Graduate Assessment

By their nature, graduate programs are advanced fields of study that concentrate on providing new knowledge in areas that are often unique to the interests of particular faculty members within specific disciplines. However, at the graduate level, there are generally quite similar expected educational outcomes that are usually independent of the specific field of graduate study. Virtually all graduate students in almost all disciplines are assessed on their: (a) acquisition of advanced knowledge; (b) acquisition of professional, verbal, and written skills; (c) ability to do research and contribute to the appropriate discipline literature; (d) ability to teach, often at the collegiate level; and (e) ability to find employment in their, or a related, field.

Since, in general, there are no standardized instruments for the assessment of advanced knowledge acquired by individual students in a given discipline, most graduate programs assess this parameter through summary comprehensive written and/or oral examinations. This approach is generally found to be an academically acceptable method of capturing most of the information necessary for graduate student assessment. In some disciplines, an assessment of graduate students' ability to teach/instruct undergraduates or professional colleagues may also serve as an assessment tool. Faculty, through their teaching of courses and assigning of grades, assess student performance in specific sub-sets of knowledge and compare these students to others who have taken similar courses previously.

In contrast, program assessment is usually accomplished by having each graduate degree program provide a mission and goal statement, i.e., some form of program intended educational outcome. These data are accumulated over a 5-year period (at WVU this corresponds to the BOG Review self-study period) and serve as a basis for both annual discussion and for the 5-year overall program assessment. These internal reviews are usually conducted by faculty, the department's director of graduate studies, and the department chair. As a result of these discussions, appropriate changes are instituted that improve all aspects of the graduate student experience, as well as improve the competitiveness of program graduates for employment in academics, industry, or government.

Programs use assessment measures appropriate to the discipline and degree. Common to most graduate degree programs is the requirement that students must complete some type of project, thesis, or dissertation. These documents serve as excellent methods of assessing students' ability to do research, perform advanced skills or techniques, and write in a professionally acceptable manner (e.g., graduates will demonstrate a depth of knowledge in four of six areas of specialization; graduates will demonstrate strong verbal and written skills through participation in seminars, journal clubs, and the writing of discipline-appropriate scholarly papers, etc.). Some masters and doctoral programs feel that assessment outcomes can be measured by identifying the number of degree program graduates that go on to doctoral education or to postdoctoral study. Numbers of contributions to the scholarly literature both during and several years immediately after graduation similarly have been used as a form of program assessment.

Professional programs (e.g., dentistry, law, medicine, counseling, clinical psychology, etc.) often focus on the ability of their graduates to obtain licensure. Assessment is evaluated in these programs by examining pass/fail rates and scale scores for different parts of the licensure exam. These scale scores permit the degree program to concentrate on improving particular components of the professional curriculum. Professional accrediting associations also may play a significant role in dictating or measuring or validating the degree program's success in accomplishing its, and the profession at-large's, stated mission and goals.

In summary, a reasonably consistent group of criteria is currently being used to assess graduate programs at West Virginia University. Among the educational outcome measures examined are the performance of students and the quality of the programs as reflected in the grades in given graduate courses, the performance of students on qualifying examinations, the number of refereed journal publications, the grants and contracts received, and the career advancement opportunities obtained after leaving the graduate program. Assessment data accumulated from the various sources outlined above are used by the graduate programs to improve their course requirements, introduce new courses, modify program requirements and, in the case of several scientific disciplines, improve their research facilities and equipment. Most of these programmatic actions are initiated either by individual faculty members or are identified in department faculty meetings, often as a result of attending national professional meetings where long-term general discipline-related trends and strategic approaches are discussed.

Responsibility for assessment oversight of individual WVU graduate programs has been given to the University Graduate Council. It is this body that conducts the 5-year BOG program review for each masters and doctoral program at the university, and a significant portion of this review involves an analysis of student and programmatic assessment information. Among its present duties, the University Graduate Council examines the principal elements of each program's assessment plan, with particular emphasis placed on assessing student learning and programmatic outcomes. Each degree program is asked to provide information on: (a) educational goals of the program; (b) measures of evaluating success in achieving these goals; (c) identification of the goals that are being successfully met as well as those that need attention as determined by an analysis of the data; and (d) use of assessment data to improve program quality.

The Chairperson of the University Graduate Council and the Director of University Graduate Education, members of the University Graduate Council, serve as ex officio members of the University Assessment Council Subcommittee on Graduate Assessment. In this way, yearly dialogue is maintained between the two primary groups involved in graduate assessment activities.