General Education Council/Teaching-Learning-Assessment Committee Joint Meeting

April 9, 2008@ 3:00 p.m.

VH330 Room

Minutes

PRESENT:     Tony Ambrosio, Paul Bland, Barbara Bleeker, Gary Bleeker, Ryann Brooks, Tim Burnett, Alexis Downs, Kevin Johnson, Carol Kohr, Neal Luo, Steve Neill, Dennis Pelsma, Jonathan Rivers, Jim Roach, Richard Schrock (proxy for David Edds), and Gary Wyatt.

Guest:   Betsy Yanik

I.          Minutes of General Education Council/TLAC Meeting of March 26, 2008 were approved.

II          Announcements:

• G. Bleeker reported that ESU is now accepting three general education courses from FHTC—Composition I, College Algebra, and Public Speaking.

• G. Bleeker reported that he met with President Lane to discuss the revised general education proposal.

• G. Bleeker distributed a 4/8/08 letter from Dean Steven Brown, responding to the revised general education program.

• Downs invited Council members to attend the School of Business assessment meetings on April 15 and 29.

III.       Old Business:

• Ambrosio introduced the VSA/CAAP slide show by recapping the implementation of the VSA system at ESU.  He reminded us that the Administration signed us up about two months ago and we were charged by the President to decide on the make-up of the VSA data displayed on the web, called the VSA college portrait.  VSA has three parts:

            1.   Student and family information

            2.   Student experiences and perceptions

            3.   Student learning outcomes

Many testing companies are happy with the development of VSA  and are aggressively vying for the inclusion of their test in meeting the VSA requirement.  We use the CAAP at ESU for testing basic competencies, so ATEC arranged for a web-cast by ACT to explain how the CAAP can be used to test basic competencies and how CAAP results can be reported on the ESU VSA portrait.

Ambrosio pointed out that he had been asked to recast the ACT presentation, “Planning for Successful Student Learning Outcomes Assessment for the Voluntary System of Accountability with CAAP,” at today’s meeting because many of the points presented are aligned with our discussion points.

After members viewed the slide show, Ambrosio reviewed the following discussion points for General Education Outcome Assessment Proposal:

• Identified system of “shared responsibility”—to operationalize outcomes, identify and/or create assessments.
• Assessment design (sampling, where, what assessments, alignment of outcomes-assessments-courses)
• Timeline (e.g., identify 1-3 outcomes a year)
• Personnel structures (includes support staff)
• Reporting structures (what decisions and who makes them)
• Internal guidelines on how-info-based decisions will be occur at ESU
• Data management system
• Faculty incentives (intrinsic and extrinsic)
• Connections to strategic planning
• Administrative support
• $
• Policy changes
• Public opportunity for faculty to share information and findings

Discussion followed on (1) Policy changes; (2) Design issues (Sampling, where to test, motivation); and (3) Infrastructure issues (data usage, personnel needs, other casts, time line, faculty and administration buy-in).

VSA information can be found at http://www.voluntarysystem.org

                  b.   Kohr discussed budgeting issues concerning assessment activities.

IV.       New Business - None

V.        Other - None

The meeting adjourned at 4:30 p.m.

                                                      Respectfully submitted,

                                                     Gerrit Bleeker

                                                      Director of General Education

These minutes are only recommendations by the Council on General Education to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and any actions taken are not official university policy. All changes in the General Education Program areannounced by the Dean of the College.

 

Last Updated May 7, 2008