General Education Assessment Committee
October 20, 2014
Student Union Building, Room 322
Present: Krista Prock (at-large non-teaching faculty), Varsha Pandya (CLAS), Mary Eicholtz (at-large teaching
faculty), George Sirrakos (COE), William Donner (Rep from SPRC), William Dempsey (Academic Dean), Valerie
Trollinger (VPA), Kim Shively (at-large teaching faculty), Janice Gasker (at-large teaching faculty), Danielle
Hendricks (Student Representative).
Absent: Gil Clary (Office of Assessment), Brent Penny (Admin. & Finance), Randy Schaeffer (Gen Ed
Committee), Stephen Hensler (COB).
Prock called the meeting to order at 2:00 pm.
Minutes: Motion was made to approve the September 29, 2014 Minutes by Pandya, seconded by Gasker.
Motion was made to approve the October 6, 2014 Minutes by Donner, seconded by Shively. Both Minutes were
approved.
Standardized Tests: Prock asked Clary for information about standardized testing. Since he knew he would be
unable to attend this meeting, Clary sent Prock an email outlining the various tests available and his opinion of
them.
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CAAP – Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency measures critical thinking via multiple
choice items and written communication via two 20 minute writing tasks;
CLA – Collegiate Learning Assessment has performance based tasks for critical thinking and
written communication and provides assessments of writing, analysis and problem solving,
scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical reading and evaluation, and critiquing arguments
plus writing mechanics and effectiveness; and
ETS Proficiency Profile – measures critical thinking, reading, writing and mathematics via
multiple choice items. Several years ago, we used ETS PP and the results did not provide
anything useful or useable. First and senior year students were recruited, and those who were
willing completed the test online with their own PC computers. It took quite a bit of effort to
get the students to participate despite every participant receiving $10 in bear bucks (students
have up to 40 minutes to complete the test) and then being eligible to win one of four iPads.
Clary feels a key issue with these tests is that they are often low stakes as students have little incentive to do
well, and therefore, do not put in significant effort. The stakes could be raised for students, but that would take
a significant effort.
Of the three tests, Clary finds the CLA intriguing as it presents real world problems to students that they might
encounter in jobs, and they are asked to talk through ways of solving the problem or issue.
Kutztown University is a member of the VSA – voluntary system of accountability – and we are supposed to
assess learning outcomes (writing and critical thinking) in some standardized way. Using one of these tests fits
this obligation but so does using student artifacts or work products from actual courses (e.g., papers that were
prepared for the purpose of the class) and evaluating them with the VALUE rubric. The latter method would
solve the low stakes problem and produces an evaluation that the institution should take seriously. Discussion
followed.
Chairnet: Chairnet meets on October 20th, and Prock plans to attend. She will talk to them about the database,
and the need for their course information on the database to be updated. When Prock attends the meeting, she
plans to review the database with the chairs, their responsibilities and ask them to review and update using the
current Excel application. This is an on-going project as new courses are added and others are deleted or put
into moratorium. She will also remind them of the consequence of when a template is assigned to a particular
course.
Database: Prock reported there may be funding to hire a Computer Science student to work on the database.
The Provost is supportive of hiring a student for this purpose. IT in the past has not offered support but that
could change with backing from the administration. Discussion followed. No matter which computer program
is used (Excel, Access, etc.); we will still need to hire a student to maintain the database.
Year 3 report: Prock had distributed the draft of the Year 3 report, and discussion followed concerning the
contents of the report. It was decided to eliminate the course name and number of an assessed course
throughout the entire report. In the Executive Summary on page 3, include managing the transition from the
pilot study to an actual study. It is thought that both benchmarking and scaffolding of general education calls
for future projects.
Page 5 ‘because the program’ to ‘pilot a three year assessment cycle’: the general education assessment
procedure approved for use by Kutztown University … suggestions were made for clarification.
3.3 discussions followed. It was decided to eliminate “200” level because no data was reported. Some of the
faculty had the students do a self-reflective essay.
On page 11 – assessment process: discussion followed. As we develop a culture of assessment on campus and as
faculty see results, we expect we should receive clearer results. In the future, we will be in a position to request
clarification. It was brought to the attention of the committee that in some higher level courses, the students
have already been assessed and they would not be in the higher level course unless they can achieve the higher
performance level.
Meeting adjourned at 2:55 pm.
/km
10/28/2014