Student Learning

Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes on General Education Core Competencies

The General Education program consists of five core competencies that are assessed on an annual three-year cycle.  The University has cycled through the first three years of the rolling three-year assessment cycle, with the Science and Quantitative Inquiry core competency assessed during 2015-16. 

NKU is continuing with the rolling three-year assessment cycles. In Spring 2016, NKU established a revised assessment process of the General Education program. The General Education Committee (GEC) modified two of the rubrics developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to assess Science and Quantitative Inquiry student artifacts (products or assignments such as student papers, tests, or lab reports that are used as evidence of student learning). The GEC articulated elements of the rubric to reflect our student learning outcomes (SLOs) in meaningful ways.

In mid-June, volunteer faculty members attended a special training session to apply the rubric to the assignments and rate them. Assessment results tells us the extent to which the SLOs have been achieved by our students and whether we are using the appropriate assignments in our General Education courses.

The results of those assessments are currently under review and analysis.

If assessment results for the SLOs do not meet the predetermined standard set by the General Education Committee, then an action plan will be developed, which identifies possible revisions to the course or curriculum to try to improve student learning for the particular outcome, or to initiate a conversation about the placement of particular courses within a particular category or aligned with a given learning outcome. Taking appropriate action when results are not at the level that we would like is the most important part of assessment.