News Winter '26

Don’t recognize an acronym? See our acronyms glossary at the end of this newsletter.

Do you lead assessment for your program/discipline? Check out our new “Program Chairs Corner!”

Ready! Outcomes assessment guidelines updated for 2026-29
Save Spring Break! Check Outcomes/Assessments Now
Assessment Ideas From Your Colleagues
PC Corner - especially for faculty leading unit outcomes assessment
- Spring Refreshment: Assessment Plans
- Out with the old? How to (Easily) Change Outcomes
- This Plan, That Plan - What’s the Difference? Clarifying Unit Plans, Assessment Plans, and Program Reviews
Assessment Almanac: Drafting the Perfect Assessment Design - Andy Frank, Carmen Watkins, and Mike Kelly

Ready! Outcomes Assessment Guidelines Updated for 2026-29

Hot off the press! LOAC has updated the college’s outcomes assessment guidelines for the next three years. Several LOAC members revised them in the fall, and the full committee approved the updates at its first Winter term meeting.

LOAC maintains these guidelines so everyone knows what’s expected of faculty for outcomes assessment work at Chemeketa. Goals for the latest update:

Maintain current approach as much as possible
Make the document easy to read
Address outcomes assessment for new state transfer degrees
Clarify what’s expected of different roles (all faculty & unit leads)

See what you think! Feedback is welcome so we can make the guidelines work well for everyone. You can reach out to LOAC members Nolan Mitchell, LOAC chair; Kim Colantino, Assessment Liaison; or Mary Ellen Scofield in AOE.

Save Spring Break! Check Outcomes/Assessments Now

Beginning to contemplate your Spring courses? Three quick checks now could save you precious Spring Break time not thinking about work:

Check course outcomes: Check the college catalog to be sure the outcomes for any courses you are teaching in Spring, and haven’t taught yet this year, are up to date in your syllabi. Here’s how.
Check your assessments: Do you like them? Do they help you get the information you want about how well they’re mastering your course’s outcomes? Jot down possible updates you want to make so they can be percolating a little ahead of time.
Check unit assessments: Will you be teaching a course that includes a unit-wide assessment? If your unit reports results for these assessments in Canvas, is this set up in your Canvas shell? If you’re not sure, check with your program chair. Lots of units conduct their unit-level assessments in the Spring.

Then enjoy a few more work-free moments over break!

Assessment Ideas From Your Colleagues

Speaking of percolating assessment ideas, if you’re looking for some assessment inspiration, your colleagues may be able to help.

LOAC’s Communication Subcommittee has assembled the Assessment Stories featured each term in this newsletter into a common document, linked on the Resources page of the LOAC website.

The stories recount ideas and solutions to assessment puzzles that your Chemeketa colleagues have come up with—philosophies, strategies, experiments, and clever simplifications.

And if you also have an assessment story you’d like to share, let us know! We feature a new Assessment Almanac story every term.

For Unit Assessment Leads

Spring Refreshment: Assessment Plans

Get ready for spring renewal, assessment style! AOE is creating fresh Assessment Plan templates for everyone for the next three years.

Here’s what you can expect in the new templates:

Same format as current Assessment Plans, set up for logging your assessment information for the next three years
Outcomes/assessments copied from old plans; easily erased/replaced if you like
Includes your records from your current Assessment Plans (in tabs titled “2023-26”)
The option to connect transfer degree program outcomes to Chemeketa’s General Education Outcomes for a simple way to assess them
An accessible text-based alternative template, if you prefer to use this

Assessment Plans are where you document your unit’s approach and progress with outcomes assessment. LOAC’s assessment guidelines are integrated into the format. LOAC also helps AOE decide how to approach template updates.

The templates will be ready and in your unit planning and assessment folder in time for Spring planning. Reach out to AOE for questions or for any help needed.

Out with the old? How to (Easily) Change Outcomes

Contemplating changing course or program outcomes as you think about updating your unit’s Assessment Plan?

Here’s how to go about changing outcomes. Usually these changes are considered “minor” and only need a couple of emails and a conversation with your advisory committee, if you have one. Changes to outcomes only become “major” when you’re updating more than 30% of a course or program’s content.

Once you let AOE know of a change to your outcomes, you can usually start using them for unit assessment the very next term if you like. It takes a little longer for updates to get into the catalog. Catalog deadlines are set way ahead just to ensure they get cleared by the state and accreditation agency as needed.

Here are deadlines for upcoming editions of the catalog:

March 6, 2026: Major Change Revisions for 2026-27 catalog
April 3, 2026: Minor Change Revisions for 2026-27 catalog
September 12, 2026: Forms available for 2027-2028 catalog credit additions/changes)

December 4, 2026: New Courses and Programs for 2027-28 catalog
March 5, 2027: Major Change Revisions for 2027-28 catalog
April 2, 2027: Minor Change Revisions for 2027-28 catalog

So Many Plans - What's the Difference? Clarifying Unit Plans, Assessment Plans, and Program Reviews

AOE helps units track and document improvements they’re working on in their programs, disciplines, and departments with brief-as-possible planning processes, captured in templates.

What are they all for? In a nutshell:

Unit Plans (every year): Improvement plans, including an assessment improvement, due June 30 and reviewed with supervisors by the beginning of Fall term. Used in college priority setting (summer) and budget planning (fall).
Assessment Plans (every year): Record of unit-level outcomes assessment work. Units document the year’s activities by June 30 and review/update strategies (outcomes to assess; assessments) at least every three years.
Program Review (every 3 years in the fall): Units review the results of all this planning to identify successes, set priorities for the next three years, and vet their findings with stakeholders, who provide written feedback. Each spring, units use these program reviews to develop Unit and Assessment plans for the upcoming year.

Why all the documentation?

We all work hard! Documenting improvement ideas and results helps to keep track of projects over time in the midst of our day-to-day work.
Documentation helps colleagues/leaders see how a project went and why to continue supporting that work.
People leave and change roles all the time. Documentation eases transitions when new people come into new roles.
Accreditation processes and standards for effective colleges/programs ask for this documentation

Curious how your colleagues are approaching this work and documentation? Chemeketa employees can look through everyone’s plans in our Planning and Assessment folders.

And what is AOE’s improvement priority? To make these processes as helpful and easy as possible! Contact AOE’s Mary Ellen Scofield or Colton Christian to share your good ideas, or consider joining LOAC or our Unit Planning and Program Review Committee. Both help us improve these processes.

Assessment Almanac:

Drafting the Perfect Assessment Design

Mike Kelly, full-time faculty

Carmen Watkins, Program Co-Chair

Andy Frank, Program Co-Chair

(left to right)

Not surprisingly, the Drafting faculty approach their outcomes assessment like, well, drafters.

Drafters translate ideas into detailed drawings for engineers and architects. The Drafting faculty did essentially the same thing with their Assessment Plan.

“We sat down with our outcomes and said, ok, how are we going to tie each of these to our courses?” explained Andy Frank, Drafting Program Co-chair. Known for their regular early morning meetings, the three full-time faculty team gathered around a table to develop their plan. They identified assignments in each of their courses that tied to each of their Drafting Technology-CAD AAS degree outcomes.

For course outcomes assessment for their unit, they chose the second course in their introductory series DRF131: CAD2. A variety of people curious about CAD (Computer-Aided Design) take only the first course in the series (DRF130), and after DRF131, Drafting students start to go in different directions.

“CAD2 was best for us to target for assessment because everyone who gets a Drafting certificate or degree has to take that class,” Andy said. Of CAD2’s six course outcomes, the team chose to assess two that describe easily measurable industry-specific skills centrally important to success in the field. “The skills that students are learning in CAD2 are just so critical,” Andy said. “CAD2 is a great general class where we can assess learning about the foundational skills you need to be successful.”

The team reviews their assessment results in the spring and during in-service as they debrief about their experiences with students that year and what’s emerging in their industry. All three factors play into their planning for the year ahead. “We’re always trying to make the program better, trying to see what we could add or enhance,” Andy said.

Assessment results were particularly helpful during COVID for gauging how students were faring in a fully online environment. Being able to see where students were having trouble helped the team identify where to provide more scaffolding to help them. Andy also completed CAI’s Quality Online Instruction process, which gave him more ideas for how to best support online students, such as frequent reminders to ask for help if they get confused.

The Drafting program has been part of Chemeketa since the college was Salem Technical College in the 1960s. The industry and coursework has changed significantly since then, but the core learning has stayed much the same in these last number of years, and the Drafting faculty find their current outcomes and assessments serve them well.

They regularly attend industry “university” events, and integrate new technology into their courses all the time. Their outcomes help them keep their eyes on what matters most for students, even as they stay ahead of the curve with industry changes, Andy said; “As we introduce more tools, the outcomes help us make sure we’re staying focused on that core learning.”

LOAC: Where Chemketa’s Assessment Design Happens!

Check out LOAC’s most recent projects on the committee’s Subcommittee Updates document, always posted on the LOAC site. If you’re interested in joining this work, contact chair Nolan Mitchell or chair-elect Odilón Ramirez Javier.

About the Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee at Chemeketa

Faculty-led LOAC works with college departments and committees to design guidelines, processes, and infrastructure that support manageable, meaningful, useful outcomes assessment and results, shaped by faculty to support teaching and learning. Learn more at the LOAC Google Site. Check out our new “Definitions” page to help you get acquainted with outcomes assessment at Chemeketa!

*Acronyms: These departments support LOAC/outcomes assessment and are mentioned many times in this newsletter. Feel free to reach out with questions!

AOE: Academic and Organizational Effectiveness. This department manages our outcomes assessment plans and evidence. Contact academiceffectiveness@chemeketa.edu
IRR: Institutional Research and Reporting. This department, part of AOE, processes outcomes assessment data into Tableau reports. Contact colton.christian@chemeketa.edu
CAI: Center for Academic Innovation. This department manages support for faculty professional development and Canvas outcomes assessment. Contact academicinnovation@chemeketa.edu

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