Use an Equity Lens in Assessment Work – On-Demand Training

Give Voice to Student Populations that May Otherwise Be Hidden in Typical Data

In a keynote address, Dr. Joseph Levy stated, “When we focus on the overall or average, we risk masking the margins and teaching to the middle”. Typically, assessment work is focused on the middle, or average, so how do we change how we approach assessment projects in order to give voice and ensure equity in our work? Approaching our assessment questions from the asset model and borrowing techniques from critical quantitative analysis utilized in research can help you do just that.

Join our expert presenter – Dr. Kimberly Yousey-Elsener, Director of Student Affairs Assessment and Solutions for Engagement (SAASE) at Binghamton University – who describes critical quantitative analysis and how that translates into assessment work in order to create a new lens to approach your work, as well as the asset model and how this concept can be embedded into assessment questions and problems.

You’ll be able to look at the assessment cycle and where you can infuse this new lens into the assessment planning, data gathering, analysis and reporting stages you engage in at your institution. Using examples from assessment projects you’ll examine how they can be re-focused using a critical lens to ask different questions and give voice to student populations that may otherwise be hidden in typical assessment data.

Topics Covered

Take away critical, actionable tools that will help you:

• Examine current assessment questions and/or outcomes from a critical lens – give voice to student populations that may otherwise be hidden in typical assessment data.
• Determine if different data collection tools, approaches and or analysis are needed in order to include more voices – embed new models and approaches into your current practices to ensure you are representing all voices throughout the phases of your assessment cycle.
• Identity where the deficit model is being infused into assessment practices.
• Alter assessment plans from the definite model to the asset model – examine issues from looking at what is working, rather than what is broken so you can help even more students succeed.
• Translate critical quantitative analysis research into assessment practice – create a new lens to approach your work.

Presenter

Dr. Kimberly Yousey-Elsener is the Director of Student Affairs Assessment and Solutions for Engagement (SAASE) at Binghamton University.
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