The College must collectively assess all of its institutional learning goals (outcomes) so that it
can determine how well students are meeting them. Assessment of these expected outcomes is
also a requirement for the College’s accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher
Education (MSCHE). Outstanding Communication Skills in Diverse Media and Skills in
Quantitative Reasoning, Information Literacy and Research are two of College’s seven goals and
the Value rubrics are well aligned them. Using the Value rubric to assess these goals will allow
for a common assessment across a large number of course sections.

For this project to be successful, students must submit the assignment that will be the focus of
the assessment in Blackboard. Instructors also must enter their rubric scores in Blackboard.
This will allow the College to aggregate the scores across hundreds of course sections taking
part in this project. 

You may continue to use Turnitin as a tool to create assignments and to provide students with
feedback. This is exactly what Turnitin is designed to do. However, Turnitin does not give us
the ability to aggregate the scores on the Value rubric across large numbers of sections.

You may continue to use your existing rubrics and other scoring tools to provide students with
grades on any given assignment. We also are asking you to “score” one of your course’s major
writing assignments using the AAC&U’s Written Communication Value rubric. This rubric will
be used by instructors in all LEH sections to assess how well students are writing across the
College.

We recommend that you show the rubric to your students, but you do not have to. Showing the
rubric to students makes your evaluation criteria transparent and helps students understand
what your expectations are.

No. Please do not alter the rubric. We realize that the rubric is not perfect for every situation,
but altering it will prevent us from being able to aggregate the scores consistently.

This will depend. We do not expect students in lower level classes to achieve the highest level
of “Capstone”. We also do not expect all upper level students to receive the highest scores. We
want you to provide an honest assessment based on the criteria on the rubric

It depends. It may take a bit longer initially as you become familiar with the rubric, but once
you begin scoring papers, you will likely increase the pace with which you score students’
works.

No, the assessments will not be used to evaluate the performance of instructors. 

Your course does not need to be quantitative, per se. Quantitative reasoning assignments can
be incorporated into many types of courses. Please contact Naomi Spence or Mia Budescu for
ways in which you can include QR in your course. You may also consult the following website -
http://www.lehman.edu/academics/wac/quantitative-reasoning.php.