2011 ASSESSMENT OF GRADUATE STUDENT LEARNING
D. Conclusions
Graduate students in the program appear to be more than meeting the standards that are required. Since the inception of the assessment program for evaluating SLOs students have consistently trended toward exceeding expectations. The data also indicate that there has been a consistent improvement in the achievement of all six learning outcomes at each of the three assessment points over the duration of the assessment period. Furthermore Ph.D. level graduates consistently score higher than their Master’s level counterparts on nearly all of the SLOs. This stable trend may be attributable to several factors. First, graduate students were involved in the development of the SLOs as well as the assessment instrument. Hence, they are aware of the criterion that they are going to be evaluated on and consequently have changed their behavior accordingly. Second, there have been several programmatic changes, such as the introduction of a compulsory ethics course and the continuing development of the quantitative and research requirements of the program that may have facilitated the early achievement of some of the learning outcomes. Third, our graduate program is structured such that graduate students are immersed in research early on. Most of the quantitative and research skills that are necessary to complete graduate studies are taught in the first three semesters of the program. Consequently there is a steep learning curve in the first two years that is indicated by a “ceiling effect.” Nonetheless, it is validating to note that achievement of these SLOs improves over the course of the students academic career, with highest outcome scores being recorded at the completion of the student’s academic career (dissertation defense) and the lowest scores occurring at the first point of assessment (i.e., thesis defense).
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