Baccalaureate Core Committee

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

Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC) Learning Outcomes

• Some concerns have arisen from the Assessment office about specific verbs in the Learning Outcomes (LOs) for WIC courses.
  • Some of the LOs did not adhere to OSU’s current best practices.
  • Bloom’s Taxonomies suggested for revising the verbs.
    • Proposed revisions
      • Levels 4, 5, and 6 used.

Action: Motion to accept the revised verbiage; seconded. The motion passed with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Core Education Assessment of Learning

• What does Assessment look like for Core Education?
  • People are identifying assessment during the CADI process to meet the LOs for their category
• Compliance was checked every 10 years within particular categories. Determining the compliance schedule will help Assessment with their review process.
  • North West Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) is concerned about assessing student output
  • Helpful to know would do best with working with NWCCU
    • College of Health (COH) checks compliance every year due to outside accreditation
    • NWCCU uses a 7-year cycle – next review is in 2026.
    • Live courses in the new curriculum will be used to gather preliminary data before 2026.
  • Assessment will assess the categories with upper and lower levels as one category
    • WIC would not be included in the Writing category – it is its own category.
    • Difference, Power and Oppression has no comment on the workload at the moment, but it does sound like a good idea to potentially do the single review.
• Collection of assessment data is currently done at the course level. How do we aggregate from course level to category level assessment?
  • Proposal in to do random sampling from courses that would go to the category level.
  • How do assessments merge in the assessment of the category?
    • It wouldn’t be granular enough at the course level – it’s aggregated at the category level
    • What will happen if the data is not turned in? Will those courses still be considered compliant?
    • Rubrics need to be piloted before the new program goes live.
      • Are instructors able to develop their own rubric?
  • Compliance for continual certification as a Core Ed course is separate and it has not yet been discussed as a committee how that will manifest moving forward.
  • Is there a plan in place to combine current processes with new processes to assure a smooth transition while minimizing duplicative work?
    • Would likely be using similar processes to COH for accreditation.

Signature Core Transferability

• Signature Core includes:
  • Transitions
  • Beyond OSU
  • DPO
  • Seeking Solutions
  • Writing Elevation
  • WIC
• The process began over the summer.
• Historically, transfer and articulation was held within admissions.
  • It has caused some issues so they are looking at other options over what can and cannot be transferred in.
  • Lots of new opportunities for improvement – the goal is to partner between academic departments and academic affairs to get transfers reviewed as soon as transcripts arrive.
  • Signature Core is fairly unique
    • Pragmatic – Transitions cannot be transferred as it is specific to OSU
    • Compliance – The chances of a course matching a signature core course is unlikely, but possible. In that case, it would be accepted
    • Common Course Designators – have to be 75% similar
• Comment – Last year we worked collectively on defining an articulation/transfer policy. Why would this policy not apply to Signature courses?
• A policy to say no could/should exist.
• A collaborative review would mean that academic partners would see the volume coming through.