APC Meeting 24 October 2007—approved minutes
1. Call to Order
2. Roll Call
Present: Bickford, Clark, Cook, Darrow (chair), Diestelkamp, Duncan, Eggemeier, Frasca, Jipson, O’Gorman, Patterson, Penno
Excused: Benson, Bowman, Larson, Saliba
Guest: Untener
3. Approval of minutes from meeting of 26 September.
Minutes approved w/o corrections, additions or deletions.
4. Announcements
Letter to former WG members is out. The opportunity to meet with the subcommittee will be held in SJ 231 at 3:00 PM on Friday 2 November.
5. Old Business
Report from Subcommittee. Dr. Pair, chair of the subcommittee, submitted the following report (read by APC chair):
David,
Here is a brief update on progress.
1. I have been talking with each of the committee members to understand their schedules, time constraints, and identify time slots when they are available to meet as a group.
2. I have been meeting with various groups - Gen Ed, Cluster Coord, Human. Base etc.. to solicit ideas, suggestions, and build buy-in for this project.
3. We have been compiling an inventory of what new initiatives and/or curriculum revisions are already in place, in progress (or just dreamed about) on campus that are related to the HIR student learning outcomes.
4. We have been compiling resources and reading materials and constructing a quickplace site (and hopefully eventually a web site) for the on and off-site work of the committee.
We also need a clever acronym for "APC - HIR Curriculum Subcommittee"......
Let me know what questions the APC has for me.
Don
Don L. Pair
Associate Dean for Integrated Learning and Curriculum
email: don.pair@notes.udayton.edu
phone: 937.229.2602
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Dayton
Dayton, OH 45469 -0800
Several members of the committee asked if it would be possible for the APC to have access to the quickplace site. The consensus of the committee as a whole, however, was that this was unnecessary and could be perceived as an attempt to micromanage the subcommittee.
6. New Business
Review of Proposed Assessment Plan
Overview From Assoc. Provost Untener
Questions
The chair began by welcoming Assoc. Provost Untener. He then proceeded to relay the concerns about the assessment plan that ECAS articulated, namely the concern that the plan rested on the seven learning outcomes from HIR, and that these had not been approved by a formal vote. Some members of the committee suggested that the way to solve the issue was to bring the outcomes to a formal vote in the Senate. Others noted that, in accepting the APCs report on campus acceptance of the outcomes, that the Senate had, in fact, concurred with the report, thus rendering the outcomes acceptable until such a time as the process of reviewing the entire HIR document was complete.
Associate Provost Untener noted that, whatever the case, the seven HIR learning outcomes captured the spirit and letter of a host of other foundation documents. For this reason, the University Assessment Committee (UAC) believed them to be a suitable basis for rethinking the assessment process at UD to align it with current changes and best practices in higher education. He stressed that the new assessment process did not rest on the idea that every unit must meet all seven learning outcomes. When asked what would happen if it turned out that one of the outcomes was not being addressed by any unit, Untener noted that all seven were currently being addressed by at least one unit, and that if this should change the UAC would have to look at the outcomes again.
The central focus of the new plan, Untener continued, was less on measurement for measurement’s sake and more on documenting how units have responded to the data they collect—how they have changed the content or delivery of programs based on assessment.
The APC raised the question of the impact of the new assessment plan on workload. The Associate Provost responded that the new plan, unlike the old plan, attempted to streamline the assessment process in two ways. First, the new plan attempts to take advantage of the assessment already being done for accreditation purposes in many units. Second, the new plan encourages units to focus assessment attention on smaller pieces of the puzzle each year (a department or program, for example), rather than requiring units to assess everything on an annual basis.
Ultimately, what the UAC wants to see is change taking place as a result of assessment—either change to meet existing unit goals/outcomes, or change in the goals or outcomes that raises the bar higher.
The APC will continue its discussion and prepare a recommendation for the full Senate at its next meeting.
7. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 10:10.