CC Frequently Asked Questions

General education is a federal requirement for all undergraduate degree-granting institutions who receive Title IV funding (federal financial aid). This requirement is monitored and reviewed by accreditation agencies on behalf of the Department of Education. SMU is accredited by The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). SMU’s accreditation status was reaffirmed December 2021.

SMU adheres to SACSCOC Accrediting Standards 8.2.b and 9.3 of the Principles of Accreditation, which provide guidance on assessing general education. 

Standard 8.2 states: The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on the analysis of the results in the areas below.

b.: student learning outcomes for collegiate-level general education competencies of its undergraduate degree programs. (Student outcome: general education).

Standard 9.3 states that a general education curriculum:

(a) is based on a coherent rationale.

(b) is a substantial component of each undergraduate degree program. For degree completion for… baccalaureate programs, a minimum of 30 semester hours of the equivalent.

(c) ensures breadth of knowledge. These credit hours include at least one course from each of the following areas: humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral sciences, and natural science/mathematics. These courses do not narrowly focus on those skills, techniques, and procedures specific to a particular occupation or profession.

Assessment is the systematic, continuous process of gathering, reviewing, and using data on student learning and other outcomes for the purpose of making improvements. Student learning outcomes assessment is an ongoing four‐step process of “establishing clear, measurable, expected outcomes of student learning; ensuring that students have sufficient opportunities to achieve those outcomes; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well student learning matches our expectations; and, using the resulting information to understand and improve student learning” (Suskie, 2009, p. 4).

Student learning outcomes assessment is not simply the process of assigning grades to students. Rather, it is defining, as a program, the central areas of student learning, looking at each of these areas independently to see if students are achieving them, and then examining ways to adjust teaching/learning practices to increase student achievement. Grades, whether course or exam, often reflect multiple student learning outcomes and therefore do not accurately reflect learning in one area.

Student learning outcomes assessment is also not an evaluation of faculty. Assessment is designed to look at learning through the student experience within a program. Although the measurement of a specific learning outcome might take place in one course, student learning typically takes place over the course of a curriculum and any deficiencies in student achievement should be considered programmatic in nature, not course‐based.

Overall, the assessment process at an institution is not just an exercise for accreditation purposes. For assessment to be effective, it must be ongoing and systematic. It is not just the implementation of improvements in programs or units, but following up on these actions to determine if additional steps are needed.

Generally, grading evaluates individual students’ learning and performance across an entire project or class. Although grades are sometimes treated as a proxy for student learning, they are not always a reliable measure. Moreover, they incorporate criteria – such as attendance, participation, and effort – that are not direct measures of learning. Even in single assignments or exams, it is not always the case that the entire assignment or exam is graded solely on the single criteria delineated in one Student Learning Outcome.

 

The goal of assessment is to improve student learning. Assignments and exams can be used both for grading and for assessment. But, assessment goes beyond grading by systematically examining student learning on very specific criteria which are often more narrow than the scope of a long research report or a final cumulative exam. Assessment of individual SLOs specific to General Education or to an entire academic program should result in clear, measure of learning on one SLO. That discreet measure can then be used to inform improvement in the delivery of information in a class or in a series of courses that make up a degree program.

Faculty teaching a course within the Common Curriculum must create, and receive from students, an assessment assignment for each component tagged to the course.

SMU engages in a distributed general education model which means if you're teaching an undergraduate course, chances are you will need to assess a CC component.

IPE staff will send tailored notifications and instructions to faculty from assessment@smu.edu if assessment is required for your course. While all CC components should be assessed in every term, IPE does not collect all CC assessment artifacts for all components every year. Check the CC Assessment Calendar to see when your CC components are due for submission to IPE.

You can check the CC Course Search page to verify whether your course has any CC components.

There are no Excel files or examples of student work to upload by using Canvas for assessment during the regular 15-week terms (e.g., Fall and Spring).

Ideally, setup your Canvas course at the beginning of the semester. Faculty that wait until the end of the semester often struggle, and must contend with others needing help from support staff. The sooner you setup your course, the more time you will have to work with support staff to troubleshoot, if needed. And the bonus is that assessment does not have to interfere with final grading and other end-of-semester demands on your time.

Outcomes are imported into rubrics. Rubrics can be added to assignments, quizzes, or discussions. In the case of quizzes, if you have more than one outcome to assess, create a separate quiz for each outcome. To make the assessment task as efficient as possible consider designing a quiz with 5 questions. On a 5-question quiz, all correct equals 5, 4 correct equals a score of 4 and so on. Associating an outcome with an individual question or questions set within a single quiz is currently in beta testing by Instructure. 

NOTE: Group assignments are strongly discouraged unless an individual student's contribution to the group assignment is clearly demarcated.

No, each CC outcome is already in Canvas. Big picture, what you need to do is 1) create the assignment in alignment with the appropriate Common Curriculum assessment rubric, and 2) link the assignment to the appropriate Common Curriculum assessment rubric every term the course taught is tagged with a general education component.

Timing. During the regular terms, IPE staff are able to survey faculty after the term census date to identify the type of assessment assignment they will be employing and provide them with specific submission instructions. IPE staff subsequently allocate several weeks to the assessment assignment survey process to allow faculty ample time to determine what kind of assignment(s) they wish to use for the assessment. Given the short-term nature of the summer and inter-terms, IPE staff ability to survey faculty is exponentially shorter and surveying faculty to provide specific instructions is not possible.

Timing and resources. In addition to the short-term nature of the summer and interterm sessions, we also use a software, integrated with Canvas, called Anthology Portfolio (Portfolio). Portfolio is the "data warehouse" which collects student assessment assignment submissions from Canvas. At this time, it is cost-prohibitive to provide every undergraduate student with a Portfolio account because the cost structure is on a per-student basis.

Rather, IPE staff manually identify courses tagged with Common Curriculum components being assessed during the current academic year, and the students enrolled in those courses. Once identified, those students' data is loaded to Portfolio's system and their accounts activated. Given the relatively low course enrollments during the summer and interterm sessions, IPE staff collect assessment assignment submissions in either an objective or non-objective format, and then manually load the student's assignment submission or supporting skill scores into Portfolio on their behalf.