A workshop designed to enhance learning assessment will be held Friday in the Charleston-Mattoon Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The workshop, titled “Tools, Techniques and Tips for Academic Assessment at the Department Level,” will be conducted from 9 a.m. to noon.

The workshop will be presented by Cheryl Davis Bullock, head of the division of measurement and evaluation in the Office of Instructional Resources at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The workshop is designed for faculty, but is open to anyone.

“It’s an open forum except for the luncheon,” Donna Dawson, chief clerk of the Center for Academic Support and Achievement, said.

Dawson said this workshop was “designed to help with academic assessment” of student learning in a major.

Bullock will discuss formulating and evaluating measurable learning, choosing assessment instruments, developing and using surveys, designing and conducting focus groups and creating and using learning portfolios, a press release said.

She will explain how to write objectives to describe learning outcomes, decide the evaluation tool best to measure the objectives and when and how surveys should be administered, Dawson said.

The advantages of focus groups over other kinds of tools and the purpose of portfolios will also be discussed. There will be group activities and a question and answer session at the end of the day.

The workshop is sponsored by the Committee for the Assessment of Student Learning.