Measuring Up
Inaugural institute will promote a culture of assessment in higher education.
Director Dawn Zimmaro’s team in DIIA’s Research, Evaluation, and Assessment section won’t find things slowing down over the summer. They will be busier than ever, supporting ongoing assessment activities for accreditation, for teaching and learning, for instructional technology, and for research.
And that’s just the way they like it.
Zimmaro and team members Linda Neavel Dickens, Joel Heikes, and Meghan McGlohen are pleased to see that faculty members, staff members, and administrators throughout UT Austin have gotten the message that effective programming and innovative teaching depend on cultivating a culture of assessment. Promoting a strategy that embraces embedded assessment, DIIA is working to support the goal posed by the Commission of 125 that UT Austin be “the best in the world at creating a disciplined culture of excellence that generates intellectual excitement, transforms lives, and develops leaders.”
Now, Zimmaro and her team are preparing to share this vision and their expertise, inviting higher education practitioners and decision-makers for a hands-on event focusing on best practices in assessment and leadership. On June 19 at the Thompson Conference Center, DIIA will offer the inaugural Assessment Institute for deans, department chairs, directors, institutional research staff, and faculty leaders from throughout Texas. The institute will provide a forum for exploring relationships among assessments at institutional, departmental, program, and course levels and among nationally-normed and locally-developed methods. Participants will develop action plans to bring back to their campuses, with the goal of identifying institutional strengths and weaknesses, identifying appropriate course- and program-level assessment strategies, and developing strategies to cultivate a culture of assessment.
Marilla Svinicki will deliver the keynote address, Embedded Assessment: Finding Data on Learning in Unexpected Places. Svinicki, who has coauthored an issue of Alternative Assessment Strategies, is area chair for Learning, Cognition, and Instruction in the Department of Educational Psychology, and she is coauthor of the popular collection of essays McKeachie’s Teaching Tips.
The day-long program will feature DIIA’s full lineup of assessment experts, with presentations by Zimmaro, Dickens, Heikes, and McGlohen. Participants will take a practical and holistic approach to developing strategies for strengthening existing practices and creating new strategic processes.
DIIA’s assessment team is pleased by the strong response from Texas practitioners and leaders invited to the institute. The time is right for sharing new ways of thinking about assessment in support of innovative teaching, cutting edge research, and proactive leadership.