A trio from Fresno Pacific University gave a webinar on changing assessment management systems to higher education professionals.
“The Story of an Institution’s Holistic Revision of Program Outcomes,” was given by Cindy Carter, Ph.D., associate provost, institutional effectiveness and degree completion and accreditation liaison officer; Candi Alexander, Ed.D., director of assessment; and Marrissa Lopez, M.A., assessment systems manager on October 10, 2018, to representatives of colleges and universities across the country who have considered adopting, recently adopted or are already subscribers to eLumen, a company that provides curriculum and assessment software. FPU adopted eLumen in 2017 after having been with TaskStream.
FPU’s strategies for transitioning from TaskStream to eLumen were unique among institutions, Carter said. Rather than the typical practice of slowly implementing the new system one program at a time, FPU employed a small beta test followed by a “dark semester,” shutting down student learning outcome data collection while all faculty and staff were trained in preparation for eLumen implementation. During that time, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (OIE) worked with groups and met individually with every program director to ensure that incoming data was the best quality so that system reports accurately reflected academic rigor and led to meaningful actions. The dark semester was followed by campus-wide application.
eLumen invited OIE members to present the webinar and share success stories with other institution leaders. Alexander and Lopez have also submitted the process as a presentation proposal for the Western Association of Schools and College’s (WASC) annual conference.
PHOTO: From left, Alexander, Carter and Lopez