Assessment Process

This page contains detailed information about current assessment practices at Mount Aloysius College.

The overall process of assessment at the College involves setting appropriate student-learning and institutional-effectiveness goals, implementing methods to achieve them, measuring relevant outcomes, and using the resulting information to inform change.  The current Institutional Assessment Plan was updated in 2009 and is meant to guide the development of existing assessment activities at the College.  The updated Plan outlines principles of good assessment, documents the relationships between the existing sets of goals at various levels, assigns parties responsible for both completing and reviewing assessment activities at all levels, and delineates reporting procedures that will allow for efficient flow and use of information by relevant stakeholders.

Although results of assessment activities are immediately used to improve student learning and institutional effectiveness, reporting of these activities is done on both annual and six-year cycles. 

Annual Reporting  

Assessment activities at the academic- and administrative-unit level are planned and reported annually using a simplified template that requires the identification of goals being assessed (with links to higher level goals), methods to assess them (including responsible parties and timelines), results obtained, and use of the information. 

By the end of May prior to each assessment period, administrative unit heads responsible for assessment activities related to institutional effectiveness as well as individuals responsible for academic program assessment submit assessment plans for the upcoming academic year for their reporting units by completing the Planning section of the Annual Assessment Planning and Results Report Summary Template.  By the end of the following May, these individuals report the results of their assessment activities by completing the Results section of the Annual Assessment Planning and Results Report Summary Template.  These reports are submitted as part of the Departmental Annual Report for academic programs and will be reviewed by appropriate parties using specific criteria (see the Annual Assessment Plan Review document and the Annual Assessment Results Report Review document).

May 2010 reporting will consist of three files: 1) one containing the completed Departmental Annual Report form, 2) one containing the completed Planning and Results sections of the Template for the 2009-2010 academic year, and 3) one containing the completed Planning section of the Template for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Six-year Reporting 

Administrative unit heads who are responsible for assessing administrative unit goals as well as individuals responsible for academic program assessment are responsible for submitting a formal summary and planning report of their activities by the end of May once every six years.  The purpose of these more formal reports is to summarize the assessment activities that occurred over the previous six years, evaluate the effectiveness of the changes made in response to the assessment results, and plan for activities to occur in the next six-year cycle (see this link for additional recommendations regarding the six-year reports).  Feedback on these reports for academic programs is provided as part of their program review. 

Report Schedule  

See the following table for the report schedule for on-site academic programs.

For additional information, please contact Mr. Bryan Pearson (bpearson@mtaloy.edu; 814-886-6424), Co-Chair of the Assessment Committee and Institutional Researcher.

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