Subcommittee on Core Curriculum Minutes 2013-04-17

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by John Swinton at 12:00 p.m. in Arts & Sciences Room 216.

Attendance

Members Present: Martha Allen, Scott Butler, Kevin Crabb, Esther Lopez, Mary Magoulick, Stephanie McClure, Cara Meade, John Swinton, and Kay Anderson
Regrets: Amy Sumpter
Guest: Jason Huffman

Action Item

GC1Y 1000 Quest for Adventure for as an Area B1 Section (Resubmission)
Upon review, members of the committee expressed concerns about the amount of analytical writing and the supervision of the fourth hour. This proposal will be returned for revision.

Discussion Items

The committee discussed assessment of the core curriculum, focusing on the following themes and issues:
• It appears that faculty members are rating students at a higher level on the Gc1Y rubric than they should be after the completion of one course; we shouldn’t expect a student to demonstrate the entire range of our rubric after only one term.
• Each rubric should have clear instructions and norming information so that it is clear what each level of the rubric means in the context of the course being assessed (i.e., GC1Y students should not normally achieve the highest level assessed on the rubric).
• Assessment should not be linked to grade distributions.
• We need to make assessment schedules predictable and automatic, so that faculty members clearly know what they will need to assess before a term begins.
• We need to hold more faculty development to give faculty the opportunity to come together and talk about what to expect from student work.
• We also need to consider if we can assess certain outcomes across other areas, such as assessing Area A outcomes for writing in Area C.
• In the future, we need to address whether course-based or rubric-based assessment gives us more descriptive and informative data.

When we review courses, we spend a great deal of time revising outcomes to ensure that they are assessable, but we never give faculty an opportunity to show that those outcomes were achieved. On the other hand, since those outcomes are not necessarily consistent or similar, the data that would yield is not comparable. This led to a suggestion that we should begin look at syllabi rather than outcomes when we review new courses.

Next Meeting

The committee will meet on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, at 12 noon, in A&S 216. This will be the last SoCC meeting of the year.

Adjournment

The committee adjourned at 1:13 p.m.