ASSESSMENT AT WCSU

Systematic
Assessment

excellent academic experiences

Western Connecticut State University provides students with excellent academic experiences as well as a wide range of co-curricular experiences. Each complement and supplement the student’s academics and create a strong living-learning experience.

Academic program assessment facilitates continuous improvement of student learning by identifying how the curriculum is contributing to student academic success. Knowing and understanding the extent to which students are meeting program objectives allows faculty to make necessary changes if gaps in curricular have been identified. It is the overall goal of the university to graduate students with a well-rounded liberal arts education, prepared to work and succeed in an ever-changing global society. The Department of Student Affairs programs assessment provides opportunities to monitor the co-curricular experience and guides the University in developing and improving services and programs to meet the needs of the students. The assessment process consists of identifying student learning outcomes, developing an assessment plan with methodology, and collecting and analyzing relevant data.

University Institutional Outcomes = developed to articulate the knowledge students should have learned upon graduation.

Program outcomes = developed to articulate the knowledge acquisition students are expected to learn in their program of choice.

WCSU Systematic Assessment

  • Classroom Level

  • Classroom Evaluation

    Every year, professors collect classroom evaluations to assess coursework, teaching, and student satisfaction. This information is used to improve coursework and learning environments. 

  • Department Level

  • Academic Department Assessment

    Annual reports examine factors that contribute to student learning. These include: student retention and graduation, advising, department assessment processes, curriculum development, faculty development, and department goals.

  • General Education

  • General Education Competencies

    Our course-based competencies ensure all undergraduate students develop professional skills through the exploration of a wide range of disciplines. All gen-ed courses are evaluated regularly to ensure our courses meet learning outcomes.

  • Institutional Tools

  • National and Regional Measures

    We use national surveys like the NSSE and Pulse to see how we are measuring up compared to other universities. We also look at retention, graduation rates, and how our students are doing post-graduation.

Classroom Evaluation

Every year, professors collect classroom evaluations to assess coursework, teaching, and student satisfaction. This information is used to improve coursework and learning environments. 

Academic Department Assessment

Annual reports examine factors that contribute to student learning. These include: student retention and graduation, advising, department assessment processes, curriculum development, faculty development, and department goals.

General Education Competencies

Our course-based competencies ensure all undergraduate students develop professional skills through the exploration of a wide range of disciplines. All gen-ed courses are evaluated regularly to ensure our courses meet learning outcomes.

National and Regional Measures

We use national surveys like the NSSE and Pulse to see how we are measuring up compared to other universities. We also look at retention, graduation rates, and how our students are doing post-graduation.

Academic Program Review Process

Learn More

Information Gathering | Appraisal | Planning

Institutional Learning Outcomes

Our University Learning Objectives were developed by the University Senate Assessment Committee.  They are designed to encompass the culmination of learning experiences across schools, majors, and disciplines.  The Learning Objectives are assessed through measurement tools collected across the university, through the general education curriculum, and by each school and department.  There are five learning objectives which are modeled after the American Association of College and Universities’ Value Rubrics

Approved by the University Senate Spring 2022

Communication

  • Communication takes many forms. Evidence of this learning goal should include artifacts of sufficient length such that a central message is conveyed, supported by one or more forms of supporting materials and includes a purposeful organization.
Value Rubric

Creative Thinking

  • The student must have a strong foundation in the strategies and skills of the domain in order to make connections and synthesize.
  • Demonstrating solid knowledge of the domain’s parameters, the creative thinker, at the highest levels of performance, pushes beyond those boundaries in new, unique, or atypical recombination’s, uncovering or critically perceiving new syntheses and using or recognizing creative risk-taking to achieve a solution.
Value Rubric

Curiosity & Intellectual Engagement

  • Curiosity and intellectual engagement include curiosity, transfer, independence, initiative, reflection, and the access and use of information ethically and legally.
Value Rubric

Global Learning

  • Effective and transformative global learning offers students meaningful opportunities to analyze and explore complex global challenges, collaborate respectfully with diverse others, apply learning to take responsible action in contemporary global contexts, and evaluate the goals, methods, and consequences of that action.
  • Global Learning should enhance students’ sense of identity, community, ethics, and perspective-taking.
  • Global learning is based on the principle that the world is a collection of interdependent yet inequitable systems and that higher education has a vital role in expanding knowledge of human and natural systems, privilege and stratification, and sustainability and development to foster individuals’ ability to advance equity and justice at home and abroad.
Value Rubric

Integrative Learning

  • Students demonstrate the ability to integrate learning–across courses, over time, and between campus and community life.
  • Students connect previous learning to new classroom learning. Later, significant knowledge within individual disciplines serves as the foundation, but integrative learning goes beyond academic boundaries.
  • Integrative experiences often occur as learners address real-world problems, unscripted and sufficiently broad, to require multiple areas of knowledge and multiple modes of inquiry, offering multiple solutions and benefiting from multiple perspectives.
  • Integrative Learning also involves internal changes in the learner. These internal changes, which indicate growth as a confident, lifelong learner, include the ability to adapt one’s intellectual skills, to contribute in a wide variety of situations, and to understand and develop individual purpose, values and ethics.
  • Develop students’ capacities for integrative learning which is central to personal success, social responsibility, and civic engagement in today’s global society.
Value Rubric