Quality in Undergraduate Education QUE

Susan Albertine

The College of New Jersey

Gloria John

Baltimore

Ruth Mitchell

Education Trust

Ron Henry

09/19/03

Georgia State University

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Roles

• Communication specialist – Gloria John • Project director – Susan Albertine • Standards process experts – Education Trust – Ruth Mitchell – Patte Barth • Funders – Pew Charitable Trusts – Michelle Seidl – ExxonMobil Foundation – Ed Ahnert • Project evaluators - PSA 09/19/03 2

Roles

• Critical friends – disciplinary consultants – Ginny Anderson – biology – AIBS – Spencer Benson – biology – U.Maryland

– Jay Labov – biology – NRC – Lendol Calder – history – Augustana College – Mills Kelly – history – George Mason – Paul Bodmer – English – NCTE – Susan Ganter – mathematics - Clemson – Bernie Madison – mathematics – MAA 09/19/03 3

Conceptual Framework of QUE

• Stage 1: Development of each learning outcome associated with a major: What should students know, understand, and be able to do?

• Learning outcomes for level 14 • Learning outcomes for level 16 • Disciplinary contributions to General Education learning outcomes or cross cutting literacies.

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Conceptual Framework of QUE

• Stage 2: Development of evidence that a student has attained desirable proficiencies in a course: • Aligning assignment with learning outcome • Developing scoring guides or rubrics • Constructing performance standards for a learning outcome • Scoring student work 09/19/03 5

Conceptual Framework of QUE

• Stage 3: Development of evidence that a student has attained desirable proficiencies in a curriculum: • Developing aligned assessments so that a student can demonstrate growth through courses towards proficiency in the total curriculum.

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Conceptual Framework of QUE

• Stage 3a: Curriculum Mapping • Analyzing curriculum to determine learning outcomes for sequences of courses, using gap analysis or Super-matrix.

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Super-matrix or gap analysis

Outcome 1 Outcome 2 Outcome 3 Course 1 Course 2 Course 3 Course 4 Course 5 Total 1 2 1 4 1 2 4 2 0 0 0 2 4 2 0 5 13 7 09/19/03 8

Super-matrix or gap analysis

  Intermediate (3): Outcome is introduced and further developed and reinforced in course. Students demonstrate a “working knowledge” of the outcome.

 Major (4): Outcome is fully introduced, developed and reinforced throughout the course. Students demonstrate an “application knowledge” or “understanding.” Moderate (2): Outcome is introduced and further developed and reinforced in course. Students demonstrate a “minimal working knowledge” of the outcome.

 Minor (1): Outcome is introduced in course. Students have a “talking knowledge” or “awareness” of the outcome.  Not at all (0) 09/19/03 9

Super-matrix or gap analysis

 For the matrix of courses within program, comparing program outcomes:  Does the course add significantly to the learning of the program outcome?

 Does the course add significantly to the assessment of the program outcome?

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Conceptual Framework of QUE • Stage 3b: Learning outcome mapping assessment

• Using the super-matrix, trace assessment of learning outcome through the curriculum • How do we capture student developmental progress as s/he proceeds randomly through a series of courses that make up a curriculum?

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Why we are here - Objectives

 Participants demonstrate functioning knowledge of performance assessments – able to set criteria, select evidence, and make judgment about extent to which evidence is met  Participants learn about curriculum mapping and are able to apply the super-matrix to their own curriculum 09/19/03 12

Agenda

• Plenary Session: Saturday 8:30 – 10:15 AM • Grant Wiggins • Assessment and Accountability: – How to design assessment activities that will reveal how students are learning more 09/19/03 13

Agenda

Disciplinary Groups: Saturday 10:30 am - noon; 1:00-2:30 pm; 2:45-4:15 pm; Sunday 8:30 10:00 am; and 10:15-11:45 am  How are we accomplishing valid and reliable assessments?

 How do you know they work?

 Designing rubrics; Using Understanding by Design  How do various courses provide a student opportunity to develop a particular learning outcome?

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QUE Deliverables

• Department and campus draft learning outcomes, performance descriptions, collections of student work, and assessments of student learning 09/19/03 15

QUE Objectives

• Development and use of standards for lower division to facilitate the transition to upper division within 4-year institutions and for transfer from 2-year to 4-year institutions • Development and use of standards for graduation from college • Levels 14 and 16 represent performance-bound learning [not the time it takes to get there] • Learner-centered learning, not time-specific or place-specific learning 09/19/03 16

Next meeting

Each cluster provides evidence of alignment of courses and curriculum for the disciplines in which they are involved, using the super-matrix. Apply to own curriculum – bring information to meeting in March 2004. As an activity, each discipline group could find one outcome they could all agree upon. Then they could "track" that outcome through the curriculum and talk about how that outcome might be assessed through a common graded assignment in say four or five key required courses (or course clusters) that all the students might take. 09/19/03 17

QUE web site

• QUE Web site is at Http://www.gsu.edu/que • private section – user name standards – password standards 09/19/03 18