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Assessment
Steering Team Minutes
Date: August
21, 2000
Attendance: Brent Jameson, Judy Boschult, Kristen Anderson, Betsy
Frank, Georgia Gudykunst, Marian Tadano, Kory Merkel, Maria Enciso
(Guest: Wilbur Nelson).
Welcome to our newest Steering Team member, Kory Merkel and Maria
Enciso. Kory will head up the Numeracy Committee. Maria chairs the
NFO Committee.
What We Learned About Assessment from Conferences.
o Colleges are struggling to find a way to get assessment an ongoing
part of their culture
o Students and needs are diverse and changing.
o Faculty are more willing to work together at the community college
than university
o Cross-disciplinary assessment is much tougher to initiate than departmental
or course assessment; we are much more accustomed to the latter.
o We need fluidity between content and feedback into improvement
o We want ongoing involvement of faculty and staff.
o It is critical but tough to get student participation.
o It is essential to keep communication open; we
need to provide regular updates and feedback
o We need to acknowledge NCA "Levels" into October report
to NCA.
o We need to plan for whole college (not by dept/program per se),
tying program
review to SAAA
o We want to make rubrics manageable, so that faculty don't have to
be overburdened with endless comments on a piece of student writing,
for example. The writing and numeracy committees did a good job on
this!
o It takes time to develop assessment as a process of learning and
involvement.
College involvement in Assessment.
1. Faculty buy-in is the biggest challenge, in that they already are
content experts and do course-level assessment. They and the rest
of the college initially do not have e perspective of college-wide
assessment, which is a more recent development through NCA and other
organizations.
Brent pointed out several types of buy-in:
o faculty participating as assessment liaisons, committee members,
raters, etc.
o faculty at the course level, figuring out ways to incorporate college-wide
outcomes, for example, team-building, into coursework, if appropriate.
Judy shared Time Magazine's pick of outstanding colleges such as
Clemson - places which focused on writing and communication outcomes
across the college. Like PC, they are focusing on how we can do this
collaboration across disciplines; and asking for ideas to support/facilitate
this. Judy is excited to get this into NFO, staff development, to
spread the dialogue. We need to get the "Levels" in too.
Kristen noted that we need to bring the student more into the whole
assessment system - have students tell how/what helped them in writing,
numeracy, etc. It is important to get students familiar with what
PC expects in each of these areas… Focus groups are a possibility
- have students do a self-assessment, contact alumni, etc. Marian
plans to talk to the student clubs this fall.
Marian noted that having workshops on writing and numeracy this fall
will help faculty, staff and students become more familiar with what
PC faculty are wanting students to achieve. For example, a computerized
grammar check is not the same as writing skills.
We have to address the question of who will be the focus of our writing
and numeracy outcomes assessment, similarly for outcomes 3 and 4 (Oral
communications and Team Building). There has been some discussion
of who our target populations should be, but this needs to be further
discussed and determined. We need to included the "literacy"
courses - as well as courses whose instructors indicate that they
reinforce writing, for example. It would be helpful to have the
Faculty again fill out the matrix (along with literacy, numeracy courses)
to confirm in what courses they teach or reinforce these skills. This
could be done with the help of the liaisons.
Roles of the Committees.
Brent reviewed these roles. The Steering Team meets weekly, to try
to drive the plan and set the larger parameters (e.g., working on
timelines for when NCA reports are due, what needs to be done, in
order to meet those commitments) for our assessment process.
The General Assessment Committee meets twice a month. They provide
cross-disciplinary perspective and feedback on assessment process
at PC. They also "approve" the planning efforts of the Steering
Team. They attend assessment workshops held at the college.
The Liaisons serve as the link between the departments and the Assessment
committees. . Liaisons attend their department faculty meetings and
provide regular updates on college-wide assessment. They also bring
ideas and feedback from the departments to the committees.
They also serve as raters/participants in the evaluation of student
samples for assessment.
It was suggested that we ask the liaisons to get on the agenda for
their monthly departmental meetings. In some cases, liaisons were
unable to serve, and thus they were not able to provide information
to and from the department. Brent will follow-up with the Faculty
Chairs to see who the department liaisons are for this coming year.
Some Planning Issues for this Year.
1. As our workload increases, from 2 outcomes to 4 outcomes, we need
to do more systematic pre-planning and work more effectively. We like
our faculty and staff to remain healthy and happy.
2. Perhaps we need to eventually set up an Assessment office perhaps,
to be led by a Faculty Coordinator for Assessment and Staff director.
The work of assessment will only expand. The college-wide assessment
charge comes not only from faculty interest, but also from the MCCD
Board goals and NCA.
3. We need to use feedback from assessment to improve or restructure
curriculum.
4. We need to focus on L1 courses and N1, N2 courses, for Writing
and Numeracy, along with those courses whose instructors indicate
they reinforce these skills.
5. We need to go back to the participants (raters) for their feedback
and clarification of the outcomes sought and rating standards.
6. We need to establish general guidelines for writing and numeracy
samples, for the raters to evaluate.
7. We need to eventually consider multiple measures.
Timelines/Progress To Date.
Georgia shared a draft of a 5 yr. timeline that takes us up to the
self-study and re-accreditation visit.
While the outcomes are not fully determined yet, it is based on the
Steering Team plan of addressing
2 outcomes a year, in order to address all outcomes by the time NCA
visits.
Georgia will also prepare a 1year timeline of activities needed,
to meet our goal of reporting for NCA next in October 20001, and moving
along the 5 yr. Timeline to accreditation.
Georgia also provided a matrix of progress/outcomes for this past
year, 1999-2000, in draft form.
Meeting Schedule for Steering Team.
Mondays at 1pm seem to be the most realistic for everyone. The next
meeting is Monday, Aug. 28
at 1 PM. Location TBA.
Respectfully submitted.
Georgia Gudykunst
*Updated on August 31, to include Maria Enciso in attendance.
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