Sweetland is excited to join the new Undergraduate Learning Assessment (ULA) Project, a Community of Practice facilitated by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) and the College of LSA. The program is designed to provide departments with a structured and manageable process to gather meaningful data and develop sustainable assessment plans for their undergraduate programs, while also supporting the departmental external review process. Participating LSA departments in 2024-2025 include Sweetland, Linguistics, Anthropology, and Political Science.
Sweetland’s participation stems from a recommendation made during its most recent external review in 2023, which called for creating a transparent, mission-driven cycle of assessment for its programs. A team of Sweetland faculty and staff will use the ULA framework to develop program-specific goals, implement evidence-based assessment practices, and share findings for formative improvements. Collaborating with CRLT and the other LSA units provides support and accountability throughout this process.
Our first focus will be Writing 160: Multimodal Composition, a course launched in 2022 that fulfills the university’s first-year writing requirement. Considering both student and instructor experiences, the Sweetland ULA team will use course evaluations and faculty focus groups to explore how students engage with the course pedagogy and identify areas where teaching practices can bridge gaps in student learning and strengthen engagement with multimodal composition.
