The evolution of curriculum assessment within the physics program

Whether a physics department is situated within an engineering program or within a liberal artsprogram, assessment can play an important part of overall program development and curricularenhancement. Regardless of the accrediting agency, assessment is of critical importance at theinstitutional level as well. At the 2007 ASEE conference in Honolulu, we reported on acomplete redesign of the curriculum for the physics major at XX University. Since our earlierreport we have continued with annual assessments, focusing each year on one or two of thecourses within our overall program. These annual assessments have allowed us to pinpoint thestrengths and weaknesses of our redesigned curriculum, and have led to additional curricularrevisions and changes. In this paper, we report on these curricular revisions and changes, withan emphasis on our efforts from 2007 forward. With a focus on the learning outcomes for ourprogram, we will share how we have used an assessment-based framework to support ourcurricular revisions. In addition, we will discuss the goals and objectives we have created to help us achieve the intended learning outcomes. As appropriate, we will share specific examples of our assessment plan, featuring strategies and tools used for individual physics courses. With each example we will present a discussion of how our plan provides us with critical and timely information about what, and how, our physics students are learning. While assessment is often not viewed as a favorite item on the “to do” list of any faculty member or administrator, we have found enormous value in the continued attention we place on our annual assessment efforts. We hope that by sharing the evolution of our curricular efforts, others will find useful ideas and strategies that could be adapted to an existing assessment plan; or, that could be used to helpbuild the foundation for a new one.