Assessment Advisory Board

October 14, 2003

 

Present: J.Bernier, T. Boggess, I. Cucina, G.Goodnough, J. Krueckeberg, J. Kulig, N. Mathis, B. McCahan, Kathleen Norris

 

The meeting started at 3:30 pm.

 

1. The group elected Irene Cucina chair for the next year.

 

2. Julie asked for members of the board who could meet with the NEASC visiting team on Monday, October 20 at 10:10. Several members volunteered to attend and were asked to review self-study Chapter 2, Planning and Evaluation, in preparation for the meeting.

 

3. Julie updated the board on ongoing assessment activities:

 

1. PSU participated in NSSE for the third time in 2003 and substantially improved our response rate. We will be participating in NSSE 2004 and plan to oversample the first-year class to include all new first-year students.
2. We participated in the FSSE pilot and approximately half our full-time faculty responded. We will also be doing FSSE again in 2004.
3. Julie presented some of our NSSE results on Faculty Day. We plan to develop more presentations, including FSSE data as well.
4. First year students were given the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ) on the day before classes began. They will be given a follow-up questionnaire, the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) during Spring term. The board will develop twenty institution-specific questions to be included on the CSEQ.
5. Two departments, Business and Psychology, administered ETS major field exams to their students last Spring.
6. Communications has made some curriculum changes based on department assessment activity.

 

4. Irene reported on the Assessment conference in Seattle that she, Barbara McCahan, and Julie Bernier attended in June.
1. A number of tracks/focus were addressed. These included:

Track 1: Aligning Teaching, Learning and Assessing

Track 2: Exploring how technology is advancing assessment of learning

Track 3: Assessing learning and development outside the classroom

Track 4: Exploring how diversity shapes teaching, learning, and assessing

Track 5: Documenting assessment practices and results for accreditors and legislators

Track 6: Responding to last year’s assessment research forum topics.

 

The focus areas were at the level of course, program, institution and other.

 

Julie, Barb and Irene divided up the sessions to try and get a variety of ideas and strategies to assist with the assessment plans for Plymouth State.

 

¨       One session presented by Gloria Rogers, vice president for institutional research, planning and assessment, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology was very informative regarding the reliability and validity of reviewing electronic portfolios.

¨       Royce Robertson and Irene Cucina are developing a proposal to visit Rose-Hulman this spring when assessment of the electronic portfolios will be done.

¨       IWEBFOLIO is currently being used by over 200 first year students in the Education and HPER Departments. Royce is developing a grant proposal to lower the cost of student use. The current cost is $40.00/year.

 

 

5. The group discussed several agenda items for the year:
1. Meet with Bob Fitzpatrick regarding the Foundations of Excellence in the First College Year project in which Plymouth State is a founding member.
2. Discuss the purposes and uses of the CSXQ and CSEQ.
3. Offer workshops on assessment through the Faculty Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence
4. Consider the issue of obtaining Institutional Review Board approval for surveys of students.

 

6. Julie offered to pay the conference expenses for board members who would like to attend Fall Forum 2003, “Demonstrating Quality through Assessment” to be held November 7 at Holy Cross.

 

7. The meeting ended at 4:30 pm. The next meeting is scheduled for October 28 at 2:00 pm in HUB TOWER ROOM. Meetings for the rest of the year as of now are: November 18, December 2, and December 16.