Assessment Committee Meeting 04-26-13 Notes
The Assessment Committee "re-starting" this process.
Discussed using the Understanding by Design (UbD) Grant Wiggins and Jeff? As the process to
follow. Similar to business models where you start with the end in mind.
Linda will look into costs, training materials, trainings, etc.
Outcomes need to be accurate
Outcomes need to strenuous.
Outcomes should not be worded about a certain percentage of students reaching a particular
course grade.
We should be using identified/selected assignments.
We should identify a level we want each student to reach.
VERY IMPORTANT to find/develop a common vocabulary/terms:
Outcomes:
Goals:
Objectives:
Standards:
Indicators:
Etc.
The University of Connecticut has an "Assessment Primer" with helpful definitions.
The American Association of Community Colleges has information we should incorporate.
Assessment needs to be cyclical and include a feedback loop. Loop was not "closed/completed"
in the past. (We were fortunate to be able to collect some data...) By being closed/completed, we
mean that the data needs to be shared with the appropriate parties, evaluated, and responded to/
acted upon.
Assessments chosen need to represent best practice.
Due to variations in data collection times usually, due to accreditation reports, we discussed the
necessity of having different reporting times. Perhaps dividing up and having half collected in fall
and half collected in spring to spread out the workload, esp. For institutional research.
We discussed having programs/degrees mapping their curriculum across courses. It will be
required. Identifying where outcomes would be "introduced/initiated" (I), where outcomes are
reinforced/practiced (R/P), and where outcomes were "assessed/evaluated" (A/E) was discussed.
At first the conversation was about how burdensome this would be, later it seemed to be a
valuable idea for programs to understand their courses.
It was discussed that core learning outcomes could be "officially" assessed three times:
F-1 a formative assessment in a 1000 course
F-2 a formative assessment in a 2000 course
S a final summative assessment in a capstone course
It was mentioned that those who had attended the assessment conference in IL in Oct 2012
(Gregg Timberlake, Karen Reed, and Linda Jagielo) felt that it would be important for the
assessment committee members to become experts on the new assessment process. This was
shared with Cindy Freeman and Anne Strouth prior to sharing with the committee.
Therefore, assessment committee members will need to receive professional development/
training/practice in assessment and in particular the planning for, integrating in, and reporting out
processes we choose. Also needs to include a deep understanding of the development of rubrics
and Understanding by Design (UbD).
Whatever we decide we must keep it simple/focused
And Need to clarify the roles people in the programs will have to play
Even accredited programs may need to re-look at their or the college's/state's reasons for
requiring courses. What is the purpose/fit of all courses on curriculum worksheet? Yes, even
comp, speech, soc sci, etc.
We will be presenting this new process during fall in-service 2013.
Should we begin with a quiz in which we have the audience use the clicker system to answer?
Discussion ensured regarding how the clicker system was received during Diab's academic
structure presentation. Did people use it? Did they like it?
If we go with truly restarting the assessment process here, and especially if we choose to use a
process similar to Understanding by Design (UbD) it will most likely take two years to complete
the first cycle.
Therefore, we talked about keeping the same process in place for next year for programs currently
reporting assessment results. I think we decided to do this.
It would make sense to have new programs/degrees (especially AA's) start from scratch with the
new process. I think we also decided to do this.
We need a plan, probably over two-years, needs to be holistic, needs to include accountability for
faculty