2014 PCOA Examination

For the third straight year, the College will be facilitating the PCOA examination for pharmacy students in the P1-P4 years. Invitations have been sent out to a select group of randomized students, asking for volunteers to sit for this exam. We are attempting to recruit 75 students from each of the four professional years: 300 in total. Having successfully run the PCOA electronically last year, we anticipate being able to manage it this way again.

Pharmacy Students: Please check your e-mail for an invitation to take the examination.

While the PCOA helps us to evaluate our curriculum in comparison to other programs nationally, each student receives an individual confidential report (which will not be part of your academic record) that will highlight areas of strengths and weaknesses so that you focus on these areas as you continue. You can use this report to meet with faculty to discuss the development of self improvement plan.

Click here for more information

Institutional Transparency and Shared Resources

One of the simplest ways that we have found of keeping our stakeholders on the same page is the use of simple shared servers. These are accessed using a mechanism that administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders are very familiar with.

The resources can be browsed or actively searched, and as they are kept up to date, they represent an institutional timeline of our progress.

First, How do I connect to the shared resource?

The links have already been sent to all of our stakeholders. If you feel you should have received an email with this link but did not, please contact Anthony or Gina in the Assessment Office. Once you have the link you will need to access the drive.

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Okay, so you have access to the shared resource, what now?

The simplest answer here is to browse and look around. In many ways the directory structure is meant to reflect our College committee structure. This model means that you can quickly access resources by selecting years of interest and the then selecting the college committee that you are interested in.

Fall 2013 Assessment Activities

The Office of Assessment is currently working on:

• iPad Mobile Survey Lab grant proposal
• Planning and implementing a Fall assessment workshop at the Bartilucci Center
• Presenting a poster on the culture of assessment at the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis in October
• Scheduling the NABP Pharmacy Curriculum Outcomes Assessment (PCOA) exam for early 2014
• Facilitating Pharmacy and Physician Assistant Pharmacotherapy seminar surveys

Top Ten Ways Assessment Makes Your Life Better

The Office of Assessment has been working to strengthen the culture of assessment.  This initiative involves hosting workshops for students where the Assessment team describes what is meant by assessment and explains its role within the College. The students responded to the first workshop by saying that they were interested in learning more about how assessment directly impacts their lives.  It became clear that a top ten list would be a great way to communicate this information.  A list of ten items was generated to show students how their involvement in the assessment process can make their lives better.

 Top Ten Ways That Assessment Makes Your Life Better

1. We insure that faculty and administrators hear your feedback “loud and clear”.

2. Provide Faculty with question quality metrics for scantron exams

3. Make sure that student opinions are available when funds are allocated for facility improvement.

4. Use student feedback to identify new potential elective courses.

5. Provide a forum for certification exam review.

6. Let the administration know what social events you want to see more of.

7. Identify what parts of the curriculum, need strengthening and improvement.

8. Improve grading accuracy on scantron graded exams.

9. Evaluate how new technologies work in the classroom.

10. Provide a structured means for students to track achievement through professional portfolios.

What Will I do With My Life?

The good folks at LifeHacker have a nice piece on the interactive job site at Rasmussen College.

The interactive graph has a number of nice features that allow the user to pick areas of interest and then browse the individual jobs to find out more about them. The two axis provide information about median annual salary and the number of jobs that are available in the field.

At a time when many are questioning the value of a college education, it is interesting to see a concisely laid out chart based on pretty solid data form the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I was fairly surprised by the pharmacist data (included in the screen shot) and it was nice to see it in a comparative format like this.

Outcomes Assessment

As a follow-up to the prior post, here’s another interesting article on Outcomes Assessment. Acceptance, as we know, is key. This article speaks to that, as well as the specific types of assessment that are needed to begin to see progress.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-PromisePeril-of/141337/