Program Assessment

Elements of Assessment

Champlain College Program Review is a process designed to orchestrate self-improvement through learning for the betterment of the entire institution. As such, it supports efforts to maximize our understanding of how our students are learning and how well our programs are delivering on their promises to those students and the institution as a whole.

Seeking an external perspective is a required part of the program review; since Champlain College is strongly, and intentionally, connected to the marketplace, the external support and validation of our self-understanding is critical.

Champlain College Program Review must be:

1. Systematic:

• Ongoing over a period of years
• Able to show patterns over time; taking a longitudinal view of student success
• Plans for who will collect and consider data

2. Outcomes-based: 

• Defined by faculty and based on program mission, vision, and competencies
• Attentive to College Competencies (undergraduate)
• Focused on understanding what causes individual students to achieve at higher- or lower-than-average levels

3. Comprehensive: 

• Representative of student demographics and range of performances
• Attentive to all the program competencies over a period of time
• Considers achievement of College Competencies by students in the program
• Considers institutional-level data related to student learning and student experience (NSSE, SSI, IDEA PRO, IDI)

4. Transparent:

• Available to the campus community and up to date
• Formatted to allow selected portions to be made available and comprehensible to a wider audience
• Receptive to feedback

Program Review at Champlain College is an ongoing holistic assessment of student learning complemented by program management (reported annually) and periodic inclusion of an external perspective—all of which point to and inform subsequent action planning. The model takes a rolling and cumulative approach that, when viewed within a four-year cycle time frame, captures a full picture of program and divisional performance.

Each year, the Program Director submits an activities report that is included with the Dean's report on program management. The annual program assessment report describes the results of assessments of the competencies reviewed in that year of the four-year assessment plan cycle and any plans for improvement resulting from analysis of the evidence of student achievement.

We also provide Assessment Plan and Report Guidelines file for guidelines, plans, and information about Program Assessment.