GEM Assessment

Assessment Process

The GEM Assessment can occur in any semester. The college sets a minimum benchmark for spring data entry.

• Early Semester

  • Division Chairs Instructional Leadership and GEM faculty receive SLOA reminders about GEM assessment.

  • SLOA checks in with GEM faculty, Division Chairs. and administrative assistants. Makes sure GEM rubrics are imported into all GEM Canvas classes.

• Mid Semester
  

  • SLOA reaches out to Division Chairs to choose GEM leaders for fall GEM Assessment workshops.
  • All Full-time, Part-Time, and Dual-Credit GEM Faculty select the assignment(s) to assess and score students using their GEM assessment rubric.

• End of Semester

  • GEM Assessment Data for due by June 15.
  • Dashboards created for GEM areas by August 1. Divisions and faculty can then use data to examine student success, plan for learning improvements, and have data visualizations to inform teaching and learning.

• Next Semester

  • GEM Assessment Workshops and Action Plans for next year's cycle occur during fall semesters.
  • Programs continue to select classes to assess, adding to their data dashboards, and building a more robust picture of student success.
    

Through Canvas

Import

These instructions will import, into your Canvas courses, an assignment (and rubric) with all the GEM competencies for your area. Whether you intend to use a rubric or quiz questions for GEM assessment, this is the first step in that process. When you course copy through eLearning to move your materials to the next semester, this assignment/rubric and the affiliated outcomes will be copied, and you will not have to repeat this process. 

1. Log in to Canvas 
2. Click on the Commons icon in the menu on the left.
3. In the search bar, search for “GEM Outcomes Assessment” and select the appropriate GEM area for your course.  
4. On the right side of the screen, under the picture, click on import/download.
5. Select all of your GEM courses for the current term.  
6. Click on Import into Course.
7. When you return to your Canvas course(s), you can check that the rubric was imported by going to Rubrics in your course menu.

Implementation

Once your GEM assignment/rubric is imported to your class, you have flexibility in how you want to assess students on the GEM competencies.

1. Use the imported assignment/rubric to indicate whether each student met expectations on a signature assessment (this mirrors the current GEM assessment process in several GEM areas).  
2. You can also choose to alter the imported assignment so that its attached GEM rubric is used to score student submissions for your signature GEM assessment. (i.e. rename the assignment, publish it, and have students submit their assignment using it so that you can use the rubric while grading that work).  
3. You can implement the rubric on an already existing homework assignment (click on the assignment in Canvas and “find rubric”)
4. You can choose to edit your existing rubrics and select “Find outcome”, then select whichever GEM outcomes are applicable to that rubric content (or create a rubric containing only a few outcomes using the same process).

Viewing Student Attainment of Competencies

You can view your Learning Mastery Gradebook in Canvas by

1. Going to Grades, clicking on the Gradebook dropdown menu
2. Selecting Learning Mastery Gradebook.
3. You will be able to see the percentage of your students who are meeting expectations in the GEM competencies by hovering your cursor over the top of each column.

Why are we doing this new process?

This shift to Canvas for outcomes assessment is a result of NWCCU’s recommendation to the college, in the spring of 2020, that we need to "use a systematic approach to student learning outcomes assessment" across programs and in our classes.

Starting Spring of 2021, all GEM data will be extracted from Canvas and bundled into reports for the different GEM faculty to analyze and plan actions.  These reports of your student's performance will be provided for use in your GEM area’s continued assessment process. For now, this digital process just provides an easier way to gather your data.

Regarding the use of Quizzes (and question banks) rather than rubrics

It is possible to align question banks with specific GEM Competencies, such that student performance on questions pulled from those question banks is reported directly to the Learning Mastery Gradebook. This process MUST be done prior to students taking the exam/quiz that is being used to assess the outcomes.