Summary of the University Core Development Committee meeting with Dr.
Barbara Walvoord, Thursday, March 31, 2011.
We began at about 1:35 p.m. in the first floor conference room of Waul
House.
Present from the UCDC were: Michael Clarke, Clare Dunsford, Arthur
Madigan, and James Weiss. Also present were Barbara Walvoord, J. Joseph
Burns, Donald Hafner, and Robert Newton.
Barbara Walvoord, the university's consultant on learning outcomes
assessment, introduced the main topics of the meeting: how to go about
assessing the effectiveness of the core curriculum and the role of the UCDC
in assessing the core curriculum. Dr. Walvoord distributed the document
Basic . . . General Education Assessment System and cited the goals of the
core curriculum listed on pp. 6-7 of the 2010 Boston College Assessment
Plan. With these as background, she outlined a series of steps towards a
procedure for assessment of the core.
Step 1 will be to reformulate the stated goals of the core into the format
"Students who do the core at Boston College will be able to . . . . " The
goals are fine, but they need to be made more concrete. Here it is important
to distinguish the overarching goals or outcomes of the core from the goals
or outcomes of different disciplines and from the more particular goals or
outcomes of a given course. What we need is not statements of what
material the core will cover, but statements of what students who take the
core will be able to do.
Step 2 will be to gather and examine a sample of student classroom work.
The kind of classroom work does not need to be standardized. Any kind of
classroom work can be used, so long as it demonstrates student achievement
of the goals. The point of examining these materials is not to grade them but
to identify strengths and especially weaknesses — to find something to work
on. It is a question of finding evidence that points to action at some level.
The three most commo0n forms of action are: faculty development (e.g.,
workshops); changes in curriculum or pedagogy; and logistical or technical
changes.
Step 3 will be to gather and examine a sample of student evaluations. These
are not to be the regular course evaluations. These are used in the evaluation
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of individual faculty, which should be kept separate from assessment.
Rather than asking students what they liked, we should focus on the
following three questions: how well do they think they have achieved the
learning goals of the core? what elements in their core courses helped them
and why? and what would have helped them more? / what suggestions do
they have? These three questions would form the basis for written
evaluations, individual interviews, and focus groups?
Step 4 will be to bring student work and student responses together in a
forum that will examine them and decide on some action to be taken. Dr.
Walvoord said that NEASC will not be satisfied with assessment of
individual courses or of disciplines; they will insist on a broader level of
assessment. They will insist on assessment of what students are learning in
the core program. There needs to be a forum to conduct this broader
assessment. Dr. Walvoord saw three possible candidates: the UCDC, a
subset or subcommittee of the UCDC, or another committee entirely.
Discussion followed. From the discussion it emerged that Dr. Walvoord was
not thinking of the UCDC or other body assessing core courses directly;
rather she was thinking of the UCDC or other body examining the
procedures whereby the various departments assessed the effectiveness of
their core courses. Her book Assessment Clear and Simple includes a
sample form for departments to report on their learning goals for their core
courses, how they will assess the fulfillment of those goals, and what their
process is to decide on action in view of the assessment. In this system the
departments do the actual reading of student product and student responses
and report on it, while the UCDC reads the reports of the departments.
Dr. Walvoord reported that NEASC's gold standard would be for a
university to review a certain number of core departments each year or,
alternatively, to review a certain number of core requirements each year.
She suggested that we might consider the LEAP program, details of which
are available on the website of the AACU. This provides a statement of
learning outcomes that, while written from a secular humanist point of view,
may with some tweaking be serviceable for our purposes. Here Robert
Newton pointed out that this LEAP statement includes rubrics.
Dr. Walvoord then drew a diagram of what the NEASC was looking to see.
The first or bottom level of the diagram illustrated the back and forth
feedback loops of departments, student work, and student responses. The
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higher level of the diagram illustrated further levels of contact and feedback
between the departments and the UCDC.
In conclusion, Dr. Walvoord suggested that we obtain the NSSE and other
relevant data from Institutional Research, and that the UCDC see itself as
making recommendations to higher levels in the university, as being in a
feedback loop with higher levels of decision and budgeting.
The meeting adjourned at about 3:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by
Arthur Madigan, S.J.