GETTING TO THE HEART OF ASSESSMENT: THE LIBERAL STUDIES/PROFESSIONAL SKILLS PROGRAM AT INVER HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Abstract

The Liberal Studies/Professional Skills (LS/PS) program began with the intent to develop an assessment process that would provide immediate benefits to students and faculty. For students, we wanted to be able to provide them with information about the skills they master while they complete their course work. Underlying this intent was the belief that students need something more than a list of courses completed and grades earned (their transcripts) - that they needed to be able to verify their competencies. For faculty, the intent was to support and challenge faculty to design assignments, projects, and tests that would teach and assess students' "critical thinking and doing" skills. The beliefs, here, were that positive change in pedagogy comes through a sustained faculty development program that focuses on learning outcomes and that assessment can be a meaningful process that enhances students' learning when the focus is on the design of assignments that lead to measurable learning outcomes. Out of these intents and beliefs came the multi-faceted Liberal Studies/Professional Skills program. These components are: a Skills Profile that reports each student's proficiency in the "critical thinking and doing "skills" a template of Essential Skills; rubrics that establish the performance standards; an electronic database to record student performance; an LS/PS web site that houses the skills templates, the rubrics, electronic database, and program information; faculty collaboration through a sustained faculty development program. The tangible benefit for students is the Skills Profile, a companion to a student's transcript that provides verification and documentation of those skills that a student has mastered, the standards that the student met, and the product or activity that demonstrated that mastery. The Essential Skills are ten broad skills areas that have been identified as the skills which - combined with the knowledge that comes with a college education - will provide students with the basis for lifelong learning, citizenship, and employability in contemporary society and business. Because our theme in explaining the LS/PS program to students is Distinguish Yourself, we do not intend all students will master all of these skills - nor do we expect faculty to teach and assess all of these skills. Instead, faculty begin work in the LS/PS program by determining which skills from this basic list they already include in their courses, and work later to refine or expand their teaching and assessing of these skills through collaboration with other faculty on assignment design and evaluation standards. The Skills Profile provides students with a record of the particular strengths they developed. Faculty worked together to create rubrics - specific standards of assessing the learning outcomes in the five subcategories and developmental levels of each of the Essential Skills. Each of the rubrics has four levels of performance criteria - defining the acceptable and unacceptable levels of performance. The most important part of LS/PS is a sustained faculty development program focused on assignment design.