Resources
The Center for Teaching & Assessment of Learning is pleased to support all educators at the University of Delaware. We offer a variety of services and resources to help you refine your courses and syllabi for intentional planning of your students’ learning experiences as well as to satisfy your department’s learning goals.
Designing Your Course
Engaging Your Students
Assessing Student Learning
Getting Teaching Feedback
Mentoring & Collaboration
* These resources link to external websites that we feel provide excellent information on the given topic. To best serve your needs, we encourage you to speak with a CTAL staff member.
For Department and Programs
The University of Delaware is committed to implementing and institutionalizing a University-wide student learning outcomes assessment program. The student outcomes assessment program has one central goal: to create a University of Delaware culture of continuous academic improvement that is focused upon student learning. Through the campus-wide student learning outcomes assessment program, academic units define clear, concise and measurable student learning outcomes, identify opportunities within and outside of the classroom and the curriculum for students to achieve those outcomes, apply measures to assess whether the desired outcomes are being achieved, and use the results of the assessment for decision-making that improves instruction, strengthens the curriculum, and forms the basis for policy development and resource allocations. To be successful, the program requires full faculty and department/school engagement in the design and practice of student learning outcomes assessment.
The focus is on assessing academic programs (undergraduate majors and minors, graduate and professional programs at the master’s and doctoral levels); course-level assessment will be necessary as a component of program assessment. The fundamental questions to be addressed by programs are:
- Learning Outcomes/Goals: What do we want students to learn?
- Metrics/Data/Evidence: How do we know what they are learning?
- Closing the Loop: How can we modify our programs so students better learn what we want
them to learn?
A significant number of programs already have active academic assessment programs in
place because of external accreditation demands. These programs need not “reinvent the wheel” but should continue to ensure that their undergraduate majors are acquiring the GenEd objectives and share their results with the Center for Teaching & Assessment of Learning.
We must also address that the standards of general accreditation through our regional accreditor. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education mandates formal assessment within all programs. It is a good idea for our own improvement, we are already doing it a various levels, and it is required by outside bodies.