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Planning and Assessment

Planning and Assessment in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

At The College of New Jersey

group discussionPlanning and assessment are integrated in the process of continual improvement in the programs of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at The College of New Jersey. In accordance with TCNJ policy, on a staggered rotation every seven years each department conducts a rigorous self-study followed by an external review conducted by a scholar or scholars from that discipline who work(s) at another institution. In the year following the self-study and the external review, departments revise their strategic plans or create new strategic plans. Each department’s strategic plan is approved first by the department and then by the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The strategic plan includes an explicit articulation of the learning outcomes of the given major.

In the year following the approval of the department’s strategic plan, the department revises or creates a new plan for the assessment of learning outcomes. This plan includes enumerative, quantitative, and qualitative analyses of learning outcomes for the major, outcomes that include the more generalized learning outcomes for all majors in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The assessment plan is approved by the School’s Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee, a committee that consists of faculty representatives from all the departments in the School; the College’s Assessment Coordinator sits, ex officio, on this committee as well. Click here for a list of the principles for assessment in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Click here for the website of the HSS Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee.

classroom discussionOnce approved, the learning outcomes assessment plan is posted both to the department’s website and to the HSS Planning and Assessment Website and becomes the blueprint for the collection of data related to learning outcomes for the next several years (until the revision of the Assessment plan following the department’s next external review and revision of its Strategic Plan). Each department creates annual reports based on the approved assessment plan; these reports include a summary of the data collected and the analysis of those data by the faculty in the given department, as well as an enumeration of any steps considered or taken in response to the analysis of the data. These assessment reports are submitted to and approved by the HSS Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee and, after committee approval, submitted to the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College’s Assessment Coordinator in the Center for Institutional Effectiveness. The reports are ultimately posted to the given department’s website and the College’s Assessment website.

group listeningDepartments in the School of Humanities of Social Sciences began the regular process of self-study and external review in a staggered schedule over the course of the last several years. Accordingly, the departments enter into the newly established cycle of assessment, as described above, in a staggered rotation, as depicted in this chart.

Click here to download copies of departmental strategic plans, plans for the assessment of learning outcomes, and assessment reports, as they become available (based on the rotation described above).

Contact

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Sciences Building, Room 302
The College of New Jersey
P.O. Box 7718
2000 Pennington Rd.
Ewing, NJ 08628

609.771.3434
hss@tcnj.edu

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