Each semester, the Director(s) of General Education will work with instructors on assessing one subsection of General Education courses.
This fall, the four Common Core areas plus Fundamental Literacy/Writing will be assessed.
Assessment includes three steps:
First step: Syllabus collection. if you are teaching in one of the areas being assessed this fall, the Director will contact you to ask for a syllabus. Please keep in mind:
- There are specific Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for each course taught as part of General Education. Every syllabus for a course counting for General Education must include the relevant SLOs.
- For instance, if you are teaching a Natural World course within the Common Core, your syllabus must include the SLOs developed for the Natural World courses. In that way, every Natural World course includes the same Gen Ed SLOs.
- SLOs and Essential Characteristics for each component can be found at the following URL: Essential Characteristics and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs).
Second step: Course-specific discussions. The Director of General Education will invite instructors to join a component-specific discussion during the fall. For instance, all Fundamental Literacy-Writing instructors will be asked to meet once to discuss previous assessment data and to share good ideas for meeting the specific Writing SLOs.
Final step in the fall: Data gathering/rubric submission. At the end of the semester, instructors will complete and submit one assessment rubric for each class. It can be a good idea to review these rubrics early in the semester and as you teach your class. (Each link below is for downloading the corresponding Rubric Worksheet in .XSLX format):
- Fundamental Literacies: Writing
- Common Core: Art, Aesthetics & Creativity
- Common Core: Human Behavior & Social Institutions
- Common Core: Literary & Intellectual Traditions
- Common Core: Natural World
More information on the assessment rubrics to be collected at the end of the semester:
- Students are assessed for each SLO on the following scale, as indicated on the Rubric Worksheets:
- 0 (Does Not Meet);
- 1 (Introductory Level);
- 2 (Practicing);
- or 3 (Mastery).
- Student names should not be included on the Rubric Worksheets — just the number of students that fall under each Assessment Level for each SLO.
- For example, in a class of 30, for one specific SLO, the instructor might indicate that there are 5 students in the “Does Not Meet” category, 10 at the “Introductory Level,” 9 at the “Practicing” level, and 6 at the “Mastery” level — for a total of 30 students.
- It is up to each instructor to decide how to assess the SLOs; some faculty have one signature assignment that is designed to meet and measure all SLOs, whereas others use multiple assignments for this purpose.
- Instructors should clearly indicate the Number Assessed (number of students who have completed the course) on the worksheet. Students who have withdrawn or have an FN in the course should not be included, but those who have completed the course, even if they did not pass, should be included.
- Instructors should complete the appropriate Rubric Worksheet and submit it via a web-based submission form (link to be provided). In the event of difficulties with the web-based form, it is acceptable to submit via email attachment, ideally in reply to the initial notification email.
Below is an example rubric completed for Quantitative Reasoning, for a hypothetical Number Assessed of 30 students. Note that…
- The instructor adds text (numbers) in the shaded areas.
- The total for each row, listed in the far-right column, should be the same total as “number assessed” in the shaded box on top left. This is how many students, total, were assessed.
