Centralizing the Approach to Assessment

Middle States criticized Small School’s decentralized process of student learning outcome assessment and recognized the lack of systematization and documentation. Therefore, two critical steps to centralization occurred: I was named the Director of Assessment and Institutional Research (DAIR) and the institution formed an academic assessment committee. The assessment committee includes the DAIR as chairperson and four faculty members known as assessment coordinators. This move was in the spirit of Kotter’s step 2 – creating a guiding coalition. It was important for us to work to develop a vision and strategy for our new assessment process (step 3), communicate the vision to colleagues (step 4), and empower action by removing obstacles (step 5) (Kotter, 2012).

As a group representing multiple perspectives, the assessment committee took on several key experiments throughout the year including piloting a rubric to provide feedback on assessment reports (something that was inconsistently done in the past), establishing a revised assessment report template for the 2018-19 submissions (a previous template was also inconsistently used and a barrier to creating an acceptable report), and changing the deadline for those submissions (new). Addressing only the latter Test of Change, brainstorming conversations led the assessment committee to acknowledge that the previous August 1 deadline created an obstacle to using feedback for the upcoming academic year; so, the committee changed the deadline to the end of May so that departments could receive assessment feedback by mid-summer, learn from the feedback, and incorporate it into their planning for the upcoming academic year – Kotter’s (2012) step 5 empowering broad-based action. The experimental mindset enabled the committee to make the change – an educated guess (Heifetz et al., 2009).

Worth explicitly noting, the improvement science model informed the assessment committee’s work by using PDSA cycles to revise the feedback rubric. Namely, the committee adopted an established rubric from another institution (plan) with the prediction it would improve the feedback loop to chairpersons. Throughout the course of evaluating the 2017-18 assessment reports, committee members jotted down aspects of the rubric that did not work (do). As a committee we spent extensive time tweaking the rubric to make it more focused on Small School’s assessment process rather than the generic nature of the piloted rubric (study). Finally, the assessment committee revised the rubric and used it during the evaluation of the 2018-19 reports (act). This PDSA cycle capitalized on multiple perspectives from the assessment committee, school deans, and faculty chairpersons who were the recipients of the feedback. This example, once again, shows how Kotter’s (2012) step 5 – empowering broad-based action – to rid the process of obstacles was key to developing a more useful rubric and contributed to developing a strategy to achieve the vision (step 3).

3.2.1.1 Aligning the System

The committee successfully completed the above mentioned PDSA and implemented a consistent feedback loop between the committee, school dean, and academic department chairpersons via the rubric; the committee, however, was not without challenges. Colleagues on the committee fell into old cultural habits in regard to protecting the status quo during committee work. For instance, three of the four assessment coordinators had served in the role prior to the establishment of the committee in the centralized model. The decentralized coordinator role was in many ways a “name only” position that did not produce much valuable action or support for good student learning outcome assessment. School deans held decentralized assessment

coordinators inconsistently accountable and with no documented process it was hard to give consistent direction.

From my leadership role as chairperson of the newly formed assessment committee and the person now responsible for centralized assessment, I concluded that two of four assessment coordinators posed challenges to forward momentum. Namely, one member agreed with everything that I said and did not contribute original thoughts or challenge ideas, while the other strongly held on to the status quo of the old way of assessment – continue to monitor but take no action. I saw all of Heifetz et al.’s (2009) adaptive leadership archetypes emerging – work avoidance, speaking the unspeakable, competing commitments, and the gap between espoused values and behavior – and I knew in order to be an adaptive leader I could not ignore warning signs that could threaten our assessment progress. I also saw some of Kotter’s (2012) common errors to organizational change efforts occurring – “allowing too much complacency and failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition” (p. 16). Therefore, after consultation with the school deans and Vice President for Academic Affairs, I made a change to committee membership for the 2019- 20 academic year. I did not know if this committee membership change would be effective or not, but I could not take the risk of the status quo continuing. “…To practice leadership, you need to accept that you are in the business of generating chaos, confusion, and conflict, for yourself and others around you” (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 206).

The assessment committee is currently still very much a work-in-progress, an opportunity for me to continue to practice adaptive leadership. “The culture-creation leader therefore needs persistence and patience, yet as a learner must be flexible and ready to change” (Schein, 2017, p. 351). I can see that I need to find ways to infuse professional development for the assessment coordinators and not rely on their self-motivation to explore new assessment strategies and explore

the scholarship of teaching and learning. In the coming year, I hope to execute another Test of Change by developing an onboarding process for a new assessment coordinator and developing a retreat to enhance coordinators’ confidence and know-how in order to help other departments. Both tests of change will be significantly influenced by what I learned through my Test of Change assessment consultation for this doctoral study.