Asking the Tougher Questions: Two Institutions' Efforts to Link Teaching, Learning, and Assessment

This session presents two novel efforts, formation of a unique partnership at Portland State and organization of a university-wide Assessment Symposium at California Lutheran, that were initiated to strengthen links between teaching, learning, and assessment.

California Lutheran University's Assessment Symposium is a learning experience designed to increase the University community's understanding and commitment to assessment. An important feature of the Symposium planning process incorporates University-wide involvement and collaboration by combining faculty, administrative, and staff presentations that illustrate the University's assessment system in action. Responses from participants and attendees indicate the Assessment Symposium's goal was accomplished. Three annual symposia have taken place and faculty, staff, and administrators continue to share assessment evidence and to describe ways in which it is used to improve student learning and quality of service.

The Office of Institutional Research and Planning (OIRP) at Portland State University works in partnership with programs and individual faculty across the campus to generate, analyze, and interpret data on student learning and success. In 2007, OIRP partnered with University Studies (UNST) to hire and jointly supervise an assessment associate, providing the "missing link" connecting the measurement of student learning in UNST with student record and survey data collected by OIRP.

In an effort to build on Hutchings and Schulman's notion of a "reconceived institutional research...that asks much tougher, more central questions," UNST and OIRP partnered with the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) to work directly with faculty in posing the tougher questions that may be answered by connecting unit-level assessment with institutional assessment. Successes and challenges of these collaborations will be discussed.