Assessment of Student Outcomes Assessment of Student Outcomes

Iowa’s Public Universities and Special Schools will demonstrate that their student outcomes assessment programs help students achieve identified learning goals

“The identification of student learning goals within academic programs and the ongoing measurement of students’ progress toward these goals, throughout the learning process, are important keys to student success.”

  • Regent Katie Mulholland

Alongside their financial efforts, Iowa’s Public Universities and Special Schools demonstrate accountability for what students learn from their educational experience. Student outcomes assessment programs represent an ongoing effort to define, measure and report evidence of student learning. This is critical to ensuring a quality learning experience that benefits each student at Iowa’s Public Universities and Special Schools, and particularly one that prepares students for the Iowa workforce.

Of the 254 undergraduate academic programs offered at Iowa’s Public Universities in FY 2011, the universities have been successful in developing student outcomes assessment plans, with established targets, for 161 academic programs. Student outcomes assessments for the universities’ remaining programs are in varying stages of development as the Board and the universities are committed to this initiative for all undergraduate academic programs. This commitment includes a dedicated student outcomes coordinator on each campus who is charged with working with faculty in defining the process of student outcomes assessment.

At Iowa’s Special Schools for FY 2011, the Iowa School for the Deaf reported an ongoing student outcomes assessment plan with specified targets and measurement tools, and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School reported an assessment plan at varying stages of development with completion of an initial implementation phase.