Examples

Western Washington University Department of English

• At Western Washington University, the Department of English initialized an exit interview which is completed by all graduating students. The intent is to find out what students thought they were learning and what they were not.
• Their department discovered one major criticism: the creative writing emphasis. Over two years, the department located resources to add five new sections of creative writing workshops.
• Additionally, the department made a curricular change that went into effect in the Fall of 2008 by making a creative writing course repeatable with different instructors to a maximum of 10 credits.
• Retrieved from the Western Washington University Department of English assessment website.

University of Colorado Department of Chemistry

• As a results of student learning assessment at the University of Colorado, the Chemistry department realized that they must do a better job of emphasizing the sequencing of the course curriculum to students
• They also realized they must do a better job at emphasizing and applying course prerequisites.
• Course prerequisites was determined to be a crucial point of emphasis with department advising, and that faculty need to check that students are qualified to enroll in classes.
• Read more from their Chemistry Assessment Plan.

The Catholic University of America Department of Sociology

• The Catholic University of America Department of Sociology realized the need to re-organize the curriculum to capitalize on existing department expertise and resources while providing more current learning experience to their students.
• The re-organization consisted of specifying fields of interests with the sociology major while maintaining the same number of credits required for graduation.
• Several courses were dropped from the curriculum and few new ones were instituted. The department saw an increase in declared majors in Sociology and positive feedback from graduating seniors.
• Read more about their Assessment Findings and Curricular Improvements.

California State University, Sacramento Department of Economics

• Based on assessment results, the California State University, Sacramento Department of Economics introduced a peer-to-peer mentoring program on an experimental basis to assess whether programs increase student learning and satisfaction and lead to higher retention and graduation rates.