Assessment. The word sends shivers up the spine of even the most experienced scholars. Assessment is one of the most challenging, fraught, and effective endeavors that we deal with as public scholars, community engagement professionals, and change agents. But does assessment have to be so stressful? So inauthentic? Devoid of values? The quick answer: no!

Assessment can be so much more than ticking boxes, taking surveys, and statistics. It can be dynamic, engaging, authentic, and reaffirming. In this workshop, we will help participants to reimagine their relationship with assessment and develop ways of centering an equity-based, inclusive, democratic assessment process in their work. These workshops will guide participants through a series of activities to reimagine their assessment work using the framework of democratically-engaged assessment (DEA) as a lens. Following a conceptual introduction and initial engagement with the framework, participants will examine their assessment practices and develop an action plan for their own work in a specific arena. Reflective exercises and collaborative activities will help participants surface their assumptions about the role of values in assessment, the values they enact through their assessment, tension points that arise across phases of assessment, and opportunities to negotiate tensions through the lens of DEA. In keeping with the tenets of the framework, participants will not only enhance their own work, but also will contribute to the ongoing and co-creative development of the DEA framework itself.
Part One: Reimagining Assessment for Public Scholarship
NOTE: This session has a separate registration, please register for Part 1 here.Intention: This workshop will cover the basics of assessment, bust some myths, introduce some framings and tools, and explore examples of the spectrum of assessment.
Part Two: From Theory to Practice - Build a plan and make it yoursAudience: This workshop is an ideal space for those who have a project, an idea, or an inkling of an idea that they want to develop into reality and plan how to assess it.Participants may choose to attend one or both sessions, depending on their interests and needs.Facilitators
Julia Metzker serves as director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education at Evergreen State CollegeSarah Stanlick is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies and the director of the Great Problems Seminar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
This session is sponsored by Rackham’s Mellon Public Engagement and the Humanities program, and is open to all students on campus interested in the topic.