Assessment Philosophy

Our goal was to stimulate curricular innovation, but more importantly, to stimulate effective curricular innovation, i.e. innovation that really helps accomplish the educational goals of the course. Effective curricular innovation requires that curriculum development and assessment be intertwined. To know whether one is effective in meeting educational goals, one needs to clearly explicate those goals, and develop and use reliable assessment tools to measure when one has/has not been successful in meeting those goals. Through this process one can then determine how things might be improved in the future.

Assessment Goals

Our assessment goals are really twofold. Encourage the assessment of curricular innovation in individual courses. Furthermore, we want to set up this process of assessment so it is perpetuated. Do a global assessment of the projects sponsored by AIRE and the impact of introducing more research-like experiences into courses.