Assessment of Student Learning - Minnesota State University Moorhead

Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee Minutes

February 27, 2006

1:00 p.m.
Bridges Hall 250B

Present: Tim Borchers, chair; Ted Gracyk, Cassie Kramer, Jody Mattern, Amy Phillips, Peggy Rittenhouse, Stacy Voeller, Alison Wallace.

Minutes: The minutes from the previous meeting (December 12, 2005) were distributed for review and will be acted upon at the next meeting.

Update: Borchers announced that two meetings have been held with chairs to review the assessment guidebook. He has also met with the School of Business and with individual chairs, as requested, to review assessment. A list of plan/report status was presented:

Received	Coming	Need	6-year – Due	Plans-At some point
Social Work	English	Construction Management	Art and Design	American Multicultural Studies
Physics - plan	MFA	Corrick Center	Anthropology/Earth Science	American Studies
History - plan		CELFFE	Physics – report	International Studies
Educational Leadership		Curriculum & Instruction	Chemistry	Legal Studies
Special Education		Elementary & Early Childhood Education	Computer Science and Information Systems	Biosciences (revised)
MLA		Graphic Communication	Languages and Cultures
		Mass Communication	Psychology
		Reading	Technology
		School Psychology	Social Work - report
			Special Education - report

Borchers, Rittenhouse, and Teri Walseth, Director of Teacher Education, met recently to discuss plans/reports for Teacher Education programs. It was determined that programs would be assessed at the field experience level and one plan would be developed to cover all the teacher preparation programs.

Evaluation Procedures: Discussion opened on ways to proceed with evaluation of plans and reports. Agreement was reached to develop a form with rubrics for evaluation of both plans and reports based on the forms departments/programs use to submit plans and reports. It was further agreed that initially plans and reports would be reviewed by the entire committee, then in the future to work in rotating pairs and bring to the whole committee any plans or reports where the subgroup has disagreement or questions. Rubric items for the evaluation forms were discussed and Borchers agreed to create the final form and send electronically to SLOAC members to use to review Physics, History and Social Work. The following rubrics for plan evaluation were suggested:

Direct

Multiple

Dept

Dean’s signature

SLO as a whole-appropriate? Relevant to the curriculum.

Curriculum—missions/goals

Measure

Expectation

Match SLOs in report to those in plan

The committee will meet next week to discuss the plans/reports and to critique the evaluation form. Plans/reports will be sent electronically to SLOAC members unless the submitted plan or report is received as a hard copy. It will then be placed in BR 250B and members will be notified of its availability for review.

Discussion followed on a number of assessment issues and topics:
Should departments/programs include a student learning outcome on specific content knowledge;
Teacher Education relying on disciplines to teach and assess specific content;
Past Instructional Improvement Grants were reviewed and ways to encourage departments to apply for the grants;
Need to develop a way to ease SLOAC assessment procedures for departments that are accreditated by national bodies – this topic will be discussed more fully next fall;
Assessment of student learning and assessment for learning.

It was suggested that SLOAC recommend an assessment data collection day and review day for MSUM. Using the two days prior to Thanksgiving as non-instruction days was suggested.

Next Meeting: Monday, March 6, 1:00 p.m. in BR 250B

The meeting adjourned at 2:38 p.m.