The Story Project

It’s a narrative that describes evidence of improvement in student learning that was informed by assessment processes and intentional change(s) to the learning environment. (See also the Story Writing Guide.)

The story might, for instance, focus on how faculty members used learning achievement results from an integrative project in a capstone course to inform a change that led to better performance in a next iteration of the course. It might highlight improvements at the program level, in which an analysis of student e-portfolios pointed the way to modifications in curriculum that in turn led to greater student success for the subsequent set of students. Or it might capture the improvement of students’ skills resulting from a new curriculum informed by an academic program review. A story focused at the institution level might feature campus-level modifications stimulated by faculty conversations about findings from the National Survey of Student Engagement that led to an increase in student achievement. 

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In any case, all learning-improvement stories will have in common the following:

• collection of information about student learning (i.e., baseline data),

• implementation of well-thought-out changes to the learning environment, and

• a re-assessment that shows that students’ learning improved.

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We know that assessment contributes to faculty’s learning and changes to assignments, curriculum, policies, etc. These kinds of changes to the learning environment are integral to each story.