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Administration
continues assessment
By Jason Bowen
Over the summer Dr.
Ralph Fagin, Dr. Cal Easterling, Dr. David Connor and Leigh Anne
Locke went to Kansas City and attended an assessment conference
with the North Central Association. There they were asked to design
a comprehensive plan to improve the institution of Oral Roberts
University.
This led to the creation of the ORU Assessment Implementation plan
for 2002-2007.
As part of the plan, every department has been asked to re-evaluate
or formulate a mission statement since not every department had
a mission statement. Another aspect of the plan is developing the
vision of the University and its departments concerning student
learning outcomes.
"ORU assessment has been going on since the founding of this school
in the late 60s, but we really didn't have assessment of the entire
University until recently," said Easterling, Director of Institutional
Research.
"We were a great school when founded, we are a great school today
and we want to be a great school five years from now. But we won't
be better unless we are intentional about progress."
ORU has been doing things to assess itself for years. For ORU, assessment
has three functions. "First, assessment asks how we are doing. Second,
it asks how we can get better; and third, it provides evidence of
our improvement," Easterling said.
The evidence used in the assessments is both external and internal.
External evidence includes how ORU students fare after graduation
and internal includes evidence such as the CAP test provided by
the company who does the ACT. The CAP test compares sophomores at
universities nationwide.
In the last CAP test ORU ranked in the national average, but according
to Easterling there is always room for improvement.
In the last Regents meeting, President Roberts told the Board of
Regents he wants to transition from an atmosphere of teaching to
learning. The example he gave was that even though a teacher might
be very charismatic and gifted, what really counts is how much the
students learn.
In the mid 90s Dr. George Thyvelikakath and Dr. George Gillen visited
Alverno College, a school known for its assessment programs. One
result of this was the printing of the course outcomes-the goals
that the course strives to achieve-on the back of every syllabus.
This past October ORU started publishing its assessment newsletter.
This highlights the new assessment catalog-produced as a result
of the assessment conference in Kansas City this summer-and helps
to answer the questions, "How are we doing?" and "What can we do
to improve?"
Students in the future can look forward to participating in the
CAP test and other forms of ORU assessment. With the increased focus
on improvement at ORU, the University can only get better.
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