Co-Curricular & Other

Students who utilize PAC's services learn their roles and responsibilities in the advising relationship; create a comprehensive plan that accounts for their academic and career endeavors; understand the steps along the pathway to professional school; learn about the available resources for applications, academic advising, campus engagement, and career development; perform a self-assessment that helps them identify their goals and determine their fit to an intended field of student. Utilization of PAC resources has continued to rise each year. Students have been very satisfied by the advising performance of PAC's undergraduate peer advisors.

Pre-Health / Pre-Law Advising Center

Students who utilize PAC’s services learn their roles and responsibilities in the advising relationship; create a comprehensive plan …

Elevating Weekly Formative Assessment: Building Relationships with Students Through the Art of Active Constructive Responding

The Hawaii Positive Engagement Project (H-PEP): SPARK Aloha, funded by the USDOE Native Hawaiian Education Program, is dedicated …

Remodel, Rebuild, Redesign: Rewriting our story for Co-curricular Assessment

This poster describes the processes of engaging stakeholders (Student Affairs, Campus Life, Career Services, and Advising), students and …

Graduate Assessment at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution

This project focuses on improving graduate program assessment at a primarily undergraduate-serving liberal arts college. The university has …

The Road to Institutional Effectiveness: Cultivating Partnerships for General Education Assessment

Chaminade University of Honolulu has restructured General Education in recent years. Various faculty committees have been spearheading a …

Strength in Numbers: Facilitating Faculty Learning Communities for General Education Student Learning Outcomes Assessment

Reaching consensus on curricular issues and learning outcomes is challenging, especially in attempting to achieve campus-wide agreement on …

Integrated Planning for Student Success: Kapi‘olani Community College’s Continuous Improvement Journey

In early 2019, ACCJC reaffirmed Kapi‘olani Community College’s accreditation status, but mandated a follow-up report and provided an …

Incorporating Learning Outcome Assessments into Noncredit Education: A Novel Approach

Quantitative assessments in noncredit education typically evaluate participant’s satisfaction or experiences with courses and the instructor. Learning outcomes …

Advanced Degree Institutional Learning Achievement Investigation: Methods and Opportunities for Action

This poster presents the process and results of an institutional assessment project that investigated advanced degree program learning …

Outreach College serves as an advocate for the needs of the nontraditional, adult and distance learning students, i.e., those who are unable to attend the regular day program that Mānoa provides. This population includes both the working adult seeking a degree and the professional looking to upgrade his or her skills. A few months ago, a task force made up of faculty and staff at Outreach College was formed to investigate ways to better service this nontraditional student population. The name “Transitions” was given to this project since we were specifically looking at adults interested in starting or returning to college and specifically, UH Mānoa. We invited two focus groups made up of representatives from various student support groups on campus and a third group composed of students who had taken noncredit courses from us in the past, asking them the same questions: 1) who are these nontraditional students; 2) what are the challenges they face in returning to school, and 3) how can we help them overcome these challenges. The poster will outline the formation of our focus groups from the beginning to the action plan resulting from these sessions. Also included will be mention of things that worked for us in this endeavor.

Growing an Assessment: Focus Groups

Outreach College serves as an advocate for the needs of the nontraditional, adult and distance learning students, i.e., …

First-Year Programs (FYP) utilizes multiple approaches to assess student learning outcomes and program success. Institutional data are used to measure retention rates for students participating in Access to College Excellence Learning Communities (ACE); National Student Clearing House (NSCH) data are gathered to measure student transfer rates. Qualitative data and feedback is collected through focus groups and surveys. In addition, ACE students complete two surveys measuring student expectations, engagement, and institutional commitment. Fall 2007 student engagement survey results indicate ACE students felt significantly more informed about core graduation requirements, major requirements, and registration procedures. Students also felt significantly more connected to the university community. NSCH data indicates that a large proportion of ACE students that did not continue at UHM transferred to other institutions after their first year. FYP will expand its evaluation by collecting Drop-Failure-Withdraw (DFW) rates for classes offered as part of an ACE learning community.

First-Year Success: Evaluating a Peer-Led Learning Community Program

First-Year Programs (FYP) utilizes multiple approaches to assess student learning outcomes and program success. Institutional data are used …

Faculty have difficulty in clarifying how their assessments and instructional strategies are aligned with both course and General Education learning outcomes in the Instructor-Based designation process. The low number of clear proposals proves the need for the General Education Office to offer an alignment framework with guiding questions.

Developing an Alignment Framework to Support General Education

Faculty have difficulty in clarifying how their assessments and instructional strategies are aligned with both course and General …

From fall 2007 to spring 2009, the UH Writing Mentors Program has reached approximately 1,300 students across 70 sections of English 100. Writing Mentors, who are graduate students in English, attend class and hold individual writing conferences with all students outside of class. For many first-year students, these mentors are the only university representative who learns their name, background, interests, academic goals, challenges in transitioning to college, and strengths and weaknesses as a writer. The initiative has received rankings of “satisfied” or “very satisfied” from 89% of students, 94% of mentors, and 98% of instructors; furthermore 85% of first-year students surveyed claimed that their mentor helped them in their transition to college. Program administrators have engaged in multiple forms of assessment including the following: a large-scale scoring of first-year student writing that demonstrated mentored students out-performing their non-mentored counterparts in statistically significantly ways in the categories of content, organization, language & style, and meta-cognition/ reflective ability; standardized logs tracking every mentor-student conference; analysis of longitudinal data on how mentored versus non-mentored students perform as writers and students post-English 100; interviews with focus groups of mentors, students, and instructors; and written end-of-semester evaluations from all participants. Our poster will summarize key results of these assessment activities and highlight the ways in which they have led to a) programmatic improvements each semester; b) peer-reviewed publications in the fields of Composition Studies and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), each of which underscore the role of mentoring in student retention; c) arguments for continued funding.

Increasing First-Year Students’ (Writing) Success: An Assessment of the UH Writing Mentors Program

From fall 2007 to spring 2009, the UH Writing Mentors Program has reached approximately 1,300 students across 70 …

Access to College Excellence (ACE) at UHM provides a series of first year programs that serve approximately 25% of incoming freshmen a year. A major ACE program is Learning Communities, in which ACE staff helps students to register a collection of courses in a cluster (e.g., general education, pre-business) and an Access to College Community freshman seminar course: CAS 110. All the students who registered for the courses in one cluster form a cohort—a learning community. CAS 110 enhances the community by helping students reaching the following learning outcomes: (1) building effective study and time management skills; (2) setting goals for success; (3) learning about the academic resources available; (4) learning core and major graduation requirements at UHM. This poster introduces the ACE learning communities and how it assesses the outcomes by using a pre- and post-survey method. The poster will present quantitative results from the closed-ended questions and qualitative results from the open-ended questions. The presenter will also present the impact of ACE Learning Communities by comparing the retention rates between the participants and non-participants, and between the less-engaged and more-engaged participants.

Assessment of ACE Learning Communities 2013

Access to College Excellence (ACE) at UHM provides a series of first year programs that serve approximately 25% …

After analyzing the university’s needs and researching best professional development practices, the UHM Assessment Office initiated an exciting project to build assessment leaders on campus through its inaugural Assessment Leadership Institute in summer 2013 that had 10 participants. The model features extensive support after the initial intensive 4- day institute. The model has shown great success. A longitudinal study has been planned to monitor its institutional impact.

Building and Sustaining Assessment Leaders: A Successful Model at UHM

After analyzing the university’s needs and researching best professional development practices, the UHM Assessment Office initiated an exciting …

Access to College Excellence (ACE) at UHM provides a series of first year programs that serve approximately 25% of incoming freshmen a year. A major ACE program is Learning Communities, in which ACE staff helps students to register a collection of courses in a cluster (e.g., general education, pre-business) and an Access to College Community freshman seminar course: CAS 110. All the students who registered for the courses in one cluster form a cohort—a learning community. CAS 110 enhances the community by helping students reaching the following learning outcomes: (1) building effective study and time management skills; (2) setting goals for success; (3) learning about the academic resources available; (4) learning core and major graduation requirements at UHM. This poster introduces the ACE learning communities and how it assesses the outcomes by using a pre- and post-survey method. The poster will present quantitative results from the closed-ended questions and qualitative results from the open-ended questions. The presenter will also present the impact of ACE Learning Communities by comparing the retention rates between the participants and non-participants, and between the less-engaged and more-engaged participants.

Learning Through Community: Best Practices and Assessment

Access to College Excellence (ACE) at UHM provides a series of first year programs that serve approximately 25% …

The Learning Assistance Center (LAC) offers academic support, e.g., tutoring and supplemental instruction (SI) study groups, for students in traditionally challenging and targeted gateway courses. Unlike academic degree programs, the LAC, a co-curricular program, cannot utilize direct assessments of student work to determine program effectiveness; therefore, assessment of LAC programming must rely on triangulated data from multiple sources to determine its impact on student learning and success. After five years of data strongly suggesting that the LAC has had a positive impact on students who use our services, the LAC is poised to expand its programming to help a wider variety of students achieve their academic goals.

Assessment: Informing Co-curricular Programming from Past to Present to Future

The Learning Assistance Center (LAC) offers academic support, e.g., tutoring and supplemental instruction (SI) study groups, for students …

Institutions that understand what helps and hinders student learning will know how to improve student proficiency in core academic areas that are important for college and workforce success. Research supports learning as a holistic (Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005), complex, and domain-specific process (Beyer et al., 2007). Institutions are encouraged to employ principles of learning that are domain-independent, experience-independent, and culturally relevant (Ambrose et al., 2010). It is important that institutions continue to examine a variety of (new) learning tools and innovative pedagogical approaches in order to improve or evolve undergraduate teaching methods, curriculum, and experiences. This study provides important descriptive evidence for understanding undergraduate student learning across campus and over time. The results provide specific ways faculty and administrators may teach and implement services to better serve students.

Factors and Experiences that Help and Hinder Undergraduate Student Learning

Institutions that understand what helps and hinders student learning will know how to improve student proficiency in core …

The online teaching award began at Manoa during the 2013-2014 academic year. This poster will present the positive and negative aspects of student nominated awards, present student data, summarize the results of the program, and present what is needed for the program to continue, as well as the future value.

Student nominated online teaching awards at Manoa: What student satisfaction surveys tell us

The online teaching award began at Manoa during the 2013-2014 academic year. This poster will present the positive …

In Spring 2016, the General Education Office identified a need to improve its indirect assessment efforts. Working with the co-creators of the Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG) instrument, the office developed and piloted an assessment plan beginning with the Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Focus requirement. Through the pilot, the General Education Office aimed to increase familiarity with SALG in order to educate others about its value in improving the quality of instruction; recruit faculty to pilot the use of SALG in HAP-designated courses; and identify how meaningful, usable assessment data could be extracted from SALG to address programmatic and learning needs within the General Education program. This poster provides information on the SALG instrument, outlines the process taken and challenges involved in implementing a new assessment plan, and identifies important next steps in the process.

Adopting a New Assessment Approach: Using SALG to Evaluate General Education Learning Outcomes

In Spring 2016, the General Education Office identified a need to improve its indirect assessment efforts. Working with …

This poster outlines the process through which faculty examined how the embedded assignments, field components, and signature assignment across a three-course sequence aligned. The course sequence of the three Learner in the Environment courses are outlined. Faculty utilized the federal funded Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEEDAR) Center tools to ensure that across the three courses students engaged in meaningful course and field assignments aligned with current research. Scoring criteria are provided along with initial and post-implementation ratings and a sample report. The courses were examined using the Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices, the Classroom Management, and the High Leverage Practices rubrics. Finally, from identified areas in need of additional clarity or additional coverage, this poster highlights how results from the report were utilized toward syllabi revision, which increased the number of elements addressed across the course sequence.

Course Series Alignment: Examining a Three Course Sequence

This poster outlines the process through which faculty examined how the embedded assignments, field components, and signature assignment …

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) utilized historic program data to identify potential gaps in campus awareness of and participation in UROP funding opportunities. Using this information, UROP launched a targeted information campaign, which increased the overall number of applications and the number of student applicants from select underrepresented units.

Using Data to Promote Awareness of and Participation in Undergraduate Research & Creative Works

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) utilized historic program data to identify potential gaps in campus awareness of …