Assessment of Learning Committee Notes from the meeting of March 22, 2010
Present: J. Simon, C. Subramaniam, D. Grogan, C. Gold, J. Soden, R. Bergeman, M.
Kline, J. Noyes, K. Laureano-Ribas, R. Lewis, H. Storms, K. Holt, C. Striepe, L.
Gallucci, B. Jaffe, J. Shankweiler
The duties of note taker will be rotated. Kaysa Laureano- Ribas, Claudia Striepe have
served, next volunteer, Chris Gold.
Opening Remarks:
Work has begun on the CurricuNet module. CurricuNet found a school with similar
requirements to us, Elgin Community College, Illinois, that we can use as a sample
layout site. This may save some time. In the Summer Jenny will begin migrating the
proposals, SLO forms, assessment reports, etc. over to CurricuNet.
Agenda:
Item 1. Jenny Simon noted that the 6th core competency regarding Information and
Technology Literacy had been passed by the Academic Senate last week, with some good
feedback. Jenny will try and arrange a presentation of the core Competencies to the
Board of Trustees at some future date.
Item 2. Jenny called for general committee feedback on this updated list of deadlines
which she had discussed with the facilitators at their last meeting. The first date is
September 17th to complete a review of current SLO’s and compare them to the core
competencies mapping, and to ensure each area has an SLO corresponding to the 3’s and
4’s core competencies ratings.
Ideas/Comments/Suggestions:
Maybe this should be another Flex Day activity?
Can our core competency ratings still be changed? Jenny felt this might be difficult
because of all the documentation and it would be easier if done via CurricuNet. However,
it would not be impossible as the documents have not yet been turned into Institutional
Research (they are due there by April 29th) The outcome of this mapping will be to make
adjustments to the SLO’s if they do not line up with the competencies. If the SLO’s need
to be adjusted, this can be done through Curricunet. We do not have to go through the
CurricuNet Committee if we are only making adjustments to the SLO’s.
Divisions will be conducting Program level assessments this Spring. A Program is
considered an overarching statement. There are different types of Program assessment.
Individual courses will be looked at later in the process. There was a question about
whether we might need a cap on faculty and individual course assessment. Currently the
part- time faculty involvement issues is still under discussion, but once that is settled,
they may be able to help in this regard.
“All course level SLO’s must be assessed every 4 years” seems to be the mandate. Jenny
noted that CurricuNet should make visualization of this process easier. Will this 4 year
deadline be based on the Program Review cycle? Another mandate states “Each course
level SLO must be reviewed in a Program Review cycle”. There is some confusion here
as there is still no settlement on the negotiations regarding how often to do Program
Review, so it is difficult to make a statement. Jenny decided to wait for further
information.
Linda asked whether the Feb. 15th deadline should include ALL Student Services
programs. Jenny said yes.
It was noted that the college catalog would be online and would be the catalog of record.
The catalog will contain the program level SLO’s , but not individual course SLO’s.
There was a suggestion to have a link to Division/Unit/department web pages to access
course level SLO’s.
On the question of individual course sections assessment, Jenny suggested leaving it up
to individual participation, bearing in mind that participation is part of faculty selfassessment. This is not currently the case for adjunct faculty. It was noted that we need to
have comparable data from the Compton campus.
Christina suggested adding to the very beginning of the deadlines a Spring 2010 reminder
“Conduct Program- level assessments.”
Jenny will send this updated deadline list out to faculty soon.
Item 3. The plan for the core competency assessment is just a draft plan, with many
questions to be resolved.
Ideas/Comments/Suggestions:
One question is how this data should be used? It was suggested that Planning and
Budgeting, Summit sessions, Accreditation, Educational Master plans, and Program
Review could all benefit from the data.
Linda noted that the core competencies are institutional and therefore be used by
institutional planning bodies, or come back to us for us to make recommendations to
institutional planning entities. It was recommended we give the data to Arvid Spor “The
Spor Report”. Linda said it was senseless to spend all this time on analyzing data that
would not be used. Christina noted that different core competencies would inform
different areas, some might fit with the Technology planning, for instance, while others
would fit with the Campus Plan. But these are still high- level campus- wide bodies that
fuel/feed the master plan. It was suggested we also ask these bodies what information
they make be looking for, for future planning – although it may be too late for Core
Competency 1.
Another question is what form the Summit should take? The date set is 10th week of
Fall2010, 29th October. Should this be a whole day affair, or morning sessions with
lunch?
The ACCJC has various concepts of what a core competency is and should achieve. The
competencies should be assessed at a degree level, tied to general educ. Outcomes, tied to
institutional effectiveness. It was suggested that our summit be broken into groups that
discuss how the core competencies inform their decisions and their work. The campus
players who effect change also need to be involved in planning the summit. We (the
LAC) may be the cog that started the business moving but the institution needs to drive
the direction we need to move in. Basic Skills folks should be there too.
The summit should begin with an overview of what has been done and then break into
groups like Gen Ed, Master Plan people, etc. We should meet afterwards to see if it was
an effective assessment or where/if changes need to be made. The feedback loop is
important. We will also seek recommendations at the summit.
It was noted that the Core Competency III had had a wording change requested to alter
“verbal” to “spoken and signed”
The goal is to decide whether the core competencies are correct, or what we can change
in our methodologies. Then we can close the loop on core competency 1 and move to the
next competency in the 6 year cycle, aiming to complete one core competency per year.
Jenny Simon will talk to Arvid Spor.
We should start to think of questions for the survey.
Ideally, this will be a 3 question email survey. Irene Graff expects a 14- 15% response
rate to this survey, which is considered good. One question would ask for student id 3’s.
This would allow access to much information, besides allowing us to know what stage of
their academic career the students are in. We do want student completors. We have a
short-ish time frame to get the questions ready and the survey out.
Other question suggestions:
How confident do you feel in writing an essay for a class?
What skills help you communicate effectively, for instance, when making a presentation?
What feedback have you received on your writing?
What college experiences have given you the most confidence regarding communications
skills?
Have you even been told that you are an effective communicator?
Try and link the acquisition of skills to the next stage – like getting a job, or college
transfer.
How will we use the data? Ideas were to use it in informing teaching practices,
assignments, to highlight progress, to link it to success/retention rates, to give feedback to
other bodies, including the ACCJC.
Please send other feed back to Jenny Simon or Barbara Jaffe.
The next meeting was set for April 26th.
Cs/ecc2010