Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Abigail Crowell, Kelsey Emard, Daniel Faltesek, Colin Johnson, Lori McGraw, Rene Reitsma, Randy Rosenberger, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Paula Weiss
Voting members absent: Geoffrey Barstow, Matthew Kennedy, Thomas Shelly
Ex-officio members present: Academic Affairs – Heath Henry; Difference, Power & Oppression – Natchee Barnd; Ecampus – Karen Watte; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: Patrick Ball, Stephanie Baugh, Kristin Nagy Catz, John Edwards, McKenzie Huber, Michael Jefferis, Caryn Stoess

Core Education Assessment of Learning (cont’d.)

• Kristin Nagy Catz and Heath Henry presented a draft 3- and 5-year cycle.
  • Data collection for 3-year cycle – year 0, 1 and 2
    • Broken up into categories with a select number of courses for sampling.
    • 3-year Review cycle will not take place at the same time as the Data collection cycle.
  • The 5-year cycle allows for a lower workload in Spring term.
  • The WIC director would like to work with Assessment about including Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC) in Major assessment. Perhaps Difference, Power & Opposition (DPO) should also be included.
  • What data is being pulled from Canvas?
    • The identified essential assignment
    • Logistics is still being set up – but a place where Assessment could easily access this essential assignment for data. It would be anonymized.
      • Can the assignments be copied, rather than taken out of Canvas?
        • It was confirmed that the assignments will not be removed from Canvas – they will be copied, and the instructors will continue to have access to those assignments.
    • Can the instructor determine what assignment or what data is pulled that best represents their course?
      • That is a potential option, but Assessment did not want to put additional work on the instructors.
        • Three approaches:
          • Faculty assessment
          • Groups of faculty assessment
          • Central assessment
  • Assessment Office would ideally gather the data and then a faculty team trained on the rubric for the category would review the data.
    • Can this be done for WIC – where students must write for their major. Can faculty be normed to these rubrics and be able to accurately determine if these sampled courses are meeting the requirements?
    • Stasis point: dimensionality reduction
      • In what ways do practices of grading introduce noise into the dimensionality reduction process in such a way that we might lose assessment?
  • All reporting and data would come back to the Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC). Most of the workload will move away from the BCC, but the committee will continue to approve new courses and assure compliance with the new Core Education curriculum.
    • Assessment conversations could change how the BCC addresses compliance.
    • Random audits to try to decrease risk of drift.
  • Should we send out a survey to the faculty to get their opinions?
    • Requires Executive Committee review and approval.
    • The committee members can speak informally with their units.
  • In the chart that shows Review and is divided into the different terms, is the review in each term what the fellows are charged with? In other words, is the burden of the spring term review carried by the fellows or by instructors?
    • The review is for the faculty fellows and the burden would be on them.
      • Faculty fellows – people interested in assessment and have a stipend or FTE dedicated to assessment. Specifically trained on a rubric and category.
  • Decisions around assessment or the timeline should be made by the December CADIs as there have been questions at previous CADIs and it would be nice to give the faculty more concrete information.