What advice about the use of measurement would you give to a department chair?

I was invited to participate in the Accelerating Systematic Change Network (ASCN) Workshop, held at the HHMI in the summer of 2016 and have since continued collaborating with Working Group 4, with the goal of shedding light on using data to drive change – identifying, explicating and disseminating sources of information. I have served as the Associate Provost at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, a minority serving, public, urban college, for the last 5 years, after having served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences for 6 years. Following are my responses to the guiding questions forwarded by the working group's leadership.

What advice about the use of measurement would you give to a department chair or undergraduate coordinator?

If the path to graduation is considered a journey, it is important to start asking questions and measuring outcomes in order to best support student success from the very beginning to even after graduation.

1. How effective is our orientation? Surveys to ascertain the following may be useful. How knowledgeable are our students of degree requirements, career options and opportunities for higher education in making a decision about their major? What are the goals of our students? Do our students feel welcome? Do they know where to go to learn about support services or extracurricular opportunities?

2. What are the entry characteristics of students in our courses/major who are successful or who are at risk in the first year? This information may include years of subjects like math or science studied in high school, performance on placement or other tests, etc. It is a good idea to drill down and look at various populations of students, particularly underrepresented groups. You want to see if your program is inviting and supportive, with suitable access and opportunity to succeed. Knowing this information helps to determine appropriate entry requirements into majors or design of student support services.

3. What are the characteristics of students at risk of attrition in the second year through graduation? This information may include grades in specific gateway courses, longitudinal GPA, semester GPA, credits earned per semester, a switch from full-time to part-time status, etc., in addition to standard measures such as one-year retention and 150% time to graduation rates. The challenge here is how to keep students engaged, committed and confident in their abilities, and help them overcome the inevitable hurdles.

4. Are degree requirements appropriate? How successful are our graduates in achieving their goals? How do employees and graduate schools think of their preparation?

5. Are faculty implementing effective (high impact) practices in the classroom? Faculty surveys or outcomes from peer review may provide valuable information on classroom practices and areas where professional development may be useful for student success. What are the grade distributions in individual sections and overall for all of our courses? What are we learning from assessment of student learning and how are we using it?

6. How effective are available support services? Are students attending tutoring or other forms of student support? What are the characteristics of participants who take advantage of support? (I.e. are only A and B students taking advantage of support?). Are students reporting that attendance at support services is effective?

7. Are we providing students with the appropriate extracurricular activities? Are our students involved in meaningful extracurricular activities such as professional organizations, internships, etc.? Do they report finding them of value?

8. Is there a mechanism for "consumer-related" student complaints, are complaints and their outcomes documented, and is this information reviewed and improvement plans developed and assessed? While institutions typically have structures in place related to Title IV compliance, grade appeals, complaints about faculty, etc., there are a myriad of other challenges students may face such as the availability of required courses at convenient times and course materials that are prohibitively expensive. Are there mechanisms in place to identify and mitigate these challenges?

Suggested Citation

Brown, P. (2017, June 9). What advice about the use of measurement would you give to a department chair? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://ascnhighered.org/ASCN/posts/what_advice.html