One psychology department’s home-grown programmatic assessment of their curriculum.

Programmatic curricular assessment is both necessary and desirable. Yet, the sheer scale of assessment projects can be daunting and there is currently no widely agreed upon model for assessment. Our assessment initiative’s novelty and scholarly value becomes apparent when viewed holistically as an evidence-based, multistep, comprehensive, in-house, sustainable assessment model. In this article, we detail the design, implementation, and results of our five-step curricular assessment initiative. First, the department faculty generated measurable departmental learning outcomes. Second, faculty mapped how individual courses in our curriculum met departmental goals. Third, faculty teams constructed common syllabi. Fourth, these teams generated multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and rubrics to measure knowledge acquisition and skill development. Fifth, to “close the assessment loop,” faculty members received assessment results to inform their teaching and further enhance students’ learning. Our iterative process also highlighted shortcomings in our procedures and instruments.