Assessment of Student Learning - Minnesota State University Moorhead

Computer Information Systems and Computer Science
Assessment Report

Current Student Assessment Plan
The CSIS Department has approved assessment plans for each of its two majors, Computer Science (CS) and Computer Information Systems (CIS). In addition, there is an approved assessment plan for Management Information Systems (MIS), a joint major between the CSIS department and the Business Department. The MIS major has been suspended effective May 2002.

Assessment plans for each major include a set of performance goals that graduates should be able to demonstrate. We use two assessment instruments to measure these performance goals. The first is a rating sheet filled out by faculty that have just taught selected courses in which specific performance goals can be measured. The faculty member will rate each student in each of the categories on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being poor, 4 average, and 7 excellent. The second assessment instrument is a Senior Exit Questionnaire filled out by graduating students in which they rate their own abilities in the performance areas using the same scale used by the faculty. For each assessment instrument, the mean of the responses for each item is calculated and the results of the faculty responses are compared to that of the student responses. The assessment plans, rating sheets, and senior exit questionnaire can be found in the appendices. The summaries of the results follow. Each table shows survey averages for faculty and students for each academic year of this report period.

Computer Science			Computer Info. Systems			Management Info. Systems
	Faculty	Student		Faculty	Student		Faculty	Student
2000-01	4.99	5.19	2000-01	5.03	5.35	2000-01	5.51	5.55
2001-02	5.71	NA	2001-02	5.55	5.46	2001-02	4.99	5.62

From the data, it can be concluded that our curricula in each major is providing students the necessary knowledge base in each of our performance goals. Our students are performing at a level that is well above average. In addition faculty rating and student rating are very close in each case. Student assessment of their abilities only slightly exceeds faculty assessment of their abilities in most cases. Comparing these results with the data accumulated for the last reporting period shows no significant difference in any of the majors for either faculty or student assessment.

In order to maintain these results, we must continually monitor not only our curriculum, but also those resources that enable us to appropriately deliver that curriculum. Since each major is very technologically oriented, maintaining and upgrading our technological (both hardware and software) and human resources is fundamental to insuring that our students continue to develop high performance levels in the learning objectives. Hence we will continue to seek institutional support for more equipment and more faculty.

These assessment results offer verification that the department is meeting it’s current assessment goals and can be used to inform prospective students that our majors are performing at a high level in the desired learning outcomes. This is confirmed by both our graduating seniors and by internship supervisors who have observed their performance in real world situations.

Proposed Student Assessment Plan
Though the results of our current assessment plan shows that students are performing at a level that is well above average, the department has reviewed the current assessment plans to improve them and have come up with a new proposal for the student assessment plan in each major. There were certain problems identified with the current assessment plans.

Certain performance goals were not being evaluated in the courses where faculty filled out evaluation sheets.

The performance goals were too broad.

Lack of a means of gathering the student’s surveys. The students would be given the survey, but many not return it

The validity of students assessing themselves.

The goal of the new student assessment plans is to list more specific goals and a more specific means of gathering the data. Each goal is tied to a specific class, and often a specific test question or project in that class. All assessment is to be done by the faculty member teaching the class. Students will not assess themselves.