Conducting Assessment

At CU Boulder, assessment takes place at the individual, course, program and institutional level. The ODA assessment team focuses primarily on the program level and supports campus partners throughout the assessment cycle. Our website provides helpful tools and information for conducting assessment.

Assessment is a cyclical process. For many programs at CU, the foundation for conducting assessment is already in place. The assessment cycle supports a continuous process of improvement by planning, implementation, assessing and reporting:

1. Plan: The planning phase determines – in advance – what a program would like to achieve and how it will measure whether their efforts were successful.  There are several key elements to the planning phase, among them:
   • Writing effective learning outcomes
   • Curriculum mapping 
   • Data collection procedures and types of evidence
2. Implement: The implementation phase consists of letting faculty and staff do what they are great at! For example, designing and teaching course material as part of the implementation phase.
3. Assess: The assessment phase collects and analyzes data to determine whether the efforts from the implementation phase were successful in achieving the targets set in the “plan” phase.
4. Report: The reporting phase presents the assessment results and, most importantly, follows up with actionable “next steps” for program improvement to help achieve the program’s targets for the next assessment cycle.

Use the links on the right side of this page to access helpful information in navigating the assessment process.