The Role of Discipline Associations in Program Assessment

Exploring Undergraduate Research Projects Success Factors in Muni University, Uganda

“…Over the past three (3) decades, many national stakeholders and disciplinary associations in the United States of America have been calling for improved accountability in higher education which has increased the educational outcomes at both the departmental and institutional levels (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2015). Many of such disciplinary associations have encouraged departments to promote undergraduate research as a means of accomplishing goals such as: pushing students to fully explore Bloom's Taxonomy, a foundational classification of learning objectives culminating in a student's ability to analyse and to evaluate information by creating new knowledge; and creating feedback that faculty and administrators can use for assessment purposes, which is seen in Young and Crews (2012) as cited in Crews (2013). It was advanced that this helps learners to benefit from the experience of conducting independent studies and from the direct feedback from faculty mentors, examiners and other reviewers, while departments/faculties and institutions can utilise the students' performances as feedback for internal purposes, using URPs' competency to review programs to prepare the next cohort of learners to advance their abilities to engage in independent work.…”