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Assessment is the systematic and methodologically sound collection, review, and use of information about services, like administrative units, educational programs and student support, undertaken to improve success, specifically in student learning. Assessment involves:

• Making our expectations explicit and public;
• Setting appropriate criteria and standard;
• Systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards;
• Using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance.

The Assessment Glossary provides descriptions of many concepts and terms you may encounter while working on your assessment.

Institutional Effectiveness Staff. If you have questions about the technical and compliance aspects of the assessment process, please reach out to us at assessment@usf.edu. We can help clarify policies and procedures, assessment requirements, due dates, and other organizational aspects of the assessment process at USF. Additionally, are available every Friday from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM. You may drop in during these hours and a representative from our office will be able to assist you.

Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. If you need additional support with designing your assessment process, please feel free to reach out to the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) at USF. CITL is available for individual and group consultations to support your learning, teaching, and assessment goals. This includes providing workshops, research, or literature on a particular academic initiative or area of interest. CITL is available to facilitate conversations and discussions centered on learning, teaching, and assessment and can provide programming and training support as needed.

The primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning and student success. USF鈥榮 primary goal is to promote the lifelong success of well-educated, highly-skilled, and adaptable alumnae/alumni who lead enriched lives, are engaged citizens, and thrive in a dynamic global market. The academic assessment process helps programs identify what students should be able to do by the end of an educational program and determine the degree to which they meet these goals; furthermore, the assessment process asks programs to consider how to use the systematically gathered information on student performance to improve the teaching and learning process.

Additionally, assessment is mandated by our accrediting body, .

• mandates all member institutions to assess their academic programs (undergraduate, graduate, certificates), general education, and student support services.

ODS-IE collects documentation of the assessment process annually in the form of an Assessment Plan and an Assessment Report. In order to establish academic programs, program faculty must create an initial set of Program-level Student Learning Outcomes (PLOs), describing what they hope students will know and be able to do at the conclusion of the program. The faculty must design a method to assess each of these outcomes, and set target levels of performance. Every year, programs submit an Assessment Report, which includes the following sections: Assessment Results and Use of Assessment Results, for each of the outcomes, reflecting performance in the previous year and specific action items to improve future learning. Then, programs submit an Assessment Plan, reiterating or updating the PLOs, Methods of Assessment, and Performance Targets for the upcoming year. Details of the sections of each of these documents can be found in the Academic Assessment Handbook. 

Three-Year Cycle. Most academic programs, except those with certain specialized accreditation requirements, at the OB体育官网 are on a three-year assessment cycle. This means that stated PLOs are assessed over the three-year period. Please note that plans and reports are still required each year; however, the focus of the plans and reports will shift from year to year. After year three, programs may revise their PLOs and repeat the process beginning with a new year one.

• Year One
  • Establish or reaffirm PLOs based on the goals of the program.
  • Develop or update a curriculum map showing the courses in which learning outcomes are introduced, reinforced, mastered, and assessed.
  • Identify methods that will be used to assess PLOs and a plan for assessing them.
  • Collect, analyze, and use the collected assessment data to pilot test the feasibility of the assessment measures and processes described in the plan, and (if needed) revise the assessment plan.
    
    
• Year Two
  • Collect additional data (or improved data if measures were changed based on the pilot test results from Year One).
  • Analyze the data, and produce a report that summarizes the assessment findings.
  • The assessment report must include an action plan for using the assessment results to improve curriculum or instruction.
    
    
• Year Three
  • Implement the action plan to improve the curriculum or instruction that was developed during year two.
  • Assess the impact of the curricular or pedagogical changes that were made.
  • Begin developing the assessment plan for the next three-year cycle.

Academic program assessments are submitted throughout the year based on the College; deadlines can be found on the Assessment Due Dates webpage. 

Assessment Plans and Reports are submitted through . The following provide step-by-step screenshots and videos of submitting materials in this system.

The most important component of the assessment process is for the process to be utilized by faculty and staff to engage in action items to improve student learning and experiences. If this process is clearly integrated into faculty decision-making about program pedagogy and curricula, the process is successful.

To help ensure that Assessment Plans and Reports demonstrate how the process is successful and follow all of the requirements and expectations imposed by SACSCOC, ODS-IE created USF鈥檚 , found in the Academic Assessment Handbook starting on Page 10.  Once submitted, academic program assessments are evaluated by ODS-IE based on the Academic Assessment Standards on the Assessment Review Rubric (found in , Page 19). Consulting the rubric in advance can provide insight into how to compose a compliant Assessment Plan and/or Report. Feedback follows the process detailed in the figure: