Samantha Stetzer/Winonan

Assessment Day kept all the classrooms on campus quiet and many students asleep in their beds last Wednesday, Feb. 20.

But there were a few students who got out of bed and went to either Somsen Auditorium or the library to partake in a university-wide event dedicated to collecting data about students and the campus.

Eri Fujieda, the director of institutional planning and research at Winona State University, coordinated Assessment Day this year.

“The faculty member who started this idea had some really great ideas in mind,” Fujieda said. “She actually surveyed all the students and gave tests to all the students, and then she combined them, so if students who don’t do certain things, they don’t show academic achievement in some areas. She was trying to show the relationship between those.”

Fujieda said that freshmen and seniors participate in the testing, which takes place on campus, and the goal is to see how education changes upon coming into college and upon leaving.

“The idea is to compare the beginning students and the ending students, and hopefully there is a shift in score and attitudes,” Fujieda said.

But Assessment Day doesn’t just test academic ability. Surveys are sent out to students via email to find out their feelings about everything on campus from the library to the bookstore.

Fujieda said she felt there are plenty of opportunities for the campus to utilize this data.
The only question is how best to do so.

“We haven’t really figured out how to combine them,” Fujieda said. “We need to know what the heck you are doing. Is there behavior in relation to your study habits, for example? Or some behavioral patterns such as buying textbooks or not? Does it really affect the way your academic performance goes?”

All of these surveys are still available for students to take up until the end of March, and there is still some time left to participate and enter to win prizes.

Fujieda believes these surveys have the power to change what is happening on campus.

“Actually, it’s being used,” Fujieda said. “For example, the library survey. The faculty in the library really look at it very carefully.”

Fujieda said that faculty members have reported that students come at certain times to the reference desk.
“They actually analyzed what students come at what time, and then they changed the way you get stuff,” she said.

Other uses for the data have been gauging what students want from their technology and textbooks.

“The bookstore is interested in learning about how students think about e-books,” Fujieda said. “So if you put in your voice, they would actually take that into consideration, and then hopefully communicate back to the faculty too.”

That data, Fujieda said, can influence what textbooks faculty choose for their students.

“They can actually think about what students think work for them,” she said.

Fujieda said that it’s still uncertain what changes will be made as a result of the data.

“We don’t know,” Fujieda said. “The original goal was to get the feedback from students about what their experience and perceptions of learning environment was, and then trying to use that data to understanding what we can improve for the future.”

For Fujieda, this assessment is more than just bettering education on campus. It is also about continuously changing the learning atmosphere and outlook for the better.

“Are grades actually telling you what you gain from this campus experience?” Fujieda said. “We are going to work on using the data more effectively, so that we can actually make some action plans based on the data.”

The Assessment Day surveys will be open until March 31. All students are encouraged to participate. For more information on the Assessment Surveys, visit http://www.winona.edu/ipar/assessment.asp.