Introduction

Minutes

Members

Assessment Steering Team Meeting
October 30, 2003
2:00 - 3:00, E223

In Attendance: Brent Jameson, Kory Merkel, Liz O'Brien, Kristin Anderson, Ann Roselle, Mike Mitchell, Pam Rogers, Emily Lander, Jeremy Moreland, Camilla Westenberg, Phil Pepe

1. DSAAAC Update
Brent sent out hard copies of the assessment statements prepared by the Chairs to the campus. Oral Presentation was picked as the assessment committee to highlight for the December 2nd Governing Board meeting.

Next district-wide forum will be January 30, 2004 at Rio. Panel discussions are on HLC/NCA's new criteria for accreditation, and round table discussions on assessment practices. Let Brent know if you would like to present for your committee.

Discussion was brought up at DSAAAC in regards to that committee's focus, and whether they should be focusing on accreditation as well as assessment. This committee felt that assessment is a large part of accreditation, and saw no problems with discussing both topics.

2. All-Campus Meeting is November 6th at 7:00 am and 1:30 pm. Focus will be on Strategic Planning and HLC/NCA.

3. Update on committees:

Occupational - Kristin. The Occupational Committee had a very successful meeting last week with 25 of the program directors attending. The directors adopted a second outcome statement on Professional Behaviors. Because the programs vary so much, the directors have flexibility with the rubric and many modify it or create their own if needed. They have set a summer deadline for updated matrices for Outcome 1 and for new matrices for Outcome 2.

Numeracy - Kory. Kory is working on collecting samples for this semester. She is emailing faculty members individually with Brent's support.

Writing - Mike. The Writing Committee has completed reading and scoring all 54 portfolios collected last Spring. Mike will be comparing scores and writing a report, to be completed around December 1. The report will go out to the campus upon completion and review by the committee.

Oral Presentation - Liz. Liz sent out a campus wide email requesting new samples and received a great response. She had to turn people down for this semester. She has created a new rating table to track each course the committee has evaluated and their results.

ESL - Pam. The ESL Committee is still focusing on grammar and writing, and has decided to undergo training to evaluate speaking. They will be using a national recognized tool, Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), which will involve 38 hours of training over winter break. The committee is working on creating a report to be given to all ESL faculty to clarify the committee's goals and progress.

Developmental Ed - Camilla. The Developmental Ed Committee has met two times this semester. Camilla had to work to recruit new faculty participants to represent reading and math. The committee has been looking at the testing results from last year, and feels that organizational skills are a good topic to highlight in the Spring. They would like to incorporate the use of the student planner distributed each year by Student Life and Leadership into their workshop, and encourage those faculty participating to use it in their classes. They will meet again to discuss refining the process for the Spring semester.

Critical Thinking - Phil. The Committee is piloting both the standardized test (the Test of Everyday Reasoning) and their rubrics this semester. They have between 200-300 students taking the test and having their assignments scored on the rubric. After the tests are scored, they hope to be able to give students back their individual results. The results will be compared to other schools nationally taking the test, and they will also be compared against results from their rubric.

Information Literacy - Ann. Ann has her committee of 5 (3 librarians, 1 English faculty, and 1 Applied Business faculty). They will be using national standards set by the Association for College and Research Libraries but will modify them to fit a community college. Brent made note that the committee has done excellent planning and is off to a great start.

4. HLC accreditation update.

Next Meeting: Spring 2004, Date/Time TBA.