ASSESSMENT OVERVIEW

Advancing Learning Through Continuous Improvement

Assessment and Accreditation

CU Denver was re-accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools following its April 2011 accreditation review. In the area of assessment specifically, the university met all accreditation requirements. In support of this effort, the university has put in place assessment policies and procedures, formed academic assessment committees with representatives from each school/college, appointed an assessment director to conduct workshops and guide programs in strengthening their outcomes assessment systems, and required programs and schools/colleges to prepare annual assessment reports describing their student assessment results and program improvements. The next accreditation review will occur in April 2021.

Advancing Student Learning through Program and Certificate Assessment

The university has been actively working to build a culture of assessment and continuous improvement at the program and certificate levels to advance teaching and learning, and to improve program and certificate quality. Each program and certificate identifies key learning outcomes, assesses how well students are performing for each of these outcomes, and then draws on the information to inform program improvement. All academic programs, including PhD graduate programs, systematically use assessment as a vehicle for advancing student learning. Some of these programs report on their assessment and program improvement processes to their specialized accrediting organizations as well. All of the 140+ programs and 100+ certificates across both campuses submit reports to the university’s assessment committees each year.

Assessment of General Education

Assessment of undergraduate learning regularly takes places within academic programs as part of the program improvement process. For general education specifically, there is a university committee, the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee, that guides the organization of the general education core. There are a number of efforts to assess student performance in the general education core. A project begun in fall 2011, and continuing to present day, the General Education Assessment Project, enlisted 50+ faculty members to re-conceptualize the learning outcomes and rubrics in the general education core and collect curriculum-embedded assessment data for each outcome in each core area. In addition, the university has been assessing student performance for a subset of cross-cutting general education learning outcomes, such as critical thinking and written communication, through the ETS Proficiency Profile. In addition, the university recently conducted an assessment of incoming first-year students' knowledge and attitudes in Civics. The combination of these approaches, along with the assessment of learning within academic programs, provides a valuable picture of learning and an opportunity for improvement in the general education core program. 

Academic Assessment Committees

The two assessment committees, one on the CU Denver Campus and one on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, help to establish policy, guide decisions, and inform colleagues about the value and requirements associated with accreditation and assessment more broadly.

Director of Assessment

The Director of Assessment works to strengthen the culture of assessment in a number of ways, such as giving written feedback to several hundred programs and certificates a year on their annual assessment reports, conducting workshops for faculty, offering information sessions for variety of audiences on assessment-related topics, consulting with the provost and other administrators on assessment-related issues, writing assessment-related grants, publishing scholarly articles on assessment with faculty and administrators, supervising the standardized testing of undergraduates, chairing the assessment committee meetings, staying abreast of accreditation requirements, and serving on university accreditation-related committees. The university provides a budget to the director for these activities.