Assessment at Texas A&M

From AAC&U News. A couple of quotes:

A big part of our work on assessment is simply demystifying the process, giving examples of what assessment looks like and how it works. Humor really helps, with frequent reminders that assessment is for them—for the faculty.

One of the university’s main beliefs is that assessment should be useful to the faculty. By emphasizing this utility, Matthews has been able to get faculty members from many fields on board with assessment. “If you do program-level assessment well, it will give you an awful lot of data about your program,” she says.

Another core belief about assessment at Texas A&M is that the results should be easily transferable to curricular improvement efforts. While there are two main reasons that institutions assess programs—accountability and improvement—focusing on the improvement function encourages greater faculty involvement.

And now, for the rest of the story...