Developing a sustainable faculty-driven program assessment plan in undergraduate physiology
Authors: Stanescu Claudia 
Published: May 2023

Developing a program assessment plan from scratch is a challenging task whether it is for a new or existing program that requires revision. When leadership develops and runs the program assessment plan, there is a risk to sustainability. Our goal was to develop a sustainable assessment plan, that is faculty-developed and faculty-driven, for the large (~1800 students) Physiology and Medical Sciences major at the University of Arizona. At an annual retreat, faculty brainstormed program student learning outcomes (SLOs) and discussed their ideas. This information was used to compile a list of 12 SLOs (7 on knowledge, 5 on skills) that were circulated for feedback at a faculty meeting. Feedback was incorporated and used to create a shortened list of six SLOs that could be measured. The SLO list included: 1) knowledge of systems physiology; 2) knowledge of cellular physiology; 3) integration of concepts from cellular to systems level; 4) knowledge of current topics in physiology; 5) effectively read, evaluate and communicate scientific information; 6) conduct and/or evaluate laboratory experiments in physiology. This list was presented at a subsequent faculty meeting for additional feedback. An Assessment Task Force (ATF) was created, as a subcommittee of the Physiology Curriculum Committee, that would collect and analyze data. This group included faculty whose courses best aligned with learning outcomes and who offered to run assessment measures in their classes. This group collaborated on which measures should be used for each program SLO and on the cutoffs for acceptable (>70-80%) versus ideal (>80-85) goals for each outcome measure. Data collection was phased-in over a three-year period, with indirect measures collected through yearly senior surveys and direct measures collected through pre-post clicker questions in two large core courses and two elective courses. ATF faculty members collect data and implement changes to make improvements to student learning in their courses. Data analysis is completed by the chair of the ATF, shared with the ATF, and submitted to the Office of Instruction and Assessment for compliance and feedback. Assessment results are shared yearly during a faculty meeting and feedback is collected. All feedback is used to improve the assessment plan and make changes as needed. This process led to the refinement of program SLOs and reduction from six to five total program learning outcomes (SLO #4 was eliminated). Future changes include addition of demographics to data analysis using Gradescope for identification of achievement gaps. The assessment plan has evolved over the past seven years and changes were implemented to our courses in response to assessment results. In conclusion, our group successfully created a faculty-driven, sustainable assessment plan. This plan requires a few faculty members who are committed to data collection and one faculty member to coordinate data analysis and dissemination of results. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.