Sie sind auf Seite 1von 7

Assessment Center for Psychology Major Evaluation

Kristin Gross, Darby Quave, Elisa Martinez, Christy Bautista

For our Assessment Center, we have chosen following outcomes that are important assessment
criteria for JMUs psychology major:
Communication
The constant interaction between two or more people, where a message is given
and received. Communication can be in various forms: haptic, verbal, or body
language. This is important to develop since it is the base of forming relationships
and learning.
Sociocultural awareness
Being aware and respectful of cultures different than ones own and embracing
diversity. This is important for being receptive and understanding of people from
all over the world and different backgrounds.
Scientific literacy
Interpreting research methods and being able to apply the scientific method, as
well as being able to apply these concepts to future and current literature. This is
important to the field of psychology for answering questions that may arise. One
may need to find answers empirically and it is important to have this knowledge
to get such answers.
Information and technological literacy
Understanding modern technology and being current with new technology. This is
important because new technology is always evolving and one must be able to
handle these innovations in order to utilize ones skills to the fullest.
Base knowledge and understanding of psychology and human behavior
Having expertise in psychology from formal schooling. Obtaining the most
relevant and current information in the field. This is important for understanding
how and why people act the way they do and important for applying
psychological principles to everyday life.
Personal development
Having a deep understanding for oneself and finding ways to improve, grow, and
mature. This is important for being prepared for continuous evolving and
changing circumstances.

For our Assessment Center, we deem the following outcomes as important for JMU students to
have after they graduate. We will try to predict for the following outcomes:
Research opportunities
This is ability to take on projects that involve applying and conducting ones own
research, based on scientific literacy and research method knowledge. This is
important because it allows you to advance workplace objectives based on
empirical evidence.
Conscientiousness
A quality of being organized, responsible, and having the ability to plan ahead.
This means working hard when facing challenges and controlling impulses. This
is important because people who are conscientious tend to achieve goals that are
consistent with what employers want.
Workplace involvement
Employees are motivated to improve their performance through advocating for
changes, goal-setting, monitoring their performance, and planning. This is
important because high-involvement work practices can develop positive beliefs
and attitudes which in turn can lead to better productivity for employees.
Leadership opportunities
This is the ability to take on leadership roles in a group of people or organization
by utilizing communication, motivation, and management skills. This can include
internships, being president of a club, working on grants for a research lab, etc.
This is important for the workplace because employers are looking for people
who will find new ways of doing things in the organization and promote forward
thinking.

For our Assessment Center, we will be measuring the following knowledge and skills as criterion
and predictors of our desired outcomes:

Interpersonal skills:
Interpersonal skills are used daily to interact with others and build relationships.
Interpersonal skills include listening, understanding, and responding to nonverbal and
verbal language. These skills are used in team and individual settings. We chose this skill
because it is a sub-type of communication that involves problem solving, teamwork, and
conveying meaningful information thats important for personal and professional settings.
In this way, interpersonal skills act as a criterion. However, they are also predictors of
conscientiousness, leadership opportunities, and workplace involvement because
understanding others leads to overall increased opportunity and trust between coworkers.

Critical thinking:
Critical thinking is used to evaluate situations or problems by coming up with the
best solution. We chose this skill because it takes into consideration multiple
perspectives, uses reason and evidence to find a solution, and judgment to check the
validity of a proposition. Critical thinking is a criterion because it increases your
communication through generating worthy arguments and having the ability to support
them with evidence. It increases your sociocultural awareness because a person is able to
stop and think deliberately from someone elses viewpoint. It also is used as a predictor
for research opportunities, because you are able to evaluate the evidence so one does not
come to the wrong conclusions. Critical thinking also predicts conscientiousness because
when a problem arises, it helps a person to make those hard decisions by evaluating the
pros and cons.

Ethical decision making:


Ethical decision making is the process of evaluating between choices related to
moral reasoning and challenging contexts. Ethical decision making is a type of pluralistic
thinking where one recognizes multiple points of view and weighs all points equally. We
chose this skill because its necessary to be unbiased in decision making. Ethical decision
making is a criterion in the way that it promotes good communication, raises your
sociocultural awareness by seeing many points of view, and improves your personal
development by challenging yourself and your decision-making. It could also be a
predictor for conscientiousness because you are being careful and vigilant when using
ethical decision making.

Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify your individual emotions as well
as the emotions of others. Furthermore, a person with high emotional intelligence can use
this ability to help make decisions in critical thinking and problem solving. This ability is
used for personal development growth, communication, and sociocultural awareness.
Emotional intelligence is key in communication for managing your emotions and being
conscious of others when having a dialogue, such as a difficult conversation which plays
into personal development. It is also necessary for sociocultural awareness since other
cultures may do something completely foreign to how we are used to in the United States
so having that ability will make it easier to see someone elses point of view.

Openness:
Openness is the willingness to learn new information to broaden your knowledge.
Being open to learning new information raises your sociocultural awareness because you
are open to learning about different sociocultural and international issues/topics. It also
helps technological literacy with increasing willingness to learn how to use new and
changing technology. In this way, it acts as a criterion. Openness can also be a predictor
to workplace involvement because if you recognize, understand, and respect diversity
you are more likely to get involved in various workplace settings.

Flexibility:
Flexibility is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. This adaptability is
important for unexpected short or long-term changes that may require someone to shift
tasks/priorities to best accommodate new environments and demands. Flexibility is a
criterion because it promotes personal development and good communication. Flexibility
helps you effectively adjust to new situations, which helps increase your knowledge
about yourself (your personal development). It also helps good ways to communicate
messages when circumstances change. It may also be considered a predictor for
conscientiousness, workplace involvement, and job satisfaction. This is because people
who are flexible are able to more easy-going and vigilant which helps promotes
conscientiousness, will more likely lead to more responsibilities because these people are
good with time-management, and will also be more satisfied in their job if they can adapt
easily.

Interpreting and Analyzing Data:


Interpreting and analyzing data is being able to read a research paper and
understanding the statistics mentioned, as well as being able to conduct your own
research methods when writing your own paper. It goes a step further than being able to
understand what was written, but it helps to apply the scientific findings and make
conclusions from them. This skill is a criterion for scientific literacy as well as a base
knowledge and understanding of psychology. Interpreting and analyzing data may also be
a predictor of research opportunities, since it gives you a base understanding of research
and thus giving an individual with this skill more experience.

Initiative:
Taking the initiative means the ability to act on and identify opportunities and be
proactive in putting forward ideas and solutions. By taking the initiative, a person is
taking advantages of opportunities like internships and leadership positions. They will
take responsibility of their own objectives by setting priorities and display a can do
attitude. This skill helps people anticipate potential problems and take preemptive action
and act quickly to solve the problem. In this way, initiative acts as a criterion that
encompasses communication through motivating others to achieve their goals. A person
is also able to communicate with others in a variety of ways like Skype, meetings, email,
etc. Taking the initiative also helps with personal development because it builds
confidence in yourself and your abilities so you feel as though you can succeed. It also
acts as a predictor for leadership opportunities because if a person took the initiative to
participate in internships and extracurricular activities, then they will be more likely to
want to participate in different opportunities in their new environment. If a person took
the time to plan and create goals for their future by participating in these extracurricular
activities, then it will be more likely that they will be involved in the workplace.

Teamwork skills:
Teamwork skills are the skills that contribute to successful group interaction. This
involves problem solving, listening to others, accepting responsibility, and establishing
clear objectives. Being able to effectively work in a team is a lifelong skill needed for
school as well the workplace. Working in teams can be a criterion because it helps with
communication and increases your sociocultural awareness. Working in a team fosters
good communication because it requires you to effectively convey messages and address
issues when problems arise. Working in a team also increases sociocultural awareness
because it requires you to work with people who are diverse and you must be sensitive to
different types of cultures and backgrounds. Teamwork skills can also be a predictor for
the amount of leadership opportunities someone has as well as their workplace
involvement and job satisfaction. This is due to the fact that people who have good
teamwork skills are more likely to be handed more projects, be good at meeting goals,
and be in good standing with coworkers.

In order to measure student attainment of each of these skills, we will need to collect data from
different tasks/tests. The following tasks/tests will altogether measure each of the skills we have
mentioned above:

Situational Judgement Test


This test will be created and scored by psychology professors and will address the
outcomes expected for students when they graduate. Students will be given a test that has
several situational prompts with varying solutions. They will need to rank the solutions
by preference of action. Students will have to think very carefully about which action
takes priority. We chose this test because it measures attributes other than cognitive
abilities. It is a good predictor for how students they will handle situations in the
workplace (Culbertson & Muchinsky, 2016).
This activity will measure the following skills:
1. Ethical decision making
2. Openness
3. Flexibility
4. Emotional intelligence

Structured Group Interview


This would a group interview, in which students will receive open ended
questions that anyone can respond to. This interview will not directly focus on content of
answers, but more on interaction between students and the manner in which students
deliver responses. It is considered a structured interview because all students are being
asked the same questions. We chose this test because it is high in validity for measuring
our desired skills (Culbertson & Muchinsky, 2016).
This activity will measure the following skills:
1. Teamwork skills
2. Initiative
3. Interpersonal skills

Read Research Paper and Interpret Results


For this task, students will read an experimental research paper and be asked to
interpret the results in depth (i.e. experimental design, if the results were significant, what
the results tell us, etc.) Students will also be asked to identify limitations and suggest
further related research. We chose this task as a way to measure quantitative skills and
deep processing.
This activity will measure the following skills:
1. Critical thinking
2. Interpreting and analyzing data

The purpose of the Assessment Center will be used to assess student growth as well as
the effectiveness of the psychology curriculum/program. This assessment will hopefully be able
to predict how students perform in the workplace post-graduation. The tasks in the Assessment
Center are specifically aimed at measuring skills that will predict conscientiousness, research
opportunities, workplace involvement, job satisfaction, and leadership opportunities. Because of
these reasons, it is important that we evaluate the effectiveness of the Assessment Center.
If students are not performing well on each of the Assessment Center tasks, we know that
there needs to be changes in the curriculum because students are not obtaining the desired skills.
Or this may tell us that professors are not challenging students to develop these skills. If students
that have graduated are conscientious, have workplace involvement, job satisfaction and/or
leadership opportunities, then we know that these skills are good predictors of workplace
outcomes.
For our Assessment Center, we are mostly concerned with predictive validity. Predictive
validity is important for determining if the outcomes we have set up for students are good
forecasters for successful outcomes in the workplace. To measure the predictive criterion-related
validity, we will look at people who scored high on tasks and see if that correlates with multiple
research opportunities, conscientiousness, high workplace involvement, and multiple leadership
opportunities.
We will measure the success of students in the Assessment Center by using the
multiple cutoff model of selection. This will require students to obtain a minimum score on all
the Assessment Day tasks. If they do not meet the minimum score, students are allowed one
repeat before they are required to take an additional class that will help them achieve these skills.
We will also measure success in the workplace by looking at how many projects a post-
graduate takes on, how many research opportunities and leadership positions one has, and a self-
report on how satisfied one is with their job (Culbertson & Muchinsky, 2016).
Students will be motivated to do well because if they do not, they will be required to
perform the tasks again. They may also have to take a class if they fail twice, which may hinder
their ability to graduate. We will utilize the Expectancy Theory to capitalize on motivation.
Students must realize that effort leads to performance, performance will lead to outcome, and the
outcome is valued (Culbertson & Muchinsky, 2016). We will do this by telling students that
strong effort leads to high performance. We will present the students with statistics that show
correlation between high scores and job success (i.e. salary, number of promotions, etc.), which
is something that society as a whole values.
We will use the Assessment Center to evaluate the psychology program holistically. We
can use the scores from the tasks to identify gaps as well as strengths in the curriculum. We can
see if high scores are correlated to the classes students are taking and/or number of credit hours.
We can also use this to evaluate professors performance and how well they are aiding growth in
the desired skill areas for students. Individual scores will be given to students so they can note
their strengths and weaknesses. The overall results will be shared with students and faculty.
Scores that are particularly high will be featured on the psychology department students for
prospective students and other universities.
References

Culbertson, S. S., & Muchinsky, P. M. (2016) Psychology Applied to Work. Summerfield, NC:

Hypergraphic Press.

Landrum, R., Beins, B., Bhalla, M., Brakke, K., Briihl, D., Curl-Langager, M., Pusateri, T., &

Kirk, J.(2010). Desired outcomes of an undergraduate education in psychology from

departmental, student, and societal perspectives. In D. F. Halpern (Ed.), Undergraduate

education in psychology: A blueprint for the future of the discipline (pp. 145-160).

Waldman, D. A., & Korbar, T. (2004). Student assessment center performance in prediction of

early career success. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 3, 151167.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen