Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Daniel Faltesek, Kelsey Emard, Colin Johnson, Lori McGraw, Rene Reitsma, Justin St. Germain, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Geoffrey Barstow, Jack Istok, Matthew Kennedy, Michelle McAllaster, Randy Rosenberger
Ex-officio members present: Difference, Power & Discrimination – Nana Osei-Kofi, Ecampus – Karen Watte, Academic Affairs – Heath Henry, WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: Patrick Ball, Kristin Nagy Catz, John Edwards, McKenzie Huber, Mike Jefferis, Caryn Stoess

GenEd Learning Outcome Assessment – Kristin Nagy Catz

• The Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC) has been developing around course assessment and compliance, in addition to other policies around the BCC in relations to GenEd.
  • Is it better to evaluate entire categories at once, or by course?
  • What is the relationship between assessment and compliance? Between a category or between courses? What is the administration looking for in regards to assessment?
    • University of Florida is doing a lot with assessment that Kristin is hoping to apply to OSU.
    • There are rubrics that are applied to each category that is used to assess the categories as a whole. It’s not punitive, but allows for the administration to look over student responses and course details to determine if a course is affective.
    • Signature assignments were developed in each area (by the Center for Teaching and Learning [CTL]) with rubrics that go along with each area and there are rubrics for different assignment types (papers, presentations, etc.).
    • Faculty are looking at their own students so it may not be as robust.
    • All faculty assessments are loaded into Canvas as a data set.
    • This would be a yearly process during the grading period for courses.
      • If courses are being reviewed every four years, four years of data would be available for the BCC to pull.
      • Will the BCC still be reviewing the syllabus?
        • Yes, when courses apply for the Bacc Core program, they would need to provide their syllabus.
    • The model is synergistic with compliance.
• Where’s the mandate to do this coming from? As far as some faculty in the BCC are aware, we don’t do this level of assessment for courses outside of the core. Are there reviews for courses not in the Bacc Core?
  • College of Business (COB) confirmed they are frequently assessing their courses and programs for compliance with accreditation programs.
    • Course outcomes are mapped to program outcomes. Then a matrix is used to compute it to college level. Every year to every two years, the data is sent to accrediting bodies.
    • Programs don’t sample, but the Bacc Core will be sampling about 20% (more or less) for assessment purposes, to ease the burden on faculty.
• Development of signature assignments would require close collaboration by faculty teaching all modalities. Example - the path to meeting some objectives may involve slightly different assessments for online students. Curious if University of Florida example considers this?
• Instructors would be designing their signature assignment around the rubrics.
• Assessment would ideally be across all categories.
• It would be a good idea to loop in some of the LOCR groups and keep communication open regarding compliance and assessment.
• Can compliance and assessment be integrated?
• Will this change in assessment need to be approved by the Faculty Senate?
  • The Standing Rules would indicate that it’s up to the BCC to determine their system of assessment.
  • The BCC will need to determine the review cycle and then ask faculty to determine their signature assignments for assessment.
• Does OSU have a choice if our accreditors want this?
  • NWCCU requires OSU to assess the university goals and this can be done through gen ed assessment

GenEd Policy

• The BCC ran out of time to discuss the motion, so the motion will be discussed during the March 1 meeting.