Best Practice in Student Affairs Assessment
This one-day virtual, intensive workshop is ideal for student affairs educators or higher education professionals interested in designing and assessing co-curricular or student affairs programming. Focusing on program theory, implementation fidelity, and use of results for program improvement, this workshop equips participants with tools to critically evaluate and improve student affairs and student success programs. A specialized rubric will help identify varying levels of program and assessment quality, ensuring data-driven program refinement.
Click here for more information including upcoming dates, cost, and registration.
About Best Practice in Student Affairs Assessment
On their own, student learning and development outcomes assessment data have limited utility for improving student affairs and student success programming. However, program improvement can be greatly facilitated by asking two fundamental questions: “Why should this programming result in the desired outcome?” (i.e., program theory) and “Was the intended programming actually experienced by students?” (i.e., implementation fidelity). We discuss and provide resources to frame outcomes assessment efforts to answer these questions which are necessary for learning improvement.
Specifically, participants will explore topics such as:
- program theory as the mechanism undergirding all outcomes assessment efforts
- where to find evidence-based programming
- implementation fidelity to accurately depict the program being experienced by students
- finding and evaluating existing outcomes measures
- when and from who to collect outcomes data
Upcoming session of Best Practice in Student Affairs Assessment:
- Monday, August 17, 2026 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST.
- $400 per person
- Registration pending. Check back here for registration updates.
Facilitated by:
FAQs about CARS Events
You can register for as many people as will attend as long as payment is completed for each person by the enrollment deadline. The person sitting for the workshop does not have to be the one completing the registration.
You may cancel your registration up to two weeks prior to the program start date and receive a refund of course registration fees, less a $25 administrative fee. To withdrawal from this course you must send a request to cpdtraining@jmu.edu. Requests received beyond the deadline will receive no refund. For more information, please visit Policies & Notices.
As part of Assessment 101, each participant completes an individual or group project. These projects usually pertain to some aspect of the assessment cycle. For example, an individual may choose to focus on writing student learning outcomes for an academic degree program or identifying an appropriate instrument to measure such outcomes.
Here a few examples from previous projects:
You will receive an orientation email the week before the session that includes the pre-workshop preparation materials. While the specific materials vary by workshop, you can expect no more than two hours of preparation. Additionally, participants new to assessment may benefit from exploring the CARS Professional Development in Assessment webpage to learn more about the Assessment Skills Framework and other freely available resources.
