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            Troy E. Grandel, Wilmington University
            Susan J. Martin, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
            Paul E. Sum, University of North Dakota
            Michael M. Welsh, Keene State College
            Russell K. Mayer, Merrimack College

The assessment track brought together a group of teacher-scholars from a variety of backgrounds: veterans and newcomers, researchers and practitioners, the quantitatively and qualitatively predisposed, skeptics and true believers.  Yet, despite the range of expertise and experiences we brought to the table, our conversation converged around several key points that defined the current state of thinking regarding assessment in political science.

The Conversation Has Changed
The discussion regarding assessment in political science has evolved significantly over the six years of the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference.  Track participants noted that their colleagues are much more likely than they were in the past to accept the idea that assessment is a part of what we do as teachers and professionals.  While many in our group maintain a healthy skepticism about the value of assessment, and continue to question and periodically re-evaluate the benefits of “the assessment project” in general, we now dwell less on the question of whether to do assessment, and spend our time thinking about how best to do it.

External and Internal Motivators
Two drivers motivate departments to assess. The first is external, typically featuring administrators, compelled by accrediting bodies, who themselves may feel the pressure of political agendas. The second is internal, involving a department’s professors and instructors, who want to ensure that their teaching, and student learning, meets their personal and professional expectations. We want to know that our graduating students are becoming engaged and knowledgeable citizens, competent and creative grad students, and politically mindful and responsible professionals.  The second motivation is the better one, and was cited often in the papers and discussions in our track.  However, the increasing demands on our time make it difficult – if one is being honest – to imagine assessment being pursued is the absence of the first, less noble, external motivator. At the very least our motivation is unlikely to be pure.

The trick then is to prevent the dangers that arise when assessment is subservient to external forces. The desire for expedience in a program’s design and execution can lead to one such danger. What could be easier than giving students a test, particularly one pre-approved or perhaps designed by the very entities urging you to assess? The risk, of course, is a program whose more noble goals are reduced to teaching to a test – a surrender of academic freedom and professional responsibility.  Another danger is the potential for assessment methods to become a means for disciplining unpopular department members, or as a measure of performance used in deciding promotion and tenure. While we disagreed about the extent of this danger, we concurred that assessment used this way undermines a culture of assessment since student learning outcomes are affected by many factors beyond faculty performance. 
The solution to avoiding these pitfalls demonstrated in several papers is departmental responsibility for assessment design, implementation, and evaluation.  Departments should design and evaluate their own assessment plans, as well as control access to and use of these data.  Furthermore, if the burden of and responsibility for assessment falls on departments, then departments require the resources and autonomy needed to make this exercise a success.

Ideal Assessment: Simple and Adaptable
If assessment is to be a truly useful, departmentally-controlled enterprise, that enhances student learning, then we offer the following advice to our colleagues charged with designing and implementing assessment plans.  The highest priority is keep it simple.  Be clear with student learning goals and objectives.  Consider phraseology such as critical thinking, effective communication, and knowledge of the discipline which are flexible enough to be applied to many settings.  Be straightforward with measurements and analysis of data.  Strive for direct measures of student learning outcomes as well as indirect measures, such as student perceptions captured through surveys.   Reflect upon the results with an open-mind.

Simplicity is paramount, in part, because overly complex assessment makes closing the loop difficult, if not impossible.  It is better to measure a few things well rather than many things poorly.  Departments do not have to measure every section every semester; rather, a sampling of sections and semesters is best.  In addition, departments should use assessment to measure program level goals, not course level goals.  Whenever possible, departments should integrate assessment across the curriculum, in part because using assessment to integrate program level goals across the curriculum can help facilitate faculty acceptance of assessment and ease concerns about possible reprisals with a course level assessment.

In addition, assessment must be adaptable.  There is no “one size fits all” solution to doing assessment, and the mission and goals of a program and the institution should dictate methods of assessment.  Good assessment also changes in response to the broader context of higher education, both the political factors inherent in the assessment process and the changing environment of higher education instruction, for example with the introduction of service-learning and on-line courses.  Assessment should be flexible enough to incorporate both formative and summative data, and be smart enough to distinguish between the two.  Ideally, and over the course of an entire assessment cycle, departments should use multiple outcomes measures including syllabi review, pretest-posttest questions, rubrics, and capstone courses.  Successful departments will adjust both their assessment methods and the goals that they are assessing periodically, but to make assessment useful a departmentally identified linkage between goals and methods is critical.