Academic Assessment
Every successful curriculum includes careful assessment of student learning. Given the real costs of providing these data, it is important to ensure that assessment is meaningful and useful. The assessment program at Bates College is at various stages of faculty thinking and implementation. It utilizes multiple approaches, including assessment of student work, focus groups with students, in-house questionnaires, and national surveys. A key to our recent assessment methods are direct sessions with faculty in which they discuss standards and evaluate student work. Bates College is fortunate that a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation has supported assessment of the three-tiered writing requirement of the new General Education curriculum and of the senior thesis. At the same time, funding from the Teagle Foundation supports a joint Bates-Bowdoin project to assess quantitative literacy, another cornerstone of the Bates General Education curriculum.
Quantitative Reasoning Assessment