Assessment of courses and programs in higher education is often a daunting activity for faculty, but one that is receiving much more attention today. Rather than view assessment from this perspective, one can look forward to using the results as a guide for improvement. In this paper, the authors will describe how a formal evaluation plan was established for a Geosciences course that combines Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the United States Air Force Academy, titled, Geography and Weather.
The authors will describe the role of focus groups and small group instructional diagnostic (SGID) in collecting data and how they were carried out in assessing Geography 210. In addition, the results from these assessment activities over two semesters will be presented. In a companion paper of this conference, the authors will describe how the results of this on-going evaluation are being used as a base for revising portions of this course.
Finally, the authors will share with others how the assessment program developed for this Geosciences course could be modified and applied to a broad range of courses in higher education.