Minutes
Learning Evidence Team
October 18, 2007
Members Present: Suzette Dohany (co-chair), Kurt Ewen (co-chair), Julie Phelps, Roberta Brown,
Anastasia Bojanowski, Melissa Pedone, Mike Bosley, Joe, Aida Diaz, Ed Holmes, Phillip Bishop
Jenelle Conner – recording
General Education Outcomes
A revised draft will go out in advance of the forums that will be held on each campus. Then a 2nd
revision from feedback will be sent out college-wide by Susan Dauer for a vote from faculty. This
vote will lead to a recommendation to Learning Council.
The presentation has been sent out deans (attached). Council reporters/reporting system was
discussed. Outcomes and timeline have been forwarded to faculty for feedback.
The scheduling of the forums has been stalled until November/December and may even need to be
pushed into spring semester. The Learning Council meetings in February/March would be the last
chance to get changes into the catalog. (AA and AS redistributed credit hours will be streamlined.)
Think Report (combined with Oral Communication Report) (deviation from Agenda)
A rough timeline was distributed (attached) and discussed. The draft has been sent to deans to go to
faculty. A rewrite to clarify that we want the writing of the students and not just the prompts was
suggested. In order to market to faculty, professional development hours by category should be
offered and approval for Associate Faculty credit be sought.
Courses under consideration are 2000 level Gordon Rule writing courses and include 20th Century
Humanities and International Politics. This question was posed: What have the deans committed to
in the division action plans? Further communication with deans will determine this. It was
suggested that Comp I faculty be involved in discussion. It was also suggested that the Social
Science faculty be involved, that the focus be on something college-wide, and the scope be limited.
For THINK, the same timeline will be sent to Statistics faculty with revisions aimed at statistics.
IRB training is thought to be important to this project and we will be seeking a special LET IRB
training session in the near future.
For COMMUNICATE, there have been good conversations about packaging the workshops. In part
I, focus will be on the rubric to develop assignments and to focus on assessing communication skills.
Discussion will be had about how useful the rubric is to non-communication faculty. The faculty will
earn hours for implementing. In part II, faculty will focus on collection evidence of assignments and
assessment of assignments.
The goal is to advertise for workshops before Thanksgiving and offer them early in spring semester.
Then feedback can be collected at the end of the spring semester.
It is necessary that the Standards of Evidence Team step in at this point and answer questions such as
how useful the rubric is to non-speech faculty.
Learning Assessment Committee Update
The presented proposal plan given to the IAC was distributed to the team by email (attached).
There will be a test run of standards in how we collect and use data with the implementation of
Student Assessment of Instruction.
The LAC has been given the specific charge of Gen Ed leadership and pushing it through.
Main Topic Discussion: Clarifying the Link between TVCA and the General Education
Learning Outcomes
The team was introduced to the six thinking hats (attached) and used them to discuss a goal
statement: “Focusing on assessable indicators for the Gen Ed outcomes is the best way for the LET
to clarify the meaning and assessability of TVCA.” The six thinking hats is a framework for
discussion that helps to avoid adversarial thinking and also helps to approach a subject from a
parallel point of view.
Attached are the results of this discussion. The statement will be revised.
Document Decisions and Agreements
A Calendar of LET events and progress will be added to the LET Website.
IRB Training for the team will be sought.
Results of Main Topic Discussion using the six hats will be compiled and used for revision to the
goal statement.