As noted in Standard 2.2, each institution has an obligation “to plan carefully its courses of instruction to respond to student needs, to evaluate the effectiveness of that educational program in terms of the change it brings about in students, and to make improvements in the program dictated by the evaluative process." In keeping with this directive, the Department of Biology is initiating a more systematic assessment process to confirm that they are achieving established departmental and curriculum objectives. Although the department’s previous assessment protocol was multidimensional and rigorous, it was also casual; few courses had clearly stated learning objectives that were open to faculty and student consideration, and assessment results were not available to the departmental faculty as a routine planning tool. Since it would be impossible to implement assessment of every course at the same time, the department is beginning with four particularly instructive courses: Cell Biology, Genetics, General Ecology, and Evolution. These gateway courses are basic to each of the four options for completing a biology major at PSU.

The assessment plans for Biology include the creation of formal learning objectives for each of the four courses (see course objectives), and the use of pre- and post-course testing each term to determine how class averages improve and the performance of subgroups of students. This plan will allow the Biology department to compare the performance of students who complete their basic biology sequence at PSU with students who took the sequence elsewhere, to discover how well students are learning the material in each of the gateway courses, and to determine how students perform relative to other selected demographics.

As the assessment process proceeds, the Biology department will adjust their instruments and rubrics to add clarity and ease of interpretation of the results. Their goal is to have information that can be used by the department to shape major requirements and to improve the quality of required courses. Additionally, this information could be reviewed by anyone seeking evidence of course quality in the Department of Biology.