Assessment Resources
Assessment Handbook
The Graduate College, along with the Student Learning Assessment Committee, has developed a handbook detailing NSU's assessment system. It provides faculty and staff a guide to writing student learning outcomes, aligning assessment measures to their student learning outcomes and provides context to what happens once the reports are written.
Watermark Assessment Solutions
What is Student Learning & Licensure (SLL)?
SLL collects program and course-based assessment data, tracks student performance against specific standards, and gathers student artifacts.
Student Learning & Licensure provides tools that allow:
- Administrators and faculty to develop assignments aligned to standards and outcomes.
- Students submit their work (student artifacts) for assessment and evaluation.
- Faculty to score rubrics and provide feedback.
- Faculty to report out on individual course data.
- Administrators to report on aggregate data over time.
- Administrators and faculty to track field placement data
What is Planning & Self-Study (PSS)?
PSS is a repository reporting tool that will organize, collect, and seamlessly gather data across multiple fields.
Use Planning & Self-Study for:
- Strategic planning and program review
- Curriculum mapping and annual assessment planning and reporting
- Preparing and sharing your accreditation self-study report
Location for:
- Mission Statement
- Outcomes
- Curriculum Maps (only available for Program-type Organizations)
- Cyclical Assessment Plans (Measures, Findings, Actions, etc.)
- Program Reviews/Self Studies for Accreditation
- Alignment to Strategic Plan Goals
Utilizes
- Pre-built Narrative Templates
- Faculty credential reports tailored to institutional accreditor specifications
- Collaborative Workspaces
- Workflows for gathering evidence, authoring, and reviewing your report
- Central Evidence Library
- Integrates with your assessment reports and automatically cascades evidence version updates across links in your report
- Immediate Dynamic Sharing
- You can share your self-study report both on and offline
Faculty User Guide: Student Learning & Licensure
Instructional Video: Linking activities in Student Learning & Licensure
Faculty User Guide: Planning & Self-Study
Instructional Video: Assessment Reports in Planning & Self-Study
Assessment Crash Course: Goals vs Outcomes
Student Learning Goals are what the program hopes to achieve.
Examples of Student Learning Goals:
- Provide a series of professional development modules to support assessment strategy development.
- Ensure institutional effectiveness through continuous improvement.
Goal Example: Prepare students for graduate level studies in Criminal Justice.
Student Learning Outcomes are concise, measurable, and written in quantifiable terms and are what the programs use to measure student learning within an assessment term.
Examples of Student Learning Outcomes - concise, specific, measurable and written in quantifiable terms (there may be multiple outcomes supporting a singular goal)
- Measurable verb or observable verb
- Focus on single SLO- 1 verb
- Stated in terms of student’s terminal performance or outcome as a learning product
Outcome Example: Construct an educational philosophy statement about teaching and practice.