Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Daniel Faltesek, McKenzie Huber, Filix Maisch, Bob Paasch, David Roundy, Dana Sanchez, Rorie Spill Solberg, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Pat Ball, Nancy Barbour, Kathy Becker-Blease, Natalie Dollar, Weihong Qiu, Inara Scott
Ex-Officio members present: Faculty Affairs – Heath Henry; Ecampus – Rayne Vieger (remote); WIC Director – Vicki Tolar Burton (remote)

Category II Reviews

• WSE 391
  • Reviewer not present. The course will be discussed at another date.
• WSE 425/525
  • No course resources are listed – Says to find them on Canvas.
  • Statements and links appear adequate and correct.
  • Good verbatim Baccalaureate Core (BC) statement and application explanation.
    • BC Learning Outcomes (LOs) are not mentioned until page 3, and are oddly stated in bullet-pointed list, “STS Bacc-core LOs: Articulate in writing…”
    • They are also listed in reverse-order.
    • The only reference to aligning assessment of those outcomes is a parenthetical for each that is very broad, e.g., “(assessed outcomes: exploratory and project portfolios)”. The reviewer feels that this is insufficient.
  • Course-specific learning outcomes are listed in the same bullet list, following the BCs.
    • They are usually split into two separate lists so students know which LOs are related to the BC and which are related to the specific course.
  • Graduate specific LOs are two bullet points:
    • Apply modeling techniques for design and analysis of timber structures and
    • develop cross-disciplinary communication skills.
  • One of the undergraduate course-specific learning outcomes is to “develop team skills” and elsewhere the syllabus states that teams are all interdisciplinary and that graduate students are assigned to lead those teams. Is Graduate outcome 2 unique to graduate learners? Also, given that all the students are on these build teams and in the lab and turning in blogs and writing project pieces about the built models, is Graduate outcome 2 unique to Graduate students?
    • Nowhere in the grading does it say how graduate students are evaluated differently or additionally than the undergraduates. This makes it appear that graduate students are simply serving as subsidized labor while not extracting more challenge or learning than the undergraduates they “lead.”
  • Undergrad STS writing – They claim to have two 1250 word assignments (portfolios). However, in both cases (there is a noted lack of detailed assignment sheets to learn more) the 1250-word, referenced assignment appears to be broken into much smaller pieces (word counts unspecified). This does not meet the STS course requirements.
  • Syllabus has two weekly timelines – One for activities, another for assignments. Why not integrate these AND give more syllabus-visible linkages to Undergraduate and Graduate LOs, including BCs?
    • There is also no assessment linkage is provided in syllabus for the course-specific undergraduate outcomes, and the reviewer’s concerns about the Graduate LOs are detailed above but also fail to have alignment in the syllabus.
  • In regards to the form responses:
    • The responses to how will you assess the STS LOs are insufficient – They list the number of assignments, their point values (individual and total), and then verbatim paste in 1 or more of the BC outcomes, verbatim.
    • They wrote a lot about assessment criteria (which is not stated in the syllabus) which are apparently in rubrics (which were not provided), but none of those specifically or explicitly reference the BCs – The reviewer believes that they are likely assessing at least the historical influence of science and technology LO but the relationships among and other three LOs seemed to be grouped in with the blog post assignments (this is uncertain, as the prompts for the blog assignments were also not provided).
  • Send back for revisions and with comments for the Graduate Council to confirm that the class is an appropriate level for Graduate students.
• LEAD 342 
  • Originally intended as an Social Processes and Institution course.
  • Linkage between BC LOs and assessment is not clear.
    • A table is provided with headers for Topic, Reading and Assignment, but it is not clear which of these the Objective column is linked to. It is also unclear if the Objective column is referring to the BC LOs.
  • The committee discussed that it is an issue that the CPS does not require submitters to add syllabi for all campuses if they denote that the course is offered at other locations.
    • Ecampus is not required to create a Category II proposal if it is being added as an option for an existing course – it is considered a change in modality, not an additional location.
      • It was stated that Ecampus already requires courses to go through a course design program before it can be implemented.
        • The committee asked that Ecampus at least submit their syllabus so that it can be reviewed by the committee to make sure it meets the BC requirements.

Category Reviews

• PHS 211
  • Same issues as PHS 212
    • Does not explicitly state how the BC outcomes align with class activities.
    • Alignments can be assumed based on the course description and what the BC outcomes are.

Other Business

• Someone is proposing a new DPD course and wound up with an unusual chart in the proposal system.
  • Most likely some kind of glitch, or they stumbled across an older form somehow.
• No timeline yet on implication of the new CPS program. A potential soft opening is anticipated next Spring. Nothing will be moved over from the old system and the old system will be active until all programs have gone through.