Mini-grants offered for improving academic programmatic assessment practices
The Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (IRE) is pleased to announce assessment mini-grants are again available to fund activities that lead to improving the quality and consistency of academic programmatic assessment practices.
The maximum grant award is $1,000, and funds may be used for faculty assessment retreats, commercial assessment instruments for first year only, incentives for student participation in assessment, meals for assessment meetings and registration fees for assessment workshops or conferences.
Applications may be obtained via the Assessment Resources repository in Canvas and are due by Oct. 15, 2022. For further information, contact jennifer.boulay@salve.edu.
Past mini-grant recipients
In total, $3,500 was awarded to fund the following four projects during the program pilot in the 2021-22 academic year.
Title: Programmatic Improvement of the Applied Behavioral Analysis Graduate Program
Awardee: Cody Morris
Department: Psychology: Behavior Analysis
The purpose of this project was to improve the assessment practices within the Behavior Analysis graduate program. The grant funded a faculty retreat to evaluate and improve programmatic assessment practices and gift cards to incentivize student participation in a post-graduate outcomes assessment.
Ongoing student progress evaluations, student outcome assessments and the overall program assessments were each targeted for improvement or creation. As a result, sustainable assessment procedures were created across key areas of student progress, student outcomes and the overall program.
Title: Modern Languages Data Collection, Reporting and Analysis: Listening, Reading, Culture & Speaking
Awardee: James Mitchell
Department: Modern Languages
The aim of this project was to expand the Modern Languages department’s collection of speaking data among students within the program. The grant funded faculty assessment meetings and fees for all program majors and minors to participate in a standardized normed exam based on ACTFL and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) standards for spoken ability (Emmersion/True North Speaking Test).
The department also analyzed listening comprehension data and gathered and collated reading and culture data. This provided the department with baseline data to track individual student progress over time and to determine the degree of mastery upon program completion. Further, through faculty meetings and assessment day, the department revisited and streamlined its programmatic assessment strategies.
Title: Undergraduate and Graduate Nursing Transition to Competency-Based Education and Evaluation to Align with Program Outcomes and AACN (2021) Essentials
Awardees: Deb Cherubini and Sharon Stager
Department: Nursing—Undergraduate and Graduate Programs (2 grants)
The purpose of this activity was to update program and course-level student learning outcomes across the curriculum for alignment with the new American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials, a competency-based learning model for accreditation. Faculty were trained by AACN subject matter experts, and the department rewrote program learning outcomes for alignment with the new competency-based learning model. Next, didactic and clinical courses will be mapped across the curriculum to demonstrate the mastery of skills via scaffolding and faculty will integrate relevant changes into their courses.
Applications may be obtained via the Assessment Resources repository in Canvas and are due by Oct. 15, 2022. For further information, contact jennifer.boulay@salve.edu.
