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Course-based assessment: engaging faculty in reflective practice

The College of Engineering (COE) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has begun to implement course based assessment as part of their curricular continuous improvement program. The targeted faculty are those who are developing innovative courses supported by the Foundation Coalition (FC), a collaborative project funded by National Science Foundation. We began in Spring 1999, and have since tried five different strategies: taking faculty to a two-day assessment workshop, a general lecture on embedding an assessment based continuous improvement loop into courses, a written set of guidelines, individual meetings with faculty, and an interactive half-day workshop. We discovered that faculty accept and implement assessment based continuous improvement in their classes once they understand that: (a) it is in their control, (b) it can be done in ways that are cost-effective in terms of time, and (c) that it can reduce frustration in teaching because it makes visible aspects of courses that can be improved.