Assessment. The Northwest
Association of Schools and Colleges will send a
representative to campus in the spring 2001, to complete
a focused interim report by evaluating the college's
outcomes assessment. Dean Atkinson will prepare and send
a directive to academic department chairs which will give
clear instructions on what is needed. The Council will
assist in the development of guidelines that ask:
- What are your departmental
curricular goals?
- How do you determine
(measure) whether you're succeeding?
Dean Atkinson said that Gary
Reiness asked his faculty to define what skills would
cause them embarrassment if not mastered by their
graduating seniors.
Bibliography, Writing and
Speaking: How are these skills included? How are they
gauged?
- What is the rationale for
what you are teaching?
- How do you structure
it?
- Is your goal to prepare your
students for graduate school? If not, what are you
preparing them for?
- How do you know if you're
achieving those goals?
- What would you do to enhance
the achievement of your goals?
It was felt that there is too
little known about what happens to LC alumni. What is
their history after graduation?
Dean Atkinson said she will speak
to Mervyn Brockett about how best to do an alumni survey.
Find out what departments want to know. The lack of
alumni information is a perennial problem--why is the
Alumni Office not doing this. Under staffed and under
funded?
What about help in coordination
of efforts for assessment?
Dean Dodds described the
assessment tool used in Foreign Languages. The American
Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages have devised
a standard examination to assess people's language
ability, derived from the test used for people going into
foreign service. Within that test, the AATFL has
identified four levels of competency: Novice,
Intermediate, Advanced and Superior. Some of the LC
foreign languages faculty took a week-long course on the
process to learn how to administer the test. The
examination is conducted through an interview process.
Most students test at the Advanced or Superior level, as
they would in their own native language. Students at the
Advanced level can use the language to describe or
narrate something concrete; students who test at the
Superior level can engage in a theoretical or conceptual
discussion, in other words think and speak at the
abstract level. The department feels very good about the
assessment results garnered from this method of
examination.
Dean Atkinson said she was not
proposing that all departments use this kind of testing.
But she does want each department to scrutinize how they
conduct their outcomes assessment and fine tune it when
necessary to gauge whether their goals and objectives
have been met. Dean Atkinson does want the new Writing
and Speaking Task Forces to at least learn about the
AATFL examination technique.
Dean Dodds commented that it was
necessary for each department completely overhaul their
curriculum when the college changed to the semester
system--it seems an appropriate time to review what we
have now.
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