Assessment at Emerson

The Office of Academic Assessment (OAA) was established in 2017; we are part of the Iwasaki Library & Learning division within Academic Affairs. Our office strives to ensure the scholarly knowledge and tools we gather and upload here are helpful to faculty, students, and departments as we work towards inclusive excellence.

Call upon us for virtual or in-person consultations, program-level workshops, and information about the Learning, Equity and Assessment Program (LEAP), a college-wide initiative designed to ensure all Emerson students graduate with the skills and knowledge valued by the institution. In addition to the two full-time staff in OAA, our office works closely with LEAP Fellows: faculty members selected by their departments who work with OAA to align departmental learning outcomes, create meaningful assessments, and analyze student data to inform curricular decisions that enhance student success.

We collaborate with the Teaching Hub, support offices, and the Emerson community to enhance the assessment of student learning, close opportunity gaps for student achievement, and use academic assessment to support program development and design.

The Office of Academic Assessment at Emerson College collaborates with faculty teaching in all levels, locations, and modalities to create a sustainable cycle of assessment of student learning. 

We strive to build a culture of equity-minded assessment* of student learning, enabling departments to make evidence-based decisions about curricular design that enhance all students’ capacity to become "extraordinary artists, communicators, scholars, and professionals who contribute to the betterment of humanity." 
Source: Extraordinary Emerson 2030. 

*Equity-minded assessment is defined as assessments designed to "improve student learning and authentically document what students know and can do" by asking reflective questions, using multiple sources of evidence, including student perspectives, increasing transparency, ensuring that data can be meaningfully disaggregated, and making evidence-based changes in response to data (adapted from NILOA). 

For faculty, assessment highlights how we live out Emerson’s vision to be "a world-leading educational institution for communication and the arts." We equip faculty with the resources and support to engage in equity-minded assessment practices to close opportunity gaps and enhance student learning. 

For students, assessment enables students to articulate and reflect on their learning throughout their education, and especially as they prepare to move from Emerson into careers in which they "enrich lives, build connections, strengthen relationships, influence culture, and advance society." 
Source: Extraordinary Emerson 2030.

Throughout our work, OAA strives to support Emerson's values as defined in the college's strategic plan.

We work to:

• Engage the Emerson community in defining a culture of assessment that includes both student and faculty voices. 
• Practice assessment methods in which various modes of learning are recognized and validated.
• Approach our collaborations through an equity-minded lens in which assessments are designed to "improve student learning and authentically document what students know and can do."
• Promote transparent assessment design and data that are accessible to all members of the Emerson community. 
• Enable faculty and programs to make continuous, evidence-based changes to their curricula to enhance student learning.