Navigate Your Future with General Education! Corliss Badeaux, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Navigate Your Future… with General Education!

Corliss Badeaux, Jessica Hutchings, and Son Mai August 15, 2017

Agenda

• Let’s talk about

assessment

• General Education
• QEP

Assessment in the Past: Accountability to Accreditors

• Focus on meeting accreditation requirements
• An “Us versus Them” perception
• Judgmental tool for punishment rather than a source of illumination
• Perception of assessment as being separate from, even counterproductive

to, teaching and grading activities

• Takes faculty time away from students, teaching, and research
• Common rubrics create stress
• Faculty do not feel ownership of the tools nor comfort in using them.

Assessment in the Past: Accountability to Accreditors

A top-down approach...

Assessment in the Present: Storytelling

• Assessment tells the story of individual

departments and the greater institution...a way to build the narrative to share within and outside McNeese.

• What do we do successfully? What

amazing things have our faculty and students accomplished this year? How are we getting better?

Assessment in the Present: Institutional Metacognition

• Informs our conversations about our students

and our teaching

• Gives us a common language to speak and a

foundation to build the type of university that we want to have

• Are we teaching our students what they need

to know to be successful? What do we need? How do we improve?

Assessment in the Present: Accountability to Ourselves and to Our Students

A bottom-up approach...

Assignment-Level Reporting

Whoever does the work does the learning!

• There is no better evidence of student

learning than student work!

• General education courses assess through

embedded questions, and papers/projects graded by rubrics

• Academic programs assess through

student portfolios of work, clinical practice, and other types of experiential learning.

• QEP assessment will involve assignment-

level data

Show what you’re already doing to accomplish our goals and teach

• ur students

...that’s all our accreditors need to know!

General Education Core Curriculum Requirements

SACSCOC Principle 3 Areas of Knowledge:

• Humanities and Fine Arts
• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Louisiana Board of Regents Statewide General Education Requirements:

• English Composition
• Mathematics/Analytical

Reasoning

• Natural Sciences
• Humanities
• Social/Behavioral Sciences
• Fine Arts

McNeese General Education Core Curriculum and Student Learning Outcomes

• Communicate effectively in written English (Area A-English Composition);
• Apply mathematical reasoning and analytical skills to solve problems (Area B-

Mathematics/Analytical Reasoning);

• Demonstrate knowledge of scientific concepts (Area C-Natural Sciences);
• Demonstrate abstract reasoning and critical thinking (Area D-Humanities);
• Develop the ability to recognize fine and performing arts as expressions of human

experience and to make informed judgments about them (Area E-Fine Arts);

• Learn independently by applying concepts from social and behavioral sciences to a variety
• f situations (Area F-Social/Behavioral Sciences).

General Education Assessment Council

• Annual Review of Curriculum – Annually

reviews gen ed courses to determine appropriateness for inclusion in the curriculum.

• Review of Assessment – Reviews course-

level and other data to determine attainment of competencies and to recommend action to improve student learning.

• Membership – One member representing each
• f the following: English Composition,

Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Fine Arts, Social/Behavioral Sciences, Institutional Effectiveness, Faculty Senate, Business, Nursing, and one member at-large.

Gen Ed Assessment Process

• Instructors for tagged gen ed courses and capstone courses submit

data and artifacts each semester via the submission form.

• The General Education Assessment Committee (GEAC) samples and assesses artifacts

using rubrics developed in assessment sessions.

• GEAC examines data and artifacts for two SLOs per year as part of the three-year

assessment cycle.

• GEAC produces an annual report that demonstrates campus progress in gen ed

competencies.

So what do we do with this report?

We need to have a campus conversation about what we want our general education program to be. This report is a starting point to tell us what we’ve been doing so far and to give us a foundation to build the curriculum to our liking.

Questions about General Education?

Assessment in the Present

• More than just for accreditation
• To use the data to improve services to students.
• To efficiently allocate resources by need.
• Using assessment tools (rubrics) to grade assignments and then

submitting those scores streamlines faculty reporting efforts.

• By design, Navigate Your Future places an emphasis on ownership
• Good advising practices by faculty/staff
• DegreeWorks
• It builds upon Write to Excellence, our previous QEP

Navigate Your Future

• Quality Enhancement Plan—”The QEP”
• Background
• Students asked for it— “Advising” was chosen by a vote during

Homecoming 2015.

• The community asked for it – “Soft skills,” such as professional written

and oral communication, were identified as critical .

• A QEP Implementation Team—represented by a cross-section of the

University community—met and put together the QEP throughout 2016.

• A SACSCOC Onsite Team reviewed the QEP in March 2017.
• Navigate Your Future was piloted during 2016-2017.

What is Navigate Your Future all about?

• Goal: Students will attain professional and career preparation

skills as part of their undergraduate course of study at McNeese.

• Outcome 1: Students will demonstrate competency in professional

writing, which will prepare them for a work environment. (student

learning outcome)

• Outcome 2: Students will present themselves professionally as

appropriate to their field of study. (student learning outcome)

• Outcome 3: The University community will implement tools and

processes that increase the effectiveness of academic advising.

(learning environment outcome)

Every academic program will include three Navigate Your Future courses that teach professionalism and career preparation skills. Tagged courses include:

• 10 Introductory courses
• 21 Midpoint Courses
• 32 Capstone courses (all of

them)

Phased implementation requirements:

• 50% of tagged courses by Fall 2017
• 75% of tagged courses by Fall 2018
• 100% of tagged courses by Fall 2019

Tagged Introductory Courses

Introductory Assessment CHEM 101 - General Chemistry I COMM 201 - Fundamentals of Public Speaking CSCI 100 - Foundations for College of Engineering Freshmen EDUC 204 - Orientation to Multicultural and Special Education ENGR 100 - Foundations for College of Engineering Freshmen FFND 101 - Freshmen Foundations HIST 201 - American History to 1877 MUSC 230 - Form and Analysis NURS 100 - Introduction to Nursing PSYC 101 - Introduction to Psychology

Tagged Midpoint Courses

Midpoint Assessment AGRI 340 - Junior Seminar ART 200 - Sophomore Portfolio Review CHEM 301 - Organic Chemistry I CJUS 271 - Police and Policing COMM 306 - Interviewing CSCI 410 - Software Engineering I EDUC 203 - Theories and Principles of Learning and Teaching ENGL 200 - Introduction to the Study of Literature ENGR 242 - Engineering Economics HHP 345 - Physiology of Exercise HIST 300 - Introduction to Research and Writing HSM 240 - Human Resource Management MATH 307 - Foundations of Mathematics MGMT 300 - Management Concepts and Practices MLS 210 - Introduction to Medical Laboratory Science MUSC 363 - Music History and Literature II NRCM 222 - Career Development in Natural Resource Conservation and Management NURS 303 - Wellness Promotion Across the Lifespan PSYC 404 - History and Theories of Psychology RADS 355 - Clinical Radiography II SOCL 320 - Social Research Methods

Assignments include:

• Writing
• Presentations
• Résumé preparation
• Mock Interviews
• Experiential

learning/internships/ any experience involving professional practice

QEP and Advising

Efforts to improve advising include:

• Degreeworks
• January Advising Workshops
• Faculty Evaluation of Advising
• Student Evaluation of Advising
• Chozen Student Central
• C.A.R.E.: Connect, Accelerate,

Retain, Engage

QEP Resources for Faculty

• QEP Development Stipends
• Charrettes: Quick assignment

workshops

• InterviewStream for Mock Interviews
• Type Focus Interest Inventory
• Write to Excellence Center
• Career and Student Development

Center

QEP Assessment Process

• Professors who teach

tagged courses submit data and artifacts each semester via form

• QEP Assessment group

evaluates bi-annually

• Survey data assembled
• QEP Director collects information

and distributes annual report

• QEP committee makes

adjustments and recommendations for following year’s implementation

• Prepare additional tagged courses

for participation

2016-2017 Pilot Year

• Volunteer basis
• A legacy of Write to Excellence
• Result of Outcome 1—Professional writing
• Out of 188 subjects in the pilot, the average writing score was 90%
• GradFest data reveals that at least 4 out of 5 graduating seniors felt their

McNeese education helped improve their ability to write effectively and professionally.

• There is still work to be done…
• NSSE data shows McNeese assigns less writing than other institutions

(seniors reported an average of 51 assigned pages per year; national average is 74.2 pages)

Other Pilot Data

• Outcome 2—Professional Presentations
• 154 students in the pilot; the average score was 87.5%
• Interviewing: only 68.4% of students earned an 80% or above!
• Outcome 3—Satisfaction with Academic Advising
• According to NSSE…
• Only 78.6% of students felt their advisors were there when needed
• 79.8% of students felt their advisor listened to their concerns
• 56.4% of students reported that advisors suggested academic support options
• And 26.2% of students felt their advisors helped them at their time of need!
• The Ruffalo Noel Levitz Student Satisfaction Survey (SSI) confirmed

the same pressing needs!

Moving Forward...

• These are our baseline

numbers—there is plenty of time for improvement!

Questions about Navigate Your Future?

Familiarizing our campus with the language of assessment

• Students will see how Gen Ed courses

contribute to the breadth of their education.

• Students will have a better grasp of the skills

they should be getting in their courses.

• Instructors will benefit from students who

take ownership of their own learning.

• Instructors will have concrete information to

use when making curricular decisions.

• Our campus will build and promote

a culture of self-examination and improvement.

You’re doing an amazing job!

Thank you!

Contact information:

Corliss Badeaux: cbadeaux@mcneese.edu Jessica Hutchings: jhutchings@mcneese.edu Son Mai: qep@mcneese.edu