MORENO VALLEY COLLEGE
Joanna Werner-Fraczek
Student Learning Outcome Assessment Report
General Biology (Bio-1); Summer 2013
Tell us about the section(s) you assessed.
General Biology, Sec. 25503. This class is daytime, face-to-face course on the Moreno Valley
College campus that has lecture and laboratory component.
Which SLO from the Course Outline of Record (COR) does this project assess?
List the steps of the scientific method, and understand the process of science. The emphasis was
placed on the ability to develop a research project. Students formulate the hypothesis and develop a
research plan that they presented in writing.
Why did you choose that SLO?
My experience of teaching science courses with a lab component indicates that many students
struggle with truly understanding and implementing scientific methods. I accessed the same SLO
previously with an emphasis on metric system and on writing a scientific paper. Although students
wrote good papers in general, I was still not satisfied with their engagement with this assignment.
Students wrote papers on a given topic that they did not research themselves. I suspect that a
quality of papers would improve if students wrote their own research proposals. Therefore, I
introduced a student-driven research component to my Bio-1 lab where students would observe
swallows on our campus and would come up with their own research proposals. The proposals
became the written assignments that were evaluated.
What specific topic does this project focus on?
This project focuses on developing a skill of conducting a scientific inquiry. The project walked
students throughout the steps of scientific inquiry: observation that leads to hypothesis followed by
development of research plan presented in writing.
Describe your inquiry strategy, including the assessment tool, scoring criteria, and timeline.
Students were divided in the small cohorts of four students. They conducted their observations
during the lab time. To stimulate these observations, students collected samples from different
locations, cataloged them and provided a proper documentation of the samples. In the next step,
students searched literature and designed four possible research project related to swallows at
Moreno Valley College (MVC). Each project contained: 1. Set of proposed questions (minimum
four) and 2. The descriptions how each question could be answered scientifically. Students
developed research proposals.
What were the results of the initial assessment? Based on the results, what goal was set?
I was very nicely surprised to see students’ involvement in the project. They would come to class
discussing what they observed, what they learned, and what they would like to learn. There was an
easily observed difference with student’s level of engagement when we conducted planned
experiments and they discussed their own research proposals. Cohorts developed responsibility for
their own learning and applied critical thinking to formulate their ideas.
Based on this observation, I have decided to continue with introducing research into my Bio-1 class,
and to develop a long-term research plan to investigate swallows at MVC.
What modifications to the curriculum were made?
This fall of 2013 I decided to put more emphasis on research proposals development. The
assignment was given more points (60 instead of 30 when it was offered in the summer of 2013).
Students will have more time to discuss and formulate their ideas. More efforts are expected on
literature search and writing format. At this point I am hesitant to develop a rubric for the project,
because the idea is that this should be a student driven-project with as many aspects as possible
without sacrificing the learning component.
Describe your re-inquiry strategy, including the timeline and results.
The project will be reevaluated the second time at the end of Fall 2013. The next steps will be
developed according to the results obtained. I will evaluate students’ engagement and the ability to
develop a science based inquiry process.
Have you shared this project with your colleagues? Next step and timeline. Will you assess
this course again focusing on a different SLO? Will you assess a different version of this
course-hybrid, online, evening, 8 week, etc.? Will you assess a different course, if so which
SLO will you address?
We already had some discussion about introducing research-based learning into our biology classes.
The project seems to be very promising. There would be more discussion during our departmental
meetings and on every-day bases. In my opinion, there is a need to develop a way on how to
measure student engagement, so we can assess it correctly.