Student Affairs Assessment Support Services (SASS) Team Presents at AAHLE

SUMMARY: JMU's Student Affairs Assessment Support Services (SASS) team contributed 4 presentations at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AAHLE). Contributions included symposiums and workshops on topics such as logic models and program theory, research design principles, and implementation fidelity data. 

JMU’s Student Affairs Assessment Support Services (SASS) team contributed 4 presentations at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE). AALHE is an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning. As such, it serves the needs of those in higher education for whom assessment is a tool to help them understand learning and develop processes for improving it.

SASS faculty leader, Dr. Sara Finney, organized a symposium titled “Why and How Programs Impact Student Learning and Development: The Value of Program Theory in Outcomes Assessment”. The symposium included two papers by members of the SASS team.

• Pope, A. (2019, June). An introduction to logic models to articulate program theory. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, St Paul, MN.
• Finney, S. J. (2019, June). A theory-based logic model for a multi-week student affairs program. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, St Paul, MN.

The SASS team collaborated with Dr. Jeanne Horst to offer a 1.5 hour training session to facilitate appropriate inferences given particular data collection designs.

• Pope, A., Horst, S.J., Prendergast, C., Finney, S. J., & Crewe, M. (2019, June). Let’s get real: Applying research design principles to a messy assessment world. Workshop offered at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, St Paul, MN.

Dr. Sara Finney collaborated with Dr. Kristen Smith (an alum of JMU’s Assessment & Measurement PhD program) to discuss the role of implementation fidelity data when evaluating program effectiveness.

• Finney, S.J. & Smith, K.L. (2019, June). The utility of implementation fidelity data when assessing program effectiveness and using results for learning improvement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, St Paul, MN.

To learn more about AAHLE, including information on their annual conference and organization membership, visit our Organizations Page