Office of Institutional Assessment and Evaluation
Mission
The scope of assessment activities includes supporting regional and specialized program accreditation requirements, program assessment of all graduate and undergraduate programs, assessment of NUpath core curriculum, experiential learning including co-op, and co-curricular opportunities. In order to align with the Northeastern 2025 Academic plan, as more flexible credentials and customized learning opportunities are created, assessment processes will be created to support new modalities and pathways to student learning.
Community of Practice
The Office leverages collaborative partnerships to facilitate supportive training and technology and to utilize assessment activities for continuous improvement of students’ educational experience. Collaborative partners include Information Technology Services, Academic Technology Support, The Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research, the academic units, University Decision Support, co-curricular services and other segments as appropriate. An Assessment Leadership Team represents university stakeholders and meets biweekly.
Program Assessment
Program Assessment is the ongoing process of evaluating the direct evidence of student achievement of the program learning outcomes.
- Direct Evidence is based on evaluating student work produced for key courses in the program
- Program learning outcomes define what students should learn, know or be able to do upon completion of the program. Program learning outcomes set the intention of the curriculum, and assessment measures if those intentions were met.
- Program learning outcomes can be mapped to relevant course learning outcomes and to discipline specific accreditor outcomes or standards.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the assessment of student learning outcomes is the ongoing, iterative improvement of curriculum, teaching and learning. A robust continuous improvement process provides evidence and documentation of student learning for institutional and discipline specific accreditation reporting, and meets other needs for external accountability
Scope
All degree programs conduct program assessment. Degree programs offered at regional campuses are coordinated academically from the Boston campus, including the assessment of program learning outcomes. Assessment data can be disaggregated by regional campus, course modality and student characteristics (such as race/ethnicity and gender) to understand patterns of performance across subgroups. Program and college action plans leverage the disaggregated data to improve the experience and achievement of all students.
Faculty Role
As the stewards of their programs, faculty define program learning outcomes and are instrumental in continuous program improvement using data on the assessment of program outcomes. Program assessment extends faculty reflection on teaching and learning into a systematic and shared process and community of practice.
Dashboard of Program Learning Outcomes
Institutional Assessment Sharepoint Site ( NU credentials required)
NUpath Core Curriculum Assessment
The NUpath assessment strategy focuses on assignment alignment rather than scoring student work. This strategy is designed to answer the question, “Do the courses tagged with the attribute have assignments that can be used to measure student performance on the learning goals of the attribute?” This first step will generate meaning assessment results that can be used for curriculum and course improvements to ensure that all students have an opportunity to meet the learning goals. In a series of workshops and faculty surveys, instructors of relevant courses are asked to identify summative assignments and determine which NUpath learning goals are addressed by the assignments. The results of this assignment alignment exercise are aggregated across the university for the relevant learning goals. The annual results are shared with the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee to develop recommendations on the improvement of the NUpath general education curriculum.