Introduction

Minutes

Members

Assessment Steering Team
Date: January 20, 2005
1:00 - 2:00 in HC-3

Present: Jan, Brent, Ann, Camilla, Kristin, Pam, Edlyn S., Gerry,

The meeting began with everyone introducing themselves. There is a new member, Edlyn, she will be taking Mike’s place.

There will be three meetings this semester, today’s, Feb 17, and Apr. 21.

Reminder of the DSAAAC Forum on the 28. Gerry will represent PC and give an oral presentation of what they have been doing.  It will be a very informal, brief presentation. 

A year ago an assessment survey was sent out to the campus. It was decided that this would be good to do on a yearly basis. We did learn from it, even if it is anecdotal. If everyone is in agreement to continue to do this on a yearly basis, Brent will work on the survey. When the survey is sent out again there will be a note explaining that even if you filled it out last year, to please fill it out again. Return rate was about 40 responses out of about 160. April would be a good time to get it out.

Outcome reports

Kristin- continuing to get program directors to submit their two matrices. Have two outcome statements, one about professional behaviors and the other about how to prepare students for the workforce. Have all outcomes on the website, has a list of all programs that have submitted. Now we are just waiting for everyone to submit matrices from last year. Always meet in the Fall and then on an as needed basis for the Spring. In the Fall have two days where they can attend. They had a good turnout last Fall.

Gerry – committee thought it was a really good idea to finish tapes from a year ago. Wondering how to get information out that they think is useful to students, in a constructive manner. Suggest they do presentations within a certain timeframe. Some of the presentations are running too long, need to look at how to give feedback so that presentations may be shorter. Committee sent out to the faculty suggestions on how to assign presentations and tips for students while doing their presentation. Also trying to find a way to track these students, see presentations from them early on and after they’ve been at PC for a while. Jan mentioned that if they send everyone’s SS# to her then her office can pull the information needed.

Pam – they are using a new textbook, based on information from previous assessments. The new textbook will be used to approach grammar better. Committee will continue to develop a tool to evaluate compositions from level 4. Also, how do we make decisions consistent of what the grammar problem is? Every meeting that is scheduled is then flowed over into a general ESL meeting. They do have anchor papers for levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. It has been a challenge, but a good one. There are different ways to score that will show where everyone is in correlation to the others. They are going to start evaluating. In order to do this they are having a teacher training, to get trained on how to evaluate and make sure they are looking at the same criteria. Limiting class size to 20 and have an integrated studies for 040 and 041 to help improve composition.

Camilla – met in December, committee wants to present to the campus at large as a means to help the students identify and investigate careers. They will be looking at some ideas to present for developmental students to identify and select careers based on the activities they are performing.

Ann – committee is meeting next week. They are outreaching to faculty to recruit classes for the second stage of their testing, students who have had some information literacy exposure. There doesn’t seem to be a problem getting faculty to participate. For information literacy skills there are five standards to measure and one of those five is regarding electronic environments, will look more into the electronic skill sets.

Edlyn – met at the close of last semester, consensus was that they had reached a transition point, in terms of evaluating portfolios. Use the rubric to evaluate student portfolios for content and mechanics. Committee felt it was time to put portfolios aside and find a way to close the loop and use the information to address how to help students more on mechanics. Felt it might be beneficial to students if they could get more support outside of class, like a writing center. Would like to develop a set of recommendations for developing writing services and structures that can enable students to improve writing, then take those recommendations to administration and get something in place. Feel that it can’t be just a committee effort, but needs to have widespread faculty buy in.

Kory – unable to attend

Phil - unable to attend

Brent reminded everyone that on the committee blueprint it said that a general report of the committees would be turned in at end of Spring, so keep that in mind.

Decision Support System – presentation by Jan

Has FTSE, enrollment data, completion rates, etc. Demonstrated different tables, what they mean and what is in them. System maintains 5 years of information. All information is precalculated. Information is by term of years. There are two levels of clearance; most will be on the more basic level. There will be support to help understand the program and research office will help with getting the data. There will be training for anyone interested in having access to the program. First training will be March 30. As soon as you go to training then you can access the program immediately. This is unofficial data, but it can be used to make decisions. It has been tested and it does have a 3% error rate, 5% or less is acceptable. Gave a handout showing what information is in the program, what questions were asked to have data answer, and a diagram of basically what is in the program.