Language Program Evaluation and Direction: A Multidimensional Approach
Summer Mini-Course: July 7-Aug 15, 2025
Online meetings: Thursdays, 11am-12:30pm
This seminar promises a paradigm shift in understanding language program evaluation and its role in program direction. Its multifaceted perspective ensures a more comprehensive analysis of a program, considers its various components and their interactions, and balances responsibilities and accountability across key stakeholders, such as language program directors and coordinators, department chairs, and instructors.
Program evaluation has often focused on assessing instructors rather than the program itself. Evaluation has typically been conducted through assessments such as internal and/or external classroom observations, students’ post-course evaluations, and reviews of instructors’ performance via dossiers.
This seminar foregrounds the role of assessments while teaching participants how to design and develop program-specific evaluation tools that go beyond the evaluation of instructors and courses. It will reframe “course evaluation” to collecting students’ feedback in a more rigorous and meaningful way, including opportunities for strategic intervention. Additionally, it will integrate the impact of team dynamics and the intersecting roles of key stakeholders, expanding program evaluation to include leadership skills and effective professional communication.
Taught fully online; Weekly synchronous sessions Thursdays, 11:00am-12:30pm CDT
Objectives:
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- conduct a comprehensive analysis of program components, map out the interactions and responsibilities of key stakeholders, and transform findings into an action plan.
- design program-specific evaluation tools (based on the program analysis) that extend beyond traditional instructor-focused assessments.
- develop a detailed plan to systematically collect and analyze student feedback, while also demonstrating the ability to strategize appropriate interventions to enhance the evaluation process.
- assess team dynamics and the roles of all stakeholders in order to facilitate meaningful team-building activities.
- develop and present a strategic communication plan aimed at improving stakeholder engagement and leadership effectiveness within the program
Cost & Cancellation Policies
- Registration: $1,000
- Graduate students can register $750; contact languages@uchicago.edu with proof of graduate student status for discount code.
Cancellation policy:
- 14 days or more before course begins: full refund. Between 13 to five days before course begins: 90% refund. Less than five days before course begins: no refund.
Target Audience
- Directors of language programs with multiple instructors, including tenure track, instructional professionals, and graduate students.
- Single language instructors and directors of small programs seeking valuable skills for program evaluation and strategic campus functioning.
About the Instructor
Ahmet Dursun is the Executive Director of the Office of Language Assessment at the University of Chicago. He is responsible for establishing and maintaining the Office of Language Assessment and the University as innovative leaders in language learning and assessment, both in terms of the design and development of new learning and assessment strategies, systems, and instruments and in the research that brings them to fruition and ensures their validity. His research has explored computer-assisted language instruction, language testing research and practice, test validation, AI-supported automated scoring of constructed-response assessment tasks, and language-for-specific-purposes domain analysis.Questions?
If you have any questions about our mini-courses, contact languages@uchicago.edu.