Course Level Assessment Plans

Course level assessment helps faculty know what students have learned in their course. The goal is to then “close the loop,” using that knowledge to improve the course.

Like department and program level assessment, there are four steps to course level assessment—much of which faculty do all the time! Formal assessment just aims to make this process more explicit.

Step 1: Establish learning goals and objects

Step 2: Create learning opportunities for students

Step 3: Collect (and analyze) evidence of student learning

Step 4: Closing the Loop: Use the evidence to improve student learning

I. Plan the assessment

You might use a guide like this:

Learning objective guide

Remember to think about both direct and indirect measures of student learning!

II. Assess student learning

One option is to insert the criteria you used to assess the work into a table:

Assessment criteria table example

III. Reflect on the course

  1. What did you learn about what your students are learning?
  2. Were there any surprises for you? Pleasant ones? Disappointments?
  3. Do you envision making any changes to your teaching methods or the assignments?
  4. Are there suggestions you would make about possible curricular changes (not your course specifically, but perhaps the prerequisites leading to it)?