Assessment Excellence

NCATE, the Oklahoma State Board of Education, and ABET have praised ORU’s approach to assessing student learning outcomes. Additional self-studies in process for site visits will inform other accrediting agencies of evidence of the success of individual majors and programs in achieving student learning outcomes. The School of Nursing completed a self-study with ePortfolio data as a main source for documenting student progress and program improvement. The School of Theology and Missions has completed a two-year process of examining the school’s learning outcomes and converting their tracking process to ePortfolio in preparation for the start of their next re-accreditation visit, as have the music and social work programs. The School of Business is using ePortfolio to demonstrate its success in measuring and increasing student learning as well as in identifying program weaknesses in its current study to achieve initial accreditation through the Association of Collegiate Business School...

ORU educators interact with professional colleagues regarding the use of ePortfolio to trace and document achievement of learning objectives. They inform the larger academy of institutional progress, share lessons learned during the implementation and maintenance processes, and obtain peer input to improve ePortfolio. ORU’s Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs supports, promotes, and encourages ORU faculty, staff, and administrators in their efforts to share ePortfolio experiences. Faculty and staff members have presented at over 40 regional and national conferences, offered 6 regional workshops, authored numerous publications, and consulted with other institutions that are considering a similar approach to assessing student learning outcomes. An article outlining ORU’s ePortfolio in the May 11, 2005, issue of Education Week quoted the dean of the ORU School of Education as saying, “Now, all [evidence needed to qualify for graduation] is available online and can quickly be ga...

Oral Roberts University routinely provides students and the public with information about its student learning outcomes and ePortfolio, both of which have become integral parts of the ORU experience and culture over the past three years. Students and faculty members work with them daily. Members of the ORU faculty, administration, and staff have shared the ORU ePortfolio process through 41 publications, presentations, and workshops. Many of these were at the national level and addressed a wide range of constituencies, including (1) students, (2) professional colleagues, (3) accrediting agencies, (4) alumni, and (5) the general public. All ORU students are trained in the operation of ePortfolio and required to submit approximately 50 artifacts over the course of their undergraduate careers and 15 during their graduate careers. With each submission, a student is reminded of how each learning outcome links to ORU’s mission. From faculty feedback, students see their progress and learn whic...

Hey, gang. You can read about us in the March 2007 issue of Campus Technology Magazine: http://campustechnology.com/articles/45245/ Have a happy day!

Using external accreditation criteria as benchmarks, ORU’s School of Education and Engineering Department serve as examples that the institution has begun documenting whether actual achievement levels of students are acceptable given the mission, student population, and resources available. Some majors and programs are in earlier stages of documentation, but making progress. To cite a specific example related to critical thinking, each student in the Principles of Chemistry lab course writes a 250-300 word abstract for a meat analysis lab exercise. The student’s hypothesis as to which of four types of meat is the healthiest and most cost-effective is then tested by analyzing the results of the lab experiment. The abstract is submitted electronically to a faculty member via ePortfolio under the Intellectually Alert outcome and Critical Thinking proficiency. The faculty member assesses the abstract using the Critical Thinking rubric criteria, which include a clearly identified purpose a...

A report from the Association of American Colleges and Universities states that a “purposeful educational program starts at the endpoint, with the desired characteristics of an institution’s graduates, and asks the faculty to reason backwards from outcomes to the implementation of an intentionally designed curriculum to cultivate the desired qualities.” This statement characterizes ORU’s process to articulate the University’s student learning outcomes with their accompanying proficiencies/capacities, as well as the development of the ePortfolio process. ORU’s School of Education has been collecting ePortfolio data since 2002. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has heralded the ORU School of Education’s ePortfolio system as an example for all member institutions. The Oklahoma State Board of Education has done likewise. It serves as a model for other ORU programs to determine whether student learning outcomes have been achieved. Undergraduate faculty in ...

ORU determines and communicates what counts as evidence that outcomes have been achieved. Each rubric informs students in advance of the expected performance criteria. After a faculty member evaluates an artifact using an online rubric, the student immediately receives feedback and knows the extent to which the assignment-specific outcomes were achieved. For example, the general education rubric for critical thinking artifacts includes such criteria as purpose/goal, hypothesis, evidence, conceptual understanding, assumptions, and inferences. Each rubric explains the levels of performance for each criterion. ORU regularly collects and interprets evidence of outcomes. Rubric results are aggregated for each specific criterion. This process indicates which criteria are and are not being acceptably met by the majority of students, as well as how different segments of the student population are performing (i.e., minorities, international students, females, home-schooled students, older stud...