image of students in a science lab with the following words over them: "KSU Core Impacts"

Goals

General education assessment has grown increasingly important in higher education accreditation. Institutions assess program student learning outcomes (PSLOs) through direct, course-embedded measures to inform continuous improvement and demonstrate accountability (SACS-COC manual section 8.2).The University System of Georgia rolled out the “Core IMPACTS” curriculum in 2024 to unify and clarify general education across 7 domains including the Institutional Priority, Mathematics & Quantitative Skills, Political Science & US History, Art/Humanities & Ethics, Communication in Writing, Technology/Mathematics & Sciences, and Social Sciences (BOR handbook section 2.4). Since the core IMPACTS PSLOs have only been in place since 2024, much work remains in establishing baseline proficiency and normed benchmarks across the institution. This project aims to analyze normalized, direct assessment data to articulate institutional benchmarks of student proficiency, to study how these data vary across demographically disaggregated results, and to support a three-year assessment cycle for institutional accreditation. This comprehensive, data-driven approach will guide campus conversations around continuous improvement planning within our general education curriculum.

Key Research Questions

  1. How proficient are students across the seven PSLOs in the Core IMPACTS areas?
  2. What are institution-wide baselines, and how do those vary across demographic groups?
  3. How can these insights guide continuous improvement in general education at KSU?

Experience Gained

The student role will involve analyzing the data generated from Core IMPACTS course assessments. We will begin by reviewing raw data from a sample data set of student performance aligned with one of the seven PSLOs. Next, we will work on converting raw scores to normalized scores, translating data into a common proficiency scales (Not Proficient, Proficient, Highly Proficient).

Once the data are normalized, we will construct institutional proficiency profiles by summarizing the percentage of students not meeting, meeting, or exceeding proficiency on each PSLO. Then we will look to see if patterns emerge (e.g., differences by major, race, age, etc.).

An important part of the work will focus on visualization of data like bar charts or heat-maps to illustrate performance across PSLOs and groups for the campus community which will will help to transform raw assessment data into actionable institutional data, enabling KSU to engage in continuous improvement in general education.

Majors and Interests Needed

 All students are welcome to apply, regardless of major.

Christopher Dockery
Faculty Director of General Education
Professor of Chemistry
Email: cdockery@kennesaw.edu