CALL Workshop, August 15-16 2006
Making Assessment Count
A CALL Workshop
August 15-16, 2006
Hosted by
Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges
Among the hallmarks of liberal arts institutions is the high value we place on student learning. Liberal arts faculty members care deeply about the impact of our courses, our curricula, and our campus cultures on our students. We want to know that what we do and how we do it makes a difference in student learning. To that end, we are all assessing our students’ learning all the time. One of the hopes of the CALL (Collaborative Assessment in Liberal Learning) project is that it will help us assess more richly and economically, both individually and institutionally.
The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) is one higher education assessment tool that offers us an opportunity to measure the development of several competencies we agree are key outcomes of a liberal arts education: thinking critically, reasoning analytically and writing effectively. Knowing more about how this particular assessment tool measures these key outcomes can help us ask intelligent questions about the effectiveness of our teaching practices, and may also suggest other assessment strategies we should be piloting on our campuses and in our courses.
Therefore, the goals for this workshop are to better understand: a) the strengths and limitations of the CLA; and b) how we can use what we learn from the CLA to formulate directions for our assessment project.
Agenda
DAY 1 – ST. OLAF COLLEGE
8:45 – 9:00 Welcome and introductions (Jo Beld)
- Black Ballroom, Buntrock Commons, 3rd Floor
9:00 – 10:00 The CLA – an introduction (Richard Hersh)
10:00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:15 Inside the CLA (CLA staff)
- Science Center, Room 182
11:15 – 12:00 Questions and Answers
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 2:45 How does the CLA define its core competences? How is student work scored?
(CLA staff)
- Black Ballroom
2:45 – 3:00 Break
3:00 – 4:00 Using assessment results to improve student learning; what can we learn from the CLA?
(Danny Kaplan)
- Black Ballroom
5:15 – 6:00 Reception, Carleton College Alumni Guest House Library (corner of 1st & College)
6:00 – 7:30 Dinner – Carleton College Alumni Guest House
DAY 2 – CARLETON COLLEGE
8:15 – 9:00 Breakfast – Alumni Guest House
9:00 – 10:15 Outcomes & Goals (Liz Ciner)
- Essential Goals
10:15 – 10:30 Break
10:30 – 12:00 Linking institutional assessment to faculty work (Jo Beld)
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 Next steps and wrap-up