Assessment of Trinity's General Education

Our Approach

Assessment of the Trinity College general education depends on coordination and collaboration with our campus partners.  The primary developers of the assessment strategy are the Office of University Assessment and the A&S Council Committee on Assessment.

Essential collaborators include:

• The Curriculum Implementation Committee
• Trinity Language Council
• The Thompson Writing Program
• The Office of Undergraduate Education including the Academic Advising Center and OUE Research
• The Focus Program
• The Office of the University Registrar

Assessment, concepts and personnel alike, was included in the earliest stages of curriculum envisioning (i.e., the work of the Trinity Curriculum Development Committee).  Following the adoption of the curriculum proposal in April 2024, assessment remained an embedded component of curriculum implementation.  The Director of Assessment serves on the Curriculum Implementation Committee, the Constellations Committee, and the Century Courses Committee, and she teaches in the Focus Program. 

The assessment plan elevates three essential principles:

1. The curriculum espouses the principle of iteration.  We assemble and interpret information to help the individuals, offices, and committees responsible for implementation confirm its effectiveness.  When appropriate and within the framework of shared governance, stakeholders will use these findings to make evidence-guided changes to elements of the curriculum. 
2. Assessment focuses on outcomes a curriculum reasonably can impact.  We support assessment efforts across Duke which extend to learning and development beyond the general education. 
3. We seek alignments with and multiple uses of existing assessment measures.  The assessment plan limits additional labor required of faculty, staff, and students.

Structure of the Assessment Process

The elements of the assessment plan follow the commonly understood stages of the assessment cycle, starting with community consensus on student learning outcomes, moving through the selection and interpretation of measures, and concluding with the delivery and discussion of findings and subsequent actions by stakeholders across the College.  These actions may include revisions to assessment processes and/or adjustments to the structures of the curriculum itself. 

Oversight and Reporting

The Arts & Sciences Council is the main recipient of assessment reports on the general education.  It confirms the functioning of a rigorous plan of assessment, hosts discussions of findings of significant interest to the faculty community, and provides recommendations to the Committee on Assessment including the Director of Assessment, Trinity College leadership, specifically the Dean of Undergraduate Education, and other campus partners.

Areas of general education assessment activity include:

• students’ development in the core values of the first-year experience: Connections, Curiosity, and Humility
• learning outcomes in Undergraduate Writing
• learning outcomes in the languages
• learning outcomes in the six areas of the liberal arts
• studying the Century Courses as representations of the core questions and essential approaches of an academic discipline.

The assessment plan includes the administration of the following measures:

• Annual curriculum check-in surveys
• Targeted questions on course evaluations
• Faculty surveys
• Focus groups among students, alumni, and faculty
• Syllabus review and coding
• Interactive data dashboards illustrating enrollment patterns, code/requirement completions, and alignments between academic interests and subsequent academic plans

Additionally, the assessment plan includes findings from instruments developed or administered by essential campus partners including the Research group in the Office of Undergraduate Education (the DUCkI Survey program) and the Office of Institutional Research (COFHE survey data).

Phased Approach to Implementation

As of spring 2025, the Committee on Assessment is oriented to a phased approach.  Phase 1 (2024-25), which is one year prior to the curriculum launch year, focuses on the definition of learning outcomes across the curriculum, the design of the overall plan of assessment, the collection of information at baseline, and the pilot testing of instruments that will be deployed in phase 2.  Phase 1 also includes drafts of the data dashboards and data queries.

Phase 2 begins with the implementation year (2025-26) in which data collection for the first-year experience begins.  Because the new curriculum applies only to 2025-26 matriculates, the focus is the study of the first-year values with subordinate attention to early engagements with writing, languages, and courses representing the liberal arts distribution codes.

Phase 2 includes pilot testing of instruments, specifically surveys and course evaluations, that will be administered to the first cohorts in the new curriculum when they reach years two, three, and four.  The data collected from these pilots serve as baseline data from students currently in years two, three, and four.  Finally, phase two includes the design of the processes by which information from the DUCkI and COFHE surveys are obtained from the Office of Undergraduate Education and the Office of Institutional Research, respectively.

In the 2025-26 academic year, student and faculty interview and focus group protocols are pretested and sampling frames are generated prior to implementation in phase 3 (2026-27).  The phased approach to assessment implementation is intended to establish initial measures (e.g., surveys) prior to  the more time-intensive work of interviews and focus groups in phase 3.

The first reports to the Executive Committee of Arts & Sciences Council and Trinity College leadership will be delivered in spring 2026 with periodic updates in the years thereafter.  The first substantive report for A&S Council deliberation is expected at the end of year four (fall 2029) as the first cohort of students in the new curriculum graduates.

Leveraging departmental assessment

The assessment of the general education also is supported by the assessment activities and findings from A&S departments.  For more information about the processes and materials that support assessment in academic programs, see the Program Assessment page.

Alignment with principles of Accreditation

The assessment plan meets the requirements of SACSCOC Standard 8.2.b, “The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on analysis of student learning outcomes for collegiate-level general education competencies of its undergraduate degree programs.”