Questions? Need assistance?
Tim Bono
Assistant Dean/Lecturer in Psychology, Campus Life and the College of Arts & Sciences
Campus Box 1068
314-935-3531
tjbono@wustl.edu
Getting Started
Assessment is mechanism that allows us to measure the impact of our work and tell our story in a way that is systematic and compelling. Use the following steps as a guide in creating your assessment.
Step One: Identify Learning Outcomes
Ask yourself: what are the most important things a student should know, be able to do or demonstrate after completing your program?
Make outcomes as specific, focused and clear as possible.Importantly, they should be measurable.
Review this document for more information on Learning Outcomes.
Step Two: Ask the Right Questions
To determine which questions to include, ask yourself:
- What decisions need to be made?
- What information do we need to inform these changes?
In your assessment, start with questions that are easy to answer, straightforward, and uncomplicated, such as year in school, academic major, or other factual information.Place sensitive information later in the assessment.
To learn more how to write good survey questions, sign up for the "Assessment 101" Workshop.
Step Three: Create Your Assessment Instrument
Online surveys are a fast and inexpensive way to collect a lot of data.Washington University subscribes to Campus Labs, an online survey provider that streamlines survey creation, administration, and data analysis. Campus Labs automatically analyzes quantitative data and presents it in graphs that are easy to download or copy into presentations. This service is available to anyone collecting data relevant to undergraduate students at Washington University. Surveys can be created in Microsoft Word and uploaded to Campus Labs.
To learn more about the utility of Campus Labs, sign up for the "Intro to Campus Labs" Workshop.
Step Four: Identify your participants and administer your assessment
Usually, you can get the information you are looking for by asking a small subset of the population instead of everyone.The Assessment Committee now maintains a database that keeps track of which students are sent which surveys to minimize the frequency with which any individual student is sent a survey request.
To ensure that your assessment is not "competing" with others, upload your assessment to the Assessment Calendar and see what else is going out—and to whom—at that time.
Step Five: Analyze your data and report your findings.
The final step in the assessment process is reviewing your data and taking what you have learned. If you would like guidance on what to do with your findings or practice talking about them, feel free to stop by a CAUSE meeting to get feedback from committee members. We meet every other Friday from 10:30-noon.
