Research Agenda
Research Agenda
The Center’s Postsecondary Research Agenda is led by Marilee Bresciani, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Postsecondary Education in the Department of Administration, Rehabilitation, and Postsecondary Education and Frank Harris III, Ed.D., Assistant Professor of Postsecondary Education in the Department of Administration, Rehabilitation, and Postsecondary Education.
The research agenda has four areas of emphasis.
1) Good Practices in Assessment of Student Learning and Development
2) Evaluation of Technological Systems that Promote Transparency in Quality Student Learning and Development
In order to capture the intricacies of learning that are taking place in each academic discipline at varying institutional types and cultures, the faculty - the discipline experts themselves – must be able to plan, select, and deliver or facilitate the learning as well as the methods in which to identify whether the learning is occurring. In order for decisions to be made which will improve the facilitation of unique student learning, the information to identify learning must be gathered with great detail and in a manner that has meaning to the facilitators of the learning. In addition, this information must be documented in a way that demonstrates what has been discovered about learning, how learning has been identified, and what decisions have been made in order to improve the learning. Furthermore, the findings must be related to state indicators of performance. Such documentation requires a sophisticated web-enabled software system.
ASSESS is the design for a web-based assessment management system that accommodates course and program assessment process data. ASSESS captures the entire assessment process from data entry, storage and organization, through alignment of course and program outcomes to unit, division, institution, system, and re-accreditation goals, and finally to reporting.
ASSESS allows faculty and administrators to capture each step of the assessment process. Those steps include the articulation of mission, outcomes, assessment methods, tools, results, decisions, and recommendations. They also include plans for delivery of program improvements, detailed results, and comprehensible summaries. Graphical displays of the aforementioned data provide higher-level decision makers with more understandable summaries of the preceding steps and their results. ASSESS pulls the information captured by the program and course providers into meaningful summaries, easily applicable to local, state, national, and international policy discussions on the quality of higher education.
Results from data entries into ASSESS can inform conversations for improving student success, which includes course improvement, program improvement, enrollment planning/access, enrollment management/retnetion, budget reallocations, accreditation reports, institutional initiatives such as diversity, and improvement in core learning values such as writing and critical thinking.
For more information about ASSESS, please contact Marilee Bresciani at marilee.bresciani@mail.sdsu.edu
3) Identification of Institutional Characteristics that Contribute to Student Learning and Development
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Information Coming Soon)
4) College Student Development; Issues Concerning College Men and Maculinities; Gendered Trends in Postsecondary Learning Environments; Equity in Student Outcomes for Historically Underrepresented/ Underserved Student Populations