California State University, Chico
Action Plan for Program-level GE assessment
Goals of Plan: To have in place, by the end of Spring 2012 semester, an agreed upon systematic
approach to the assessment of student learning of GE SLOs that results in an overall review of
the program in a five year period from its implementation in Fall 2012.
Who does what when: The action plan will be developed by the GE Curriculum Advisory Board
(CAB) including GE Pathway coordinators working in collaboration with faculty teaching in
Pathways, as well as faculty teaching Foundation courses. CAB comes into being at the start of
Spring 2012 semester. Pathway coordinators are already in place.
What will be Assessed?: The assessment plan developed will address the ten GE SLOs defined
by EM 10-01 including the "intellectual skills" of oral communication, writing, critical thinking
and quantitative reasoning and the GE "values" SLOs defined by the campus: Active Inquiry,
Creativity, Diversity, Global Engagement, Personal and Social Responsibility and Sustainability.
How will Assessment proceed?: Specific assessment methodologies will be worked out in
conjunction with GE Pathway and Foundation faculty. The broad outlines of assessment
methodology are already under discussion and include:
1. Deliberative dialogue with faculty on strategies to operationalize and measure student learning
of GE SLOs. Faculty will be convened by Pathway coordinators or CAB who will provide
faculty with a variety of tools, including established rubrics (VALUE rubrics and others) to
stimulate thinking and refection on SLO assessment. As part of the design of the Pathway
program, faculty have already committed to addressing specific sets of GE SLOs in their courses.
Discussion will focus on appropriate learning materials, pedagogical approaches and specific
activities and assignments linked to the assessment of particular SLOs.
2. Pathway coordinators will share promising assessment approaches with CAB and across
Pathways to stimulate creative, efficient, productive and valid approaches to assessment of
student learning with colleagues. A repository of promising assignments and assessment
approaches will be compiled and shared to facilitate the dissemination of promising practices.
3. CAB will review and approve assessment plans devised within Pathways and set a schedule
for SLO assessment consistent with a five year review schedule.
4. CAB will create a repository of student work, identified by faculty ("signature assignments")
and perhaps by students as well ("signature works") that can be assessed by faculty to measure
student learning of GE SLOs.
5. In the case of Foundation courses, CAB will work with faculty teaching these courses to
engage in a similar effort to operationalize and define a methodology for the assessment of
"skills" SLOs that can inform Pathway deliberations on these same efforts.
6. Assessment coordinators will work with faculty in implementing collection of student work
for assessment purposes, perform preliminary review of data collected to ensure quality and
work with Pathway faculty on initial analysis. Assessment data and results will be shared with
CAB for further review and analysis including the write-up of a report shared with the Provost
and the Academic Senate on the level of student performance on GE SLOs.
7. Results will be shared with faculty teaching in GE in both the Foundation and the Pathways in
order to reflect on assessment results and stimulate curricular or pedagogical innovations or
adjustments to address any perceived gaps in student performance -- so-called "closing the loop."
Initial assessment will pay particular attention to supporting faculty in promoting sound writing
practices across the GE curriculum, particularly in Writing Intensive (WI) courses. Improving
student writing is a shared concern and shared responsibility across the GE curriculum and it is
particularly important that assessment examine the relationship between writing pedagogy,
classroom structures and enrollment levels in WI courses in order to support student learning and
faculty teaching of writing.
We are also committed to an early and intensive examination of learning and teaching of critical
thinking in order to promote a shared understanding of the meaning of critical thinking across
disciplines, a shared approach to assessing critical thinking and a concerted effort to promote
best practices in curriculum and pedagogy that enhance student learning.
Assessment planning will explore the feasibility of a genuine longitudinal study of student
learning of core intellectual skills. One proposal consists of identifying a random sample of 400
incoming freshman in 2012 and collecting student work in oral and written communication,
critical thinking and quantitative reasoning to establish baseline measures of student performance
on these SLOs. These students will be "followed" throughout their GE careers to examine their
interaction with the GE program and their performance on tasks associated with the core
intellectual skills. Particularly important will be their performance as they finish the GE
program to measure changes in performance over time. While this plan presents several
logistical difficulties, it should be possible to complete assuming faculty buy-in to the task and
the capabilities of enrollment management and learning management software.