Metropolitan Community College
DACC MEETING
Thursday, September 10, 2015
3-4:30 PM
PV 503
Minutes
Attendees: Cynthia Sexton Proctor, Melissa Giese, Mary Northrup, Tristan Londre, Doug Fishel, Jim
McGraw, Nancy Russell, Dachia Scroggins, Jill Kingsbury, Fran Padow, Carrie Pickerel-brooks, Mike Hillman
Approval of Minutes
The minutes were approved.
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Dr. Hillman came to personally thank the committee for our strong work on assessment. He acknowledged
that our assessment work has been a significant component to continuing with HLC pathways. He
discussed how the HLC team may want to interact with DACC members. He encouraged us to have the new
committee members at the next meeting.
• A Preparing for the HLC visit document is on the HLC website.
• The assurance argument will be going out to MCC for review shortly and to the board for approval
at the next board meeting.
IRB Report
• No report
HLC Committee Report
Cynthia mentioned that at the last faculty meeting there was a lot of interest in attending the HLC open
sessions. However there has also been some lack of urgency expressed by those who feel they are not
going to be visited. It was discussed how important it is for all campuses to be prepared for a visit as the
HLC team could decide to visit any campus while here. MW and BR should particularly be ready for any
surprises. This will be discussed more at the steering committee.
o Next steering committee meeting is 9/15/2015 at 3pm in the AC boardroom.
Survey Reports
• CCSSE (Community College Survey of Student Engagement)/CCFSSE (Faculty survey)
o Results were presented on the Custom questions that DACC added to the survey. All Gen Ed
outcomes were written in student language and adjusted to CCSSE formatting. Overall
results were favorable with students reporting that they Often or Very Often participated in
the learning outcomes. Communication outcomes #12, 11, and 10 had the lowest levels of
engagement. This corresponds to the following three outcome attributes:

Communications – The student will be able to use receptive and
productive skills to interpret, synthesize, and integrate ideas of others
and their own to communicate.
Receptive Skills – The student will be able to:
• Analyze and interpret the parts of a communication to comprehend
the relationship between them and to deepen understanding of the
meaning.
Productive Skills – The student will be able to:
Assessment is: “gathering, interpreting, and acting on information to improve student learning”.
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Metropolitan Community College
DACC MEETING
Thursday, September 10, 2015
•
•
3-4:30 PM
PV 503
Use knowledge of audience expectations and context to shape a
communication.
Create and develop an effective controlling idea using appropriate
details.
The Key findings were presented. MCC scored below the mean on all benchmarks
compared to the CCSSE cohort. Further analysis comparing PT and FT status showed
different levels of engagement. PT students had lower levels of engagement. Four of the 5
questions we scored the highest on were in the Academic Challenge benchmark. Questions
with the lowest level of engagement were on the following: making a presentation,
preparing 2 or more drafts of a paper or assignment before turning it in, using email to
communicate with instructor, number of written papers or reports of any length, and
providing financial support needed to support education.
o 85% of classes participated
o CCFSSE data was presented showing where faculty and student opinions differ. Students
reported receiving less prompt feedback from their instructors than Faculty reported.
Faculty reported that students ask questions more frequently in class than the students
reported they did.
o 41% of faculty completed the online CCFSSE
o Results will be posted on the Assessment website.
o Melissa will reach out to make presentations with interested groups across MCC.
HLC Student Survey
o HLC provided us with a survey link for student responses. It is available to students through
blackboard from September 8th to the 16th. An email was also sent to students informing
them of the importance of their feedback.
o Data is collected by HLC.
o Results will be returned to us around October 1st.
o
•
MCC Open Pathway Improvement Project Report
• Program reviews for CTE programs are underway. Presentations before the officers are scheduled
for the afternoons of fall convocation, November 23rd, and December 1st. Anyone who is
interested is invited. The disciplines are: Rad Tech, Graphic Design, Welding, Fire Science, and GIS.
• 3rd cohort: ART, English, Library, Music, Political Science, Speech will be contacted this semester to
meet and review assessment and other data for Discipline Reviews in Spring 2016. The
dates/times for these presentations before the officers have not yet been set.
• Spring class rosters are still being collected for those disciplines who assessed in Spring 2015.
• We’ll be using the CCSEE data as another measure to review our general education outcomes.
Higher Learning Commission Update
• HLC site visit by Peer Review Team will be November 16-17, 2015. One team member will be
visiting LV and BTC on Friday the 13th. We all need to be available during those days.
Assessment Reports
No report
Assessment is: “gathering, interpreting, and acting on information to improve student learning”.
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Metropolitan Community College
DACC MEETING
Thursday, September 10, 2015
3-4:30 PM
PV 503
Proposals for new assessment or survey requests
No report
Campus Reports
• BR – No report
• BTC– They are planning a meeting
• LV – Meeting in a couple weeks
• MW – meeting Monday
• PV – No report
• FOCUS Grant – No report
Old Business
• The MCC Summer Symposium received positive feedback from many.
• The 6th Annual Regional Community College Assessment Conference is April 22nd, 2016 at JCCC.
• We have hosted this conference every other year, however, it was a huge endeavor for Kristy and
Melissa. They have started a Council with JCCC and several other people from other states to coplan the conference for 2016. It will now be held annually at JCCC.
New Business
We discussed modifying our General Education outcomes to include a Diversity Outcome. We also
discussed the difficulty of assessing diversity in our curriculum and in co-curricular opportunities without
having a common definition and outcomes for diversity. We are looking at our former Human Diversity
Outcomes, the list of approved Global Diversity courses, the form to request a course be designated Global
Diversity, and the drafts of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives and their assessment drafted by the Presidential
Commissions on Equity and Inclusion. We are hoping to find some commonality that will lead to a common
definition and outcomes. However, we have decided to wait until our new Direction of Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion is hired before moving further as we think it is prudent that individual be consulted.
We briefly discussed defining co-curricular versus extra-curricular so we may target co-curricular
opportunities and assess their outcomes. Campus committees are urged to share any promising pilots that
might help MCC begin a process of regularly and consistently assessing co-curricular opportunities for
improvement.
Of the three possible tasks under New Business, it was decided we should first focus on assessing our new
AA Degree. It has been a year since its adoption so we thought it would be a good time to start
determining how we will assess it as we assess programs and disciplines. As part of this assessment plan
we already have data on the general education outcomes from discipline-created assessments and CCSSE.
We will look at global diversity outcomes in more detail once the new hire is in place. We will look at
several other metrics including; retention, persistence, and on-time completion; transfer rates;
transferability of credits (including electives); possible impacts of COLL 100 compared to other equivalent
courses like ENGR 101 and READ 108; rate of student default to old AA Degree; impact on students who
Assessment is: “gathering, interpreting, and acting on information to improve student learning”.
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Metropolitan Community College
DACC MEETING
Thursday, September 10, 2015
3-4:30 PM
PV 503
transfer in as well as students who only take courses through MCC; etc. We should also determine
outcomes expected of students who complete our AA Degree. It was suggested we might start data
collection with the graduation advisors on each campus and expand our data collection from there. More
discussion is needed and campus assessment committees are encouraged to discuss this matter and bring
back suggestions to the next DACC Meeting in October.
Next meeting: October 8, 2015, PVCC 503, 3:00 – 4:30
The meeting was adjourned.
Culture of Assessment Focus Questions:
1. From your perspective, how important does MCC consider dissemination of student assessment
reports and studies for encouraging student assessment activities?
2. To what extent does MCC use student assessment information in making decisions or changes?
3. MCC College personnel have a common understanding of the meaning of the term student
assessment. Assessment is: “gathering, interpreting, and acting on information to improve student learning”.
Assessment is: “gathering, interpreting, and acting on information to improve student learning”.
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