Doing Assessment Well: Advances for Undergraduate Psychology Programs and Psychology Educators

Abstract

This article discusses how assessment tools can be used to improve student learning in undergraduate bachelors (BA/BS) in psychology programs. The article first reviews particular advantages associated with using curricular and cocurricular maps for performing systematic program assessment. After identifying various assessment tools created by the American Psychological Association, we discuss some essential arenas for program assessment in psychology, including curricular structure and related issues, introductory psychology, capstone courses, internships, research experiences and honors projects, graduate placement data, and routine academic program reviews. We close the article by offering assessment tips for program administrators.

Assessing the implementation of a short psychological critical thinking intervention in traditional and online courses.

“…For example, Canvas now has a “must view the item” option that requires students to view a video before moving on in the course. Finally, this research may be valuable to program administrators who want to incorporate an easy critical thinking measure into their department’s assessment program (Dunn et al, 2020).…”

“…For example, Canvas now has a "must view the item" option that requires students to view a video before moving on in the course. Finally, this research may be valuable to program administrators who want to incorporate an easy critical thinking measure into their department's assessment program (Dunn et al, 2020). Future research should explore factors that could affect PCT acquisition during a course, such as the examining adding more components to a critical thinking lesson, the effects of length of the course, refining the rubric, and assessing students' evaluations of the lesson and their changing motivations throughout the course of the semester.…”

Writing across the curriculum: A longitudinal assessment of psychology majors’ writing development.

“…Because we did not compare psychology majors to other students or nonstudents, it is still unclear whether the writing gains observed were due to content from our psychology curriculum or whether these gains were due to content learned from other courses or writing skill development that would have occurred naturally over time. It is rare for academic assessments to include control groups; in fact, in several recent articles making recommendations about conducting assessments in psychology, there is no mention of including comparison groups (e.g., Chew et al, 2020;Dunn et al, 2018Dunn et al, , 2020. Typically, one-group pretest-posttest designs are viewed as quality assessments in academia.…”

“…Although one reason to do this type of assessment is because it is required for academic program review, it can also have other benefits. Namely, the collaborative nature of program-level assessment has the advantage of fostering departmental discussions of student learning goals and teaching practices (Dunn et al, 2020). The purpose of this article is to describe how our department conducted a program-level writing assessment, which included the development of an authentic assignment that addressed multiple course learning objectives and a longitudinal assessment of students' writing skills across three course levels.…”

The work-life balance of academic psychologists: Evidence and anecdote.

“…Still others routinely change textbooks in a never-ending search for the “right” one for their course. Many of us tinker with and tweak our courses in an ongoing manner, but not to a place where we undermine our own good efforts (and we wish to point out that using teaching and learning assessments wisely is one way to refine courses without undue stress; see Dunn et al, 2020). Often, undue perfectionism is linked with both health and psychological challenges (Albert et al, 2016; Dittner et al, 2011; Leonard & Harvey, 2008).…”