Meeting of the Faculty Senate
General Education Committee
325 Graff Main Hall
15 October 2012
2012-2013 Members: Colin Belby
Abdulaziz Elfessi
Rebekah Fowler
Ryan Friesen
Tom Gendreau
Kenny Hunt
Gerald Iguchi
Janet Kirsch
Michele Pettit
Geography
Mathematics
English
English (fall only)
Computer Science
Computer Science (fall only)
History
Chemistry
Health Ed & Health Promotion
Members Present:
Belby, Fowler, Friesen, Gendreau, Hunt, Kirsch, Pettit
Members Excused:
Elfessi, Iguchi
Members Absent:
Guests and Consultants: Jorge Aguilar-Sánchez, Gen Ed Assessment Chair; Chris Bakkum,
Registrar; Patrick Barlow, CATL; Amelia Dittman, CBA; Peter Stovall, CLS Dean’s Office.
The meeting was called to order at 3:34 PM by Tom Gendreau, chair.
1. M/S/P Minutes of 10/1/12, voice vote, no abstentions.
2. Patrick Barlow addressed the committee to report the discussions that took place
in a recent meeting of different UW-System schools regarding growth agendas;
specifically, the meeting focused on ideas of how to assess shared learning goals
between sister institutions (particularly as it applies to transfer students). Some
of the highlights of this meeting include the following:
• The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) has
developed a set of "Value Rubrics." These twelve rubrics are designed to
assess specific student learning outcomes (SLOs)as a means of measuring the
impact of different institutions' general education programs. Some UW
institutions have already begun to use these rubrics; they have been used both
'as is' and with modifications designed to better address the SLOs of specific
general education courses.
• One of the challenges associated with awarding transfer credit lies in the fair
assessment of prior learning; specifically, determining a way to separate the
impact of an institution's general education program from a student's prior
knowledge. Questions that naturally arise in this situation include
determining who reviews the transfer credit and determining how that credit
will be awarded. These questions are particularly germane given the state's
new Flexible Degree program.
• One of the ways prior learning can be assessed is to carry out progressing
internal assessments of general education courses. For example, at UWMadison, assessment of courses that have a first-year composition course
(like ENG 110) as a prerequisite have been carried out to measure how much
content students are displaying "downstream." Their assessment indicated
that students who took ENG 110 at Madison did better in subsequent
coursework than students who earned transfer credit.
• Two products that are currently in use as assessment information "collection
points" at different UW institutions are TaskStream and WEAVEonline.
Both of these products allow faculty and/or administrators to easily create
reports based on assessment data. This not only helps institutions with the
accreditation process, but it also has the potential to facilitate the process of
awarding of transfer credits (since it could allow the awarding institution
greater access to the content and student outcomes of other institutions'
general education courses).
• What does this process mean for UW-L internally? We may want to consider
developing assessment projects that use the Value Rubrics to help unify our
general education courses with other UW institutions.
3. The committee reported back on its assigned task from 10/1/12 to investigate the
general education programs at different Universities across the state. The
committee members' findings are summarized in the tables below.
Table 1: The number of general education credits required for graduation from
UW-system schools.
Number of
Number of
Institution
Institution
Credits
Credits
Colleges
35-44
Parkside
36
Eau Claire
39-45
Platteville
43-58
Green Bay
37
River Falls
38
La Crosse
48
Stevens Point
31-52
Madison
22-30
Stout
40-46
Milwaukee
24-36
Superior
42-48
Oshkosh
41
Whitewater
36-49
Table 2: Content areas of general education programs at UW-System schools.
Coll
EC
GB
LAX
Mad
Mwke
Ok
Pksd
Pvlle
RF
SP
St
Supr
WW
English
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Math
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Speech
x
Health
x
x
Arts
x
x
Hmnits
x
x
SocSci
x
NatSci
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
FLang
x
Int'l
x
Dvrsity
x
Other*
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
*Colleges = Application and Performance requirement; Eau Claire = University-Wide Education requirement; River Falls =
Multidisciplinary requirement; Stout = Technology requirement.
4. It was decided that the total number of courses at each institution that are
included in the general education curriculum would be a useful piece of
additional information to include in the committee's presentation to faculty
senate. These numbers will be discussed at the next meeting on 10/29/12.
M/S/P, The meeting was adjourned at 5:02 PM.
Notes compiled by J. Kirsch