Assessment Committee

Update to Faculty Senate

February 18, 2015

Outline

• Who is involved?

• What we are doing?

• Request for input

Who is serving on AC?

• Heidi Steltzer (Sciences, chair)

• Erich McAlister (Sciences)

• Shawn Meek (Arts and Humanities)

• Mika Kusar (Business)

• Michael Martin (Arts and

Humanities)

• Rebecca Austin (Social Sciences)

• Kim Hannula (ex-officio)

• Lisa Snyder (ex-officio)

Planning and conducting assessment of Liberal Arts Core at FLC 2014-2015Date Tasks

Oct 2014 Faculty senate tasked the AC to complete LAC assessment in 2014-2015

Oct-Dec 2014

AC met 2-3x per month to develop an approach for LAC assessment.

Dec 2014 Faculty submitted writing samples

Jan-Feb 2015

Creating resources for scoring, recruiting scorers, and training scorers

Feb-Mar 2015

Scoring writing samples for Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Mar 2015 Complete report on Fall 2014 term LAC assessment

Apr-Jun 2015

Complete Spring 2015 term LAC assessment

Method for LAC assessment at FLC

• Faculty teaching capstone senior courses submit writing samples for each student/group within their course at the end of the term.

• Writing samples are scored for critical thinking and problem solving, using the AACU LEAP rubrics.

• Writing samples are selected through a stratified random sampling approach• Stratification is by area (Science, Social Science, Arts and Humanities, Business,

Teacher Education) and within areas by faculty to increase chances that selected writing is not all from one faculty, as is possible.

• Data will only be analyzed across areas and faculty – assignments are de-identified

Data on submissions for Fall 2014

Area Total # writing samples

# selected samples

Arts and Humanities 10 10

Business 11 11

Social Science 47 15

Science 44 15

Teacher Education 0 0

Number of writing samples is affected by the 1) number of students/courses taught 2) whether assignments are completed individually or as groups and 3) if suitable assignment is included in the capstone course, i.e. writing, in English, critical thinking and problem solving can be assessed.

Who is scoring Fall 2014 writing samples

• Michael Martin (AH)*

• Michele Malach (AH)

• Gordon Cheesewright (AH)*

• Rebecca Austin (SS)*

• Brad Clark (SS)

• Cathy Hartney (Hon)

• Gary Gianniny (S)

• Melissa Knight-Maloney (S)

• Erich McAlister (S)*

• Paul Clay (B)

• *are individuals also serving on the AC or the LAC

• **individuals were asked to serve by faculty on the AC

• Thanks to all involved.

Request for input

• Service commitment for scoring for LAC assessment• LAC assessment is required by HLC and must be completed each

year

• Commitment includes training (~2-3 hours) and scoring (~10 hours)

• About 20 scorers are needed each year

Request for input – how to plan for scorers

• Option 1: Volunteer

• Option 2: Requirement for faculty serving on LAC Council and Assessment Committee

• Option 3: Jury-service type system (AC recommendation)• All faculty after completing 2nd year service become eligible for selection

• Random selection, document service completed, not called again to serve until all other faculty have served

• Can’t be called in term when instructing for a course being assessed

• Can defer by one term

• ~110 faculty eligible, ~20 scorers needed per year, service about 1x every 5 years

• Option 4: Service requirement for LAC assessment is included in faculty expectations statement; chairs document this is completed.