Department/Program Assessment

The college assessment plan asks chairs or coordinators to coordinate regular assessments within their departments or programs. Each department and program should articulate its goals and objectives for student learning as the foundation for this work.

At the beginning of the academic year, each department and program should have a conversation about goals and assessment, informed by the previous year's final summary report. During this meeting the department or program should clarify the focus of its assessment and how it will carry out its plan for the year.  Each department and program should review the feedback from the Provost's Office about the previous year's report, and incorporate the suggestions into its work for the current year.

Guidelines for end-of-year meetings

The assessment plan for the academic program calls for each academic department to hold an annual meeting at the end of the spring semester. These meetings provide an opportunity for departments to:

  • Review and revise curricular goals for the program of the department and individual courses
  • Consider the progress of students towards meeting these goals and the effectiveness of the department's program
  • Review assessment activities concluded over the past year and reflect on what has been learned
  • Plan for assessment activities to be conducted in the following academic year.

Ideally, these discussions should take place after Honors orals and comprehensive exercises are completed so that data from these experiences can enlighten the department's consideration of student learning and performance. Ultimately, the department can determine what materials to use as input for its reflections. To make the meeting most useful the department should have articulated learning goals for its majors, minors and individual courses prior to the meeting.

In a given year, departments may choose to consider student performance in their program in general, or to focus on individual components of the program, such as introductory courses or Honors seminars. A component of the discussion should derive from the results of recently administered course evaluations, the results of which will be summarized, in general terms only, by the Chair.

Please see the guidelines for Academic Department and Program Retreats.

End-of-year Assessment report

Following the end-of-year meeting the Academic Assessment Liaison prepares a report reflecting the work and discussion of the departmental/program.

Part 1: DUE June 15. 

  1. Are your goal statements accurately reflected at: https://www.swarthmore.edu/assessment/goals-student-learning?      Yes / No; If no, please attach a current version.
  2. Which of the goals or objectives referenced above have you assessed this year?
  3. What evidence did you look at to assess the goal(s) and how did you evaluate it?   Be sure to describe at least one example of direct assessment.   

Part 2: DUE First Friday in October  

  1. What did you find? (Please do not include materials or records that would reveal the identity of individual students.)
  2. What changes will you make (e.g., to teaching, curriculum, student support) as a result of this work?
  3. What plans have you made for assessment during the coming academic year? What goal(s) will you focus on and what are your tentative plans for collecting and evaluating student work to reflect on those goals?

Here is the report template: End of Year Assessment Report