

The University's Office of Assessment requests annual reporting of assessment of student learning. NDSU provides an assessment web site that includes information and forms to be submitted with annual reports. These include guidelines for reporting assessment activities, a tool for self-reporting levels of implementation of the department's assessment plan, a list of direct, indirect, and non-measures of student learning, and a rubric for how the assessment report will be evaluated. These extensive resources have provided the department with ideas for developing a plan. What is still needed is an efficient implementation that results in information that benefits the needs of the Office of Assessment and the Department.

The Department's assessment protocol is currently under development and in draft form. It has been based on one developed by the Department of Plant and Earth Science, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, with permission.

The major sections of the current assessment protocol includes definitions of the program learning outcomes, and a curriculum map showing in which courses the identified learning outcomes are introduced, emphasized, and reinforced. For each learning outcome, other activities which promote that outcome are listed, as are methods to determine whether the outcome has been achieved, and a timetable.