exams

How to Use Course Assignments/Exams for Program Assessment

This workshop attempts to show that by using existing course assignments and exams, programs can efficiently assess student …

This poster will present how the Civil Engineering B.S. program utilized multiple sources of evidence to evaluate the student ability to apply mathematical skills in solving engineering programs and how the program has utilized results to make programmatic improvement. To assess students’ ability to apply math skills to solve engineering programs, our faculty used the results from Fundamental in Engineering license exam and course embedded assessment. In the licensure exam, we found student scores on the Structural analysis section, which involves using math to solve engineering problems, have been lower than average in the past few years. Using embedded course assessment, faculty in the course 361 Transport Engineering and 381 Structure analysis give students engineering tasks that require them to use math skills. These tasks are evaluated using a rubric. The results on the math skills show that the student performance did not meet the target (more than 80% students scoring 3 and 4’s and fewer than 5% students scoring 1) set by the department. As the students assessed were juniors and the target was set for the graduating class, the data indicate either more work needs to be done to bring students up to the desired level of performance, or a scaled scoring system needs to be used to compensate the mismatch between the expectation (target) and the status of the students assessed. The program assessment coordinator and course instructors collect and summarized the assessment results. The program faculty collaboratively interpreted the results and discussed improvement strategies. The program used the assessment results and made multiple curricular improvements, such as changing the Structure analysis course from the electives to required courses, limiting enrollment, increasing frequency of course offerings, modifying expectations on the rubric, and applying appropriate standards to students at different academic levels. We think that our program’s assessment practices can inform skill-based outcome assessment for other programs. We will also share lessons learned.

Assessing Math, Science & Engineering Skills in Civil Engineering

This poster will present how the Civil Engineering B.S. program utilized multiple sources of evidence to evaluate the …

As the only institution of its kind in the world, the UHM Korean Language Flagship Center (KLFC) undergraduate program has been funded by the National Security Education Program since Fall 2008. The KLFC’s goal is to prepare American students to be capable of functioning in Korean as professionals in their chosen academic or professional fields. Flagship student performance is monitored and evaluated via various types of tests, which are administered on a regular basis throughout the program. The assessment tools that the KLFC BA program uses were developed externally and internally to measure students’ Korean language proficiency in four language skills. One of the assessment tools is an official ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) for speaking, provided by the College of LLL for all graduate BA language majors. Twenty-two Korean Flagship BA students from Spring 2011 to Fall 2013 have taken the official ACTFL OPI tests, and 21 out of 22 students’ speaking proficiency has improved over the two or three year period. We present these exit OPI results along with the entry OPI results to demonstrate the improvement in the student speaking proficiency. Furthermore, based on the exit scores, the Korean Flagship program has implemented changes for curricular improvement. This poster also displays curricular adjustment we have made, and the changes are expected to result in further improvement of our student speaking proficiency.

Korean Flagship BA Program Assessment Results & Curricular Improvement

As the only institution of its kind in the world, the UHM Korean Language Flagship Center (KLFC) undergraduate …