The final step is to utilize the data you gathered to improve student learning or future assessment efforts – in jargon to “close the loop”. While this step of assessment is often viewed as the most difficult it can be completed in many different ways. At Baruch departments have made changes as large as restructuring the curriculum, changing standards for program admission, adding courses, and hiring new faculty and also as small as redefining learning goals to better match the skills that students are actually acquiring. Click here to see examples of closing the loop.
Starting the Process Over Again
An assessment is only of value insofar as its findings are applied; the goal is that whatever changes are undertaken will effectively remediate any problems that were found while continuing to foster identified successes. However, it is not enough to simply assume that these changes had the effect that they were presumed to, which is why the entire assessment cycle starts over again.
Assessment is ultimately about identifying which practices are successful and which are unsuccessful, and trying to fix the latter while preserving the former. It is, by necessity, an adaptive process, and must continuously change to reflect the realities of a given program.