Assessment

Plan

The Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences uses several methods to evaluate its effectiveness and collect evaluation data on an ongoing basis in order to engage in iterative improvements of its programs and services.

  1. Students
    • Graduating doctoral students complete an exit survey made available in their graduation packet. These are returned to the department for analysis.
    • Periodically, the website is used to administer online surveys to current and/or graduate students.
    • All Master’s students complete a culminating experience. These are periodically reviewed by the faculty to help inform program changes.
    • All PhD students are reviewed annually by the faculty.
  2. Faculty
    • ITLS faculty members participate in bi-weekly faculty meetings, in which departmental changes may be initiated.
    • ITLS faculty members participate in yearly retreats, in which departmental changes may be initiated.
    • The curriculum committee initiates changes in programs and requirements.
    • The curriculum committee maintains program planning sheets. These are linked from the website. [link]
    • As part of the University’s P&T process, courses are periodically subject to peer review.
  3. Other
    • The department maintains a dashboard file, tracking important indicators every year. These include student credit hours, student residency, enrollment by degree, ethnic background of students, number of FTE students, number of degrees conferred, number of faculty, total program costs, student mean GPA, number of applications, and % acceptance. The dashboard is linked below.
    • A regents review involving outside reviewers is completed periodically.
    • Studies directed at assessing needs of students are conducted in the context of classes.
    • Web site traffic is carefully monitored using Google Analytics. This provides a view of student and outsider interests in our programs.
    • Taken together, these data provide information to the faculty as it deliberates and structures programmatic offerings to keep current with demands from the field of practice and from the discipline.

Learning Objectives

Association for Educational Communications and Technology standards were developed in conjunction with NCATE and Educational Communications and Instructional Technologies standards. They provide initial standards (for undergraduate programs) and advanced standards (for graduate programs). All standards used here are for advanced or graduate programs.

At the conclusion of ITLS programs, all students will be able to:

  • Understand learning theory
  • Execute and understand research evaluation
  • Perform hands-on instructional design
  • Will be exposed to ITLS foundations

In addition to the above mentioned general learning objectives for all programs, there are certain more specific objectives per program:

  1. PhD students will be able to:
    • Fulfill roles as college and university researchers
    • Fulfill roles as teachers in education and corporate training fields
    • Conduct and direct research and development activities in public or private educational agencies or in the corporate sector
  2. Master of Arts will be able to:
    • Perform indepth and hands-on instructional design
  3. Master of Education will be able to:
    • Understand the role of technology and its appropriate implementation in the teaching and learning process
    • Deal with issues in schooling
    • Work in a school library media centers or design and deliver instruction at a distance
  4. Master of Science (Plan A) will be able to:
    • Perform research

Documents:

Mapping:

Outcomes Data:

(2017 data integrated into decisions below)

Instructional Technology Needs Assessment Study:

Data-based Decisions:


Competencies and Indicators