A User-friendly Assessment Tool as a Means to Improved Curriculum Mapping and Student Learning Evaluation

Curriculum and competency mapping have become baseline requirements for professional graduate programs undergoing accreditation: expectations now extend mapping to the class assignment level and require assessment of their efficacy in addressing student learning outcomes and competencies. Mapping is a challenging undertaking, and maps risk becoming stagnant snapshots of the past that are not useful in assessing student outcomes. Information technology tools to facilitate assessment can help to make maps more user-friendly and relevant. This paper describes the assessment tool that the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH) Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program developed to link assessed student performance on individual class assignments and their components to both college-level learning objectives and program-level competencies. Initially developed using Excel, the tool has now been web-enabled to facilitate faculty usage and collaboration across organizations. Future iterations will focus on both reducing the clerical burden of input and refining output documentation for accrediting bodies, to include enhancing visibility of how higher-level cognitive and affective competencies are addressed. Competency and curriculum mapping are growing in importance. A functional assessment tool can help to ensure that competency maps are living documents, thereby increasing their value and relevance.