Experimental Design and Outcome Assessment

We all have them: outcomes that students struggle to master, and consistently do poorly on. Or we struggle with student engagement, retention, and success. Using basic experimental design, we can develop assessment projects to pilot new pedagogies and methodologies and evaluate their success. A sample assessment project that was completed at NHCC over the 2015–2016 academic year is available here.

Develop your own assessment project using features of basic experimental design.

1. What are you trying to measure? (A specific outcome, retention, etc.)
2. How long will you take data? (A semester, a year, etc.)
3. How many subjects are involved? (All students enrolled in your courses, a specific course, a specific section, etc.)
4. What is your current practice?
5. What is the current result associated with this practice?
6. What is your hypothesized relationship between current practice (#4) and current result (#5)?
7. What will you change?
8. Will you have a control group?
9. What does a successful outcome of this project look like?
10. How will you measure success?

A project like this is a perfect method for collecting student feedback for your formal Faculty Evaluation (see Part 3, Subpart E). You are encouraged to discuss your assessment project both with the NHCC LOA team, as well as your dean.