Making Assessment Data Useful

Assessment data is exploding for most colleges.  Institutional research departments gather mountains of data.  That data is aggregated and reported in various ways.  Faculty are given neat spreadsheets and voluminous packets of information with numbers—both for their own programs and often benchmark data.  

So now what? 

Ostensibly assessment data should help faculty improve student learning outcomes.  But it only does that when faculty are given the opportunity to review, make sense of, and plan ways to use the data.  Gathering data is important—but if the data is not used, learning may not improve.

Consider reading the brand new WIDS Resource Library article: Assessment - Making Meaning out of Numbers to learn more about the outcome assessment planning and analysis feature in the WIDS Software.