Collection & Submission Process

Assessment Cycle

During the statewide general education revision, NMHED aligned each essential skill to a content area. UNM’s 3-year general education assessment cycle allows units to collect, analyze, and report data pertaining to one essential skill per year that maps to their content area.

  • In the first year, units can choose between two essential skills.
  • In the second year, every unit will report on the Critical Thinking essential skill.
  • In the third year, units will report on the skill pertaining to their content area they did not report on in year one.

Please see the table below with a more detailed view of how these essential skills map to the assessment cycle.Table of assessment cycle

Assessment Process

To collect equitable and representative samples of student artifacts relating to each essential skill, each college/school/branch is required to select 10 sections of general education courses they offer in the designated content area per year. Ideally, units will choose five sections per semester to submit data. The instructors of each of the selected sections of courses are required to provide four student artifacts. Unit leadership and assessment committees should choose which 10 course sections will submit data, inclusive of both 1000 and 2000 (old 100 and 200) level courses.

The key people involved in the assessment of UNM's General Education Program are: 
  1. The College Assessment Review Committees (CARCs) for individual colleges/schools/branches
  2. Selected faculty/instructors for general education courses
  3. The Office of Assessment & Academic Program Review (OAAPR)

Assessment Roles

CARC Roles:

  1. Review essential skill assessment cycle, decide which skill is being assessed (if in year 1 or 3), and notify faculty/instructors
  2. Select 10 course sections to represent the essential skill being assessed
  3. Set internal timelines for faculty/instructors to gather student artifacts related to this skill

Faculty and instructors whose sections have been selected as part of the assessment process: 

  1. Beginning of semester/when creating syllabus: Review essential skill rubrics and select 2 areas that align with student artifacts
  2. End of each semester: Submit 4 students’ artifacts and complete fillable form to OAAPR

OAAPR Roles:

  1. Receive all artifacts from faculty/instructors
  2. Follow up with CARCs when artifacts are not received
  3. Oversee and participate in review of artifacts
  4. Aggregate and analyze data from all artifact ratings
  5. Provide college/school/branch level artifact ratings to CARCs
  6. Report findings in annual report

Artifact Submissions

Please be sure you have the following information about your minimum of four student artifacts, as it will be required in the submission form:

  • Instructor Name
  • College/School/Branch
  • Course Number
  • Course Modality
  • Sampling Technique - How were your minimum of 4 student artifacts selected? Examples of sampling are:
    • Random - i.e., students were randomly numbered 1-30, then a number generator was used to choose student artifacts
    • Systematic - i.e., chose student artifacts at regular intervals based on the class roster (ex: every 5th student)
    • Stratified - i.e., broke down the class roster into student's undergraduate level (First-years, Sophomores, etc) and chose artifacts from each of these groupings
  • Student Grade Level
  • Assignment Type (written, oral, lab report, visual work or representation, etc.)
  • Assignment Description (however you described the assignment to your students)
  • Essential Skill and Dimensions
  • Student Artifacts
    • De-identified of student information if possible 
    • The form can accept many different artifact types (Excel, Word, PDF, PowerPoint, etc.), but if you have a video recording, you will have to upload to a video hosting site and share the link with us.

 If you have questions about your submission or need to confirm with our team that a submission was successful, please email Elizabeth Kerl, eckerl@unm.edu.