REDWOODS COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT
Meeting of the Assessment Committee
Room FM 112, Eureka Campus: 7351 Tompkins Hill Road,
CCC Confer from Del Norte Campus
Monday, October 27, 2014
4 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Present: Clyde Johnson, Paul Chown, Erik Kramer, Marla Gleave, Lisa Sayles, Sheila Hall,
Dave Bazard
Absent: Angelina Hill, Melody Pope
Agenda
1. Review and Approve Oct 6 Minutes: minutes approved without correction or comment
2. Update of Senate Presentation: Assessment Committee Co-Chair David Bazard updated the
committee concerning his October 24 Academic Senate presentation. Dave described the three
main areas of the presentation: proposal to change course-level assessments, need to evaluate
GE outcomes in light of the addition of Area E, and the need to clarify the role of the Assessment
Committee and Coordinator within the shared governance structure. Dave reported that most
of the senate spoke favorably about changing the deadline, but they also said they wanted to
check with their constituents. The Senate President (John Johnston) suggested that the Senate
would vote on the proposal after the faculty had a chance to discuss the proposal with division
colleagues. The concept of changing the GE outcomes was discussed at length after an
apparent difference in perspective regarding the GE Areas versus the outcomes. The GE
outcomes are not “area-specific” so a review of the GE outcomes may not address the specific
requirements of a given area. There was, however, agreement that a review of the outcomes is
in order given that they were developed several years ago prior to the college having much
experience with assessment. The Senate president suggested formation of an ad hoc
committee to review the outcomes. The Senate president also agreed that further evaluation
was needed to clarify assessment within the shard-governance structure.
3. Update regarding development of a system to track the 2-year cycle of assessment reports
and plans: Ideas for a system have been discussed, but the work is in the early stages, so there
was not a specific system to describe or discuss. The topic will be brought back to the
assessment committee once more work is done.
4. General Education Outcomes: The committee was provided with a listing of the current GE
outcomes, a Board Policy that describes the objectives of the GE Areas (A through D; E has not
yet been added), and some examples from other schools. The discussion focused on the broad
nature of the current GE outcomes and the ambiguity associated with the assessment results
from the Global/Cultural Context outcome. The samples from other California schools revealed
that broad GE outcomes are common, but many schools have a second tier of outcomes for each
GE area. Also, many schools use mapping to show how a course learning outcome can be used
as a measure of a GE outcome. The Assessment Committee suggested that such mapping could
help streamline our GE assessment process and help ensure that a course achieves the GE
outcomes.
Additional discussion concerned how well the GE outcomes met the GE objectives as outlined in
BP4025. There was general agreement that the GE outcomes should be reviewed and
consideration should be given to having more “area-specific” outcomes. Committee member
Erik Kramer suggested a system in which each GE course would be required to have one or more
outcomes mapped to the Critical Thinking GE outcome and one or more outcomes mapped to the
Communication GE outcomes. Then a set of area-specific outcomes would be developed (e.g.,
Scientific Method for Area A) and a GE course would be required to have one or more of the
course outcomes mapped to the area-specific GE outcome for the area that course satisfies. A
course approved for Area E would be required to have an outcome mapped to both the Area-E
specific outcome and the other area-specific outcome that the course satisfies (e.g., Area B).
Assessment Committee Chair agreed to bring these ideas to the Senate Executive Committee as
discussion items for the ad hoc committee reviewing the GE outcomes.
5. Updates: no other updates were given
The meeting was adjourned at 5:07pm