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Tackling campus-based assessment collaboratively.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

The assessment of multi-disciplinary skills requires a campus-wide effort to succeed. In response to the State University of New York's announcement that information management skills be assessed system-wide, SUNY at Fredonia created an information literacy assessment tool, which included both pre-test and post-test components. In this article, the collaborative process used to implement the assessment tool and the resulting data are explored. The positives and negatives associated with campus-based assessment are emphasized.

Introduction

The twenty-first century brought with it a renewed interest in the assessment of general education programs at colleges and universities. The K-12 standards movement has propelled this recent trend and, consequently, both regional and state accrediting bodies are formalizing accountability systems in higher education (Wellman 47). One such example of this movement can been seen in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, which saw the implementation of new general education assessment standards arise from both their regional accreditation body, Middle States, and from the SUNY Provosts office.

Both systems of assessment have many similarities. One is the autonomy that is given to campuses. Neither plan dictates how the outcomes are obtained; rather, assessment is handled at the campus level. "In other words, it is the role of the [institution] ... to evolve its own solutions to issues of implementation by drawing on the creative energies of its faculty, staff, and other constituents" (Ratteray 369). Additionally, both revised plans added a new component to their assessment agendas: information literacy. General education programs are "designed to cultivate knowledge, skills and attitudes that all of us use and live by during most of our lives" (Stone 199). It is not surprising; therefore, that information literacy has been added to general education assessment plans. Fueled by the development of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education in 2000, colleges and universities are developing assessment measures that will monitor the ability of today's students to use information effectively to solve problems in a technology rich society--(Brasely 6).

Assessing information literacy is more challenging then assessing disciplines such as mathematics, because it is a skill that is multi-disciplinary by nature. Some institutions have formally implemented information literacy into their curriculum through credit-bearing courses, making it easy to draw on tests and assignments to measure student outcomes. But what happens when an institution has to measure a skill that appears everywhere throughout the curriculum, but is measured formally nowhere? This was the challenge encountered by SUNY Fredonia when laced with the assessment of information literacy for the aforementioned assessment mandated by the SUNY Provost's office. Developing, implementing and surviving the logistics of assessment is difficult. It was only through campus collaboration that successful outcomes were achieved for information...

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