Navigate Your Future… with General Education! Corliss Badeaux, Jessica Hutchings, and Son Mai August 15, 2017
Agenda • Let’s talk about assessment • General Education • QEP
Assessment in the Past: Accountability to Accreditors • Focus on meeting accreditation requirements • An “Us versus Them” perception • Judgmental tool for punishment rather than a source of illumination • Perception of assessment as being separate from, even counterproductive to, teaching and grading activities • Takes faculty time away from students, teaching, and research • Common rubrics create stress • Faculty do not feel ownership of the tools nor comfort in using them.
Assessment in the Past: Accountability to Accreditors A top-down approach...
Assessment in the Present: Storytelling • Assessment tells the story of individual departments and the greater institution...a way to build the narrative to share within and outside McNeese. • What do we do successfully? What amazing things have our faculty and students accomplished this year? How are we getting better?
Assessment in the Present: Institutional Metacognition • Informs our conversations about our students and our teaching • Gives us a common language to speak and a foundation to build the type of university that we want to have • Are we teaching our students what they need to know to be successful? What do we need? How do we improve?
Assessment in the Present: Accountability to Ourselves and to Our Students A bottom-up approach...
Assignment-Level Reporting Whoever does the work does the learning! • There is no better evidence of student learning than student work! • General education courses assess through embedded questions, and papers/projects graded by rubrics • Academic programs assess through student portfolios of work, clinical practice, and other types of experiential learning. • QEP assessment will involve assignment- level data
Show what you’re already doing to accomplish our goals and teach our students ...that’s all our accreditors need to know!
General Education Core Curriculum Requirements Louisiana Board of Regents SACSCOC Statewide General Education Principle 3 Areas of Knowledge: Requirements: • Humanities and Fine Arts • English Composition • Social and Behavioral Sciences • Mathematics/Analytical • Natural Sciences and Mathematics Reasoning • Natural Sciences • Humanities • Social/Behavioral Sciences • Fine Arts
McNeese General Education Core Curriculum and Student Learning Outcomes • Communicate effectively in written English (Area A- English Composition ); • Apply mathematical reasoning and analytical skills to solve problems (Area B- Mathematics/Analytical Reasoning ); • Demonstrate knowledge of scientific concepts (Area C- Natural Sciences ); • Demonstrate abstract reasoning and critical thinking (Area D- Humanities ); • Develop the ability to recognize fine and performing arts as expressions of human experience and to make informed judgments about them (Area E- Fine Arts ); • Learn independently by applying concepts from social and behavioral sciences to a variety of situations (Area F- Social/Behavioral Sciences ).
General Education • Annual Review of Curriculum – Annually Assessment Council reviews gen ed courses to determine appropriateness for inclusion in the curriculum. • Review of Assessment – Reviews course- level and other data to determine attainment of competencies and to recommend action to improve student learning. • Membership – One member representing each of the following: English Composition, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Fine Arts, Social/Behavioral Sciences, Institutional Effectiveness, Faculty Senate, Business, Nursing, and one member at-large.
Gen Ed Assessment Process • Instructors for tagged gen ed courses and capstone courses submit data and artifacts each semester via the submission form. • The General Education Assessment Committee (GEAC) samples and assesses artifacts using rubrics developed in assessment sessions. • GEAC examines data and artifacts for two SLOs per year as part of the three-year assessment cycle. • GEAC produces an annual report that demonstrates campus progress in gen ed competencies.
So what do we do with this report? We need to have a campus conversation about what we want our general education program to be. This report is a starting point to tell us what we’ve been doing so far and to give us a foundation to build the curriculum to our liking.
Questions about General Education?
Assessment in the Present • More than just for accreditation • To use the data to improve services to students. • To efficiently allocate resources by need. • Using assessment tools (rubrics) to grade assignments and then submitting those scores streamlines faculty reporting efforts. • By design, Navigate Your Future places an emphasis on ownership • Good advising practices by faculty/staff • DegreeWorks • It builds upon Write to Excellence, our previous QEP
Navigate Your Future • Quality Enhancement Plan—”The QEP” • Background • Students asked for it— “Advising” was chosen by a vote during Homecoming 2015. • The community asked for it – “Soft skills,” such as professional written and oral communication, were identified as critical . • A QEP Implementation Team—represented by a cross-section of the University community—met and put together the QEP throughout 2016. • A SACSCOC Onsite Team reviewed the QEP in March 2017. • Navigate Your Future was piloted during 2016-2017.
What is Navigate Your Future all about? • Goal: Students will attain professional and career preparation skills as part of their undergraduate course of study at McNeese. • Outcome 1: Students will demonstrate competency in professional writing , which will prepare them for a work environment. (student learning outcome) • Outcome 2: Students will present themselves professionally as appropriate to their field of study. (student learning outcome) • Outcome 3: The University community will implement tools and processes that increase the effectiveness of academic advising . (learning environment outcome)
Every academic program will include three Navigate Your Future courses that teach professionalism and career preparation skills. Tagged courses include: • 10 Introductory courses • 21 Midpoint Courses • 32 Capstone courses (all of them)
Phased implementation requirements: • 50% of tagged courses by Fall 2017 • 75% of tagged courses by Fall 2018 • 100% of tagged courses by Fall 2019
Tagged Introductory Courses Introductory Assessment CHEM 101 - General Chemistry I COMM 201 - Fundamentals of Public Speaking CSCI 100 - Foundations for College of Engineering Freshmen EDUC 204 - Orientation to Multicultural and Special Education ENGR 100 - Foundations for College of Engineering Freshmen FFND 101 - Freshmen Foundations HIST 201 - American History to 1877 MUSC 230 - Form and Analysis NURS 100 - Introduction to Nursing PSYC 101 - Introduction to Psychology
Midpoint Assessment AGRI 340 - Junior Seminar ART 200 - Sophomore Portfolio Review CHEM 301 - Organic Chemistry I CJUS 271 - Police and Policing COMM 306 - Interviewing CSCI 410 - Software Engineering I EDUC 203 - Theories and Principles of Learning and Teaching Tagged ENGL 200 - Introduction to the Study of Literature ENGR 242 - Engineering Economics Midpoint HHP 345 - Physiology of Exercise HIST 300 - Introduction to Research and Writing Courses HSM 240 - Human Resource Management MATH 307 - Foundations of Mathematics MGMT 300 - Management Concepts and Practices MLS 210 - Introduction to Medical Laboratory Science MUSC 363 - Music History and Literature II NRCM 222 - Career Development in Natural Resource Conservation and Management NURS 303 - Wellness Promotion Across the Lifespan PSYC 404 - History and Theories of Psychology RADS 355 - Clinical Radiography II SOCL 320 - Social Research Methods
Assignments include: • Writing • Presentations • Résumé preparation • Mock Interviews • Experiential learning/internships/ any experience involving professional practice
QEP and Advising Efforts to improve advising include: • Degreeworks • January Advising Workshops • Faculty Evaluation of Advising • Student Evaluation of Advising • Chozen Student Central • C.A.R.E.: Connect, Accelerate, Retain, Engage
QEP Resources for Faculty • QEP Development Stipends • Charrettes: Quick assignment workshops • InterviewStream for Mock Interviews • Type Focus Interest Inventory • Write to Excellence Center • Career and Student Development Center
QEP Assessment Process • Professors who teach • QEP Director collects information tagged courses submit and distributes annual report data and artifacts each semester via form • QEP committee makes adjustments and • QEP Assessment group recommendations for following evaluates bi-annually year’s implementation • Survey data assembled • Prepare additional tagged courses for participation
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