General Education Assessment Committee
Minutes, Meeting of October 17, 2014
1200 Centennial Hall
Committee Members Present: Georges Cravins, David Hart, Mary Kirzan; Pamela Morris; Julie
Weiskopf.
Also present, Ex Officio: Patrick Barlow [Assessment Coordinator].
Excused: James Murray; Jennifer Docktor.
Meeting began @ 3:25 PM.
1.
Minutes of the meeting of October 10, 2014 approved [5-0-0].
2.
Georges Cravins agreed to be the note taker for the meeting.
3.
Automatically-generated Courses Assessment Status Reports.
Our reporting units receive automatically-generated status reports from the GEAC online system. These
have recently generated some confusion. Identified problems with these reports include:

Some legitimate recipients seem to not understand why they are receiving the reports.

Some legitimate recipients find that there are apparent errors, sometimes due to the fact that a
report may not include the latest submission and/or review result.

Reports being sent to individuals who are not listed as “Department Appointees” and who are
not department chairs.

The timing of the reports [which are sent as emails], mainly that these are sometimes sent at
times that recipients do not expect, such one recent report that was sent at around 5:30 AM
[prompting a complaint by the recipient].
Discussion and action taken: Two individuals on the committee suggested that the automatic emails
be discontinued. However, the committee did not make a decision on the value – or the potential
negatives – of the automatically-generated status reports. The chair was asked to get additional
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information on the reports from Josh, including: a) What triggers the sending of the status reports,
and why are they sent at a particular time or day? b) What exactly is the purpose of these reports?
The chair will contact Josh and report back to the committee either via email, or at the next regular
GEAC meeting.
4.
Discussion of issues involving ongoing Form A submissions and review.
A. Form A proposals being assigned to more than 2 reviewers by the online system.
1) The normal process is that as each Form A is submitted, the GEAC system automatically assigns
the proposal to two (2) GEAC members for review. During the current cycle, however, a number of
Form As have been assigned to more than two reviewers. For example, proposals for UWL 100, HST
204, MTH 135, WS 230 have all been assigned to more than 2 reviewers.
The proper assignment [initially each proposal being sent to 2 reviewers] tends to work very
effectively and is less confusing than assigning some proposals to more than two people. Thus, the
committee has an interest in either the correction of a flaw, or a plausible explanation for the
assignment of more than two people to a single Form A.
Action taken. The GEAC Chair will including this issue in his email to Josh. It is assumed that this is
a flaw in the technology that can be corrected.
.
B. Discussion of Form A submission for courses and/or course sections that contain the same assessment
strategy.
Why is this important? In the past, individual GEAC members, likely unaware of more than one
identical Form A submission by a department, in some cases returned to the department conflicting
results: some Form As were approved for the course, while others, for the same course, were denied.
During the current academic cycle, the GEAC has had ongoing discussion of replicated or identical
Form A submissions. For example, the Department of English submits an identical Form A proposal for
some for its larger General Education courses. Committee member David Hart explained that with
respect to ENG 110 and other English courses with identical Form A protocols, the faculty members
meet at key intervals to discuss and develop assessment strategies and to effectively carry out the
assessment. The GEAC members are actively communicating around this issue with the result that the
committee’s review and communication with the relevant departments will be consistent.
C. The MLG [language] course Form A assessment protocol.
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Committee members again report that a number of the Modern Language Form As do not include an
apparent, discreet individual course assessment strategy. Rather, the GEAC has been once again
informed that students in MLG’s introduction and intermediate language courses are assessed based on
“proficiency” level standards, including language proficiency exams, which are set by outside testing
sources. The problem is that the UW-La Crosse General Education Committee requires that each
General Education course be assessed based on criteria developed specifically for the course.
Action Taken. The committee chair will invite a MLG representative to a future meeting in an effort to:
a) better understand MLG’s assessment strategy, and b) attempt to determine how the course instructor
in MLG might develop and articulate course-specific assessment protocols.
Meeting adjourned at 4:40 PM.
Recorded by Georges Cravins /10-20-14
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