Pathways Assessment
Please note: Pathways assessment data collection for the 2023-24 academic year has been suspended and will resume Fall 2024.
New Pathways Assessment Process (as of Fall '24)
The University Curriculum Committee for General Education (UCCGE) has revised the former assessment process with the following goals in mind:
- To lessen faculty burden
- To provide more individual support to faculty throughout the process
- To create a process that collects less--but more accurate and usable--data
- To make program improvements in a timely manner
Under the new process, instructors will submit assessment for a section of a specific course a maximum of once every four years, as opposed to every time the course is taught. When instructors are selected for assessment, they will be notified by email by the end of the semester before the one in which they are selected. For example, if you are selected to submit data assessment for the Spring 2025 semester, you will receive an email notification by the end of the Fall 2024 semester.
The manner of submitting assessment data has also been updated. Instead of manually submitting data in an Excel or Word file, Pathways data will be extracted from Canvas at the end of the semester. Using Canvas course sites, instructors will select the student work that will be used for Pathways assessment and then assess that work as part of the normal grading process.
Pathways assessment data will be used to inform and improve the Pathways curriculum to enhance student learning at Virginia Tech, not to evaluate individual instructors or courses. Submitted data will be aggregated at the student learning outcome level, ensuring that data are not student, instructor, or course identifiable.
To fine-tune the program, faculty (particularly members of UCCGE) will come together to discuss the aggregated results and make plans for improvement.
The new process will be conducted on a four-year cycle, in which data are collected from instructors in years one and two, the Pathways community analyzes the data in year three, and makes any needed improvements in year four (see below).
Assessment data are collected from a sample of ~200 course sections in the fall semester and ~200 course sections in the spring semester.
Assessment data are collected from a sample of ~200 course sections in the fall semester and ~200 course sections in the spring semester.
Faculty working groups come together with UCCGE to discuss the aggregated data collected in the first two years, and recommend improvements to the Pathways program.
As needed, recommended improvements go through university governance.