General Education Course Review -- Evaluation & Feedback February 11, 2015
The purpose of the General Education Committee (GEC) is to provide guidance and direction to the VCAAR to improve the quality and relevance of the University's general education curriculum. The GEC considers proposals for modification of the general education curriculum and reviews each course in the general education program once every four years to determine its acceptability as a general education course.
The GEC will review assessment data on the general education program provided by the Assessment Office and make recommendations to the VCAAR.
Year: 2014-2015 General Education Goal: Developing a strong foundation in the social sciences
Title of Course:
ECON 2313, Principles of Macroeconomics
ECON 2333, Economics Issues and Concepts
_N_ Syllabi reflect brief course description (40 words or fewer), as it appears in bulletin.
Necessary information given on only three of 14 syllabi
_N_ Syllabi list general education goal and related student learning outcome.
Missing entirely on 10 of 14 syllabi; four syllabi listed the goal intermixed with the learning outcome; 11 syllabi listed no learning outcome
_Y_ Prerequisites are appropriate for level of course.
_Y_ Level of education of instructors for this course complies with ADHE and ASU Faculty Handbook.
ADHE - Master’s degree with at least 18 graduate hours in field for general education courses
ASU Faculty Handbook - section II.h. Credentials, p. 40
Assessment of General Education Goal – Developing a strong foundation in the social sciences
_X_ Explain the processes and effects of individual and group behavior;
___ Analyze events in terms of the concepts and relational propositions generated by the social science tradition.
_Y_ The above student learning outcome is being assessed across sections for continuous quality improvement of student learning.
Allowing the instructors to choose the section for assessment raises the potential for selection bias. The GEC is less concerned with the representation of instructors (though rigging the collection of data by choosing to assess certain instructors’ sections and not those of others is obviously unacceptable) than it is with having data from a representative sample of students (including any Paragould or concurrent students and without respect General Education Course Review -- Evaluation & Feedback February 11, 2015
to mode of delivery). While the total Ns are reported, it is not clear from how many different sections the samples are composed.
The GEC believes that the economics faculty has done (subject to the sampling issue noted above) a conscientious and thoughtful job of collaboratively constructing and administering items to test proficiency with respect to the problems of supply and demand. It notes that the multiple choice items are appropriately challenging and is pleased to see that the faculty has thought to include multiple items that get at demand and supply in different ways; on the other hand, the faculty has missed out on insights into student performance by not looking at the intercorrelations of scores.
At the same time, the GEC is having some trouble grappling with the idea that two different courses—with different course descriptions and different core contents—use the same assessment items. As shown below, comparing performance for the two courses across questions, there does not appear to be any obvious pattern to the results. This drives the GEC to ask, why are there two distinct courses? The GEC recognizes that the College of Business core requires ECON 2313 (presumably it does not accept ECON 2333 as a substitute) in which case Principles of Macroeconomics may be less a General Education course than a body of material that all Business students need for their respective majors but not appropriate to introduce students as a whole to an “essential area of knowledge.” The GEC does not presume to have an answer to this puzzle (two different courses, same assessment; same or different textbook?) but this quadrennial review exercise provides the opportunity to raise a question that should be thought through.
_Y_ Report of the assessment findings has been submitted.
The Department should know that the GEC took no notice of the section on MFAT reports because they don’t provide any relevant information for the assessment of General Education courses. General Education Course Review -- Evaluation & Feedback February 11, 2015
_?_ Data are being used to improve student learning.
So far as can be determined from the reports, the faculty has not set any criteria for determining the proficiency of its students. What expectations does the faculty have for overall pass rates on individual items? How many of the six items should an individual student get right to say he or she has a minimally adequate grasp of the demand and supply relations? The department wants to have accumulated a longer series of data but it will only be able to make sense of more data if it can agree what level of performance it expects.
While it is certainly appropriate to have members of the faculty attend conferences on pedagogy, these efforts do not clearly help use assessment data to improve student learning. The faculty will get more leverage on improving student learning if it systematically analyzes the effect of the Student Learning Assisted experiment and the plan of selected faculty to increase the use of practice and homework problems and online tools.
DECISION OF GENERAL EDUCATION COMMITTEE
_____ Course is acceptable as a general education course linked to the General Education goal.
_____ Course is not acceptable as a general education course linked to the General Education goal.
__Y__ Course is acceptable as a general education course linked to the General Education goal given the following modifications:
Report back to the GEC on the following points
Commitment to fully comply with HLC mandates to include on every syllabus
o Course description as given in the Bulletin
o Appropriate general education goal and the two student learning outcomes
Reconsidering and justifying as appropriate having two General Education courses which are assessed in exactly the same terms
More complete reporting on how assessment data were compiled and plans for the future to increase confidence in the representativeness of students assessed
Plans with respect to setting criteria for determining student proficiency
Plans to enhance the sophistication of the analysis of assessment results
Plans to systematically use assessment data to improve student learning
While the GEC reviewed the two courses in tandem because both are offered by the same department with overlapping faculty and because the chosen outcome for the two courses is the same and the assessment strategy is identical, it is prudent to confirm that the GEC and the Department of Economics understand that, as courses with distinct catalog numbers and course descriptions, the two courses must be independently assessed and results reported separately.
_____ Unable to evaluate as a general education course linked to the General Education goal. General Education Course Review -- Evaluation & Feedback February 11, 2015 General Education Course Review -- Evaluation & Feedback February 11, 2015
ACTION REQUIRED
_____ None
__X__ Please respond to issues raised above by 13 March 2015. Please do not submit a whole new report but instead provide a memorandum addressing all of the points noted above as “modifications.”
_____ Follow up Review
_____ Meeting with Department Chair
GEC Chair ______David Levenbach______Date___11 February 2015______
Approved 10/30/2012; revised 18 Nov 14