Continuing the Around the State

Kim from TCC - Visit in october - actual got a commendation on assessment. Kim will be doing a workshop at the Teaching and Learning conference on their practices. Some key points -

• One focus was continued classroom assessment even though it is not required.
• Questions about program level outcomes link to institutional outcomes.
  
• Questions about assessment projects and how they improve student learning

TCC now struggling with replacing the faculty assessment liaison - no one wants to take that job and wants to hear any feedback to see what others are doing.

- South - Offering a bachelors degree, impacts 30 student of 7000, but has new accreditation requirements as a result. These community colleges are being considered baccalaureate institutions and the people evaluating them are baccalaureate institutions. South wonders :what does this mean? How will we tell our story? What is our story? How do we tell it to a different audience? If anyone has an answer, let her know.

Roger - South - South has gotten commendations on institutional effectiveness, has educational goals tied to money. The transfer programs have never dealt with student learning outcomes and no one has ever noticed. So they have a lot of work. It is a big change, but a good one. Why hasn't it been done? Think it infringes on academic freedom, lack of leadership, no one made faculty do it. Also, many students at the college involved in prof tech courses which had more formal outcomes build into programs.

Also, faculty learning communities - tecn writing + pronounciation + ESL + physics. Also doing lab report writing across the curriculum, happening over 1 year.

Jane at North - 10 year accreditation in April - got several commendations on assessment. Have formed faculty groups around student outcomes, reviewing master course outlines, looking at the individual classes. Surveyed faculty and they are revieiwng the data. They are finding that few faculty are willing to share evidence that the learning is happening in thier classes

Surveyed professional development for adjuncts and for probationary faculty. Doing a 3 year cycle of professional development. Two tiers - community connections. 1st year is using Parker Palmer's courage to teach. The first hour is seminar on the book and the second hour is on some piece of pedagogy

Evaluation of faculty. Faculty have contractualized peer observation. Now training faulty mentors who will be paid to observe and support faculty. NOT evaluation, but observation and support. This is a district wide effort. Someone will observe the faculty and the faculty member is the one who is submitting the support. Contact Tom Drummond at South for the process.

Spokane CC - does not know what is going on, but will find out and post it on the wiki

Highline - Classroom based assessment model. Groups have formed around institutional. Student responsibility one is the only one that has managed to survive. Have created some listserves, but only critical thinking has generated any discussion.

Cover Park - in between accreditation visits. Transition from clock hour to credit hour. Trying to revive teaching and learning center which used to have 1 part time person, is now distributed among 4 faculty. 2 years ago had a student speaking forum. Last year they expanded it to a communications festival which also featured student writing. This year, math faculty are thinking of expanding it to critical thinking and problem solving. The eventual goal is to have an annual event that showcases all of the

Grays harbor - All divisions assessed all 5 student abilities. Faculty are reevaluating syllabi for student abilities and ranking them. Decreased enrollment - trying to address it through the addition of more hybrid courses, faculty being paid to transition

Frank - Green River - Working on tracking college outcomes and competencies. Committies are reviewing syllabi to see if there is alignment between the syllabus and what the instructor is claiming to do based on competencies. Also working on the assessment of online learning. Part of it is union related. Having a hard time finding an instrument. One faculty member is studying the difference between . I suggested Quality Matters - focuses on design rather than instruction. Chico State has a good rubric, as does Gulf Coast University in Florida. They all work with either fully online or hybrid.

Colene - Everett - looking at learning communities to see if the learning is improvement. Trying to improve retention with an SOS program for individual student alerts. Union negotiations coming up, special consideration of part time issues. Struggling over evaluation vs. observation.