Mission-driven, Manageable and Meaningful Assessment of an Undergraduate Neuroscience Program

Academia has recently been under mounting pressure to increase accountability and intentionality in instruction through development of student "intended learning outcomes" (ILOs) developed at multiple levels (e.g., course, program, major, and even institution). Once these learning goals have been determined, then classroom instruction can be purposefully designed to map onto those intended outcomes in a "backward design" process (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The ongoing challenge with any such process, however, is in determining one's effectiveness in achieving these intended learning goals, so it is critical that efficient tools can be developed that enable these goals to be assessed. In addition, an important requirement of any ILOs is that they are mission-driven, meaningful and parsed in such a way that they can be used to obtain evidence in a manageable way. So how can we effectively assess these outcomes in our students? This paper describes key factors to consider in the planning and implementation of assessment for an undergraduate neuroscience program.