ANNUAL INSTITUTIONAL ASSESSMENT REPORT

1996-97

A. Executive Summary

B. NARRATIVE REPORT

1. We continued to institutionalize the five Learning Ability Themes, a process begun two years ago. Last year we had gotten the themes into catalogue, schedules, and program sheets, and we had gotten Instructional Council approval to mandate all divisions to update course outlines taking the five themes into account. This has been accomplished. (See division totals attached) We provided funding, and faculty ultimately pitched in admirably. Many course outlines were thoroughly re-thought and changed as a result of this initiative, and the result is a more sensible curriculum and more focused attention to Reasoning; Oral, Written, and Visual Communication; Exploration: Self and Others; Resourcefulness; and Responsibility. Though this effort has in some ways limited the amount of time and energy faculty might have spent on mini-grant assessments of the themes, we have garnered several of these too, and the cooperation between Instructional Council, the Dean of Instruction, Assessment, and other campus entities is very good. All of the posters will be mounted before students begin the Fall, 1997 academic year, and the Dean of Administration has agreed to cover the costs of framing (about $400) the glassed and matted posters we purchased through this year's budget. This is another sign of the impact Assessment has had on our campus. We have definitely accomplished our goals for this year.

2. Many of our past inservices have borne fruit this year. Dave Cornelius' inservice on a portfolio-driven program at Eastern (Fall 1995 and Virginia Darney's Portfolio Workshop (Dec., 1994) have inspired Bob Leingang's continued Business Management portfolio projects and Doris Wood's and Susan Hoyne's portfolio components in Composition. Stephanie Carter has drawn on Dave Cornelius' (and his colleague Reta Gilbert's) work on "design" for her Library 181 linkages with Humanities, Geology, Botany, etc., and her creation (with Susan Hoyne) of the English Department Web Site and other worthy student-responsive work.

Our inclusion of students on the Assessment Committee (Louise, John, and Tammy) two years ago and (John, Tammy and Chris) this year, has inspired two new students (Regina and Kyle) to join Chris for l997-98. They continue to remind us of the student perspective, and they have lauded Assessment's serious effort to work hard for the students by encouraging the college to support demonstrations of student learning. The Byways anthology is an excellent example of specific successes students have realized in the classroom, and Margaret Snyder is at work on the next edition which will be pegged specifically to our five Learning Ability Themes. Student staff also work on the upcoming Beyond Parallax issue.

The fact that numerous colleges have communicated their interest in the anthology and in our five themes, and particularly in the new course outlines and posters, signals to us that we are on track and focused on practicable and replicable measures of evaluation.

3. I've addressed institution-wide incorporation of our five themes above, but there are many other signs that the college is working assessment into planning processes. Blaine Nisson, Dean of Student Services, has brought in Kathe Taylor and others, during five mandated area-wide study sessions and focused his entire staff on assessment of Student Services' relationship to the five Learning Ability Themes. Each staff member must report on an assessment project and evaluate a measurable improvement in service. Some projects planned include: retention and intervention with student athletes in the Sports Program, evaluation of Student Success classes by Counseling staff, and successful transfer strategies. (Maggie Foran report on SS "assignments" attached.)

The four completed Mini Grants this year also had college-wide impact. For instance, Paul Mitchell and Fred Schwindt held a training session on Freshman Seminars, then ran four FSs in Fall, 1996 which they have assessed and spoken about both to Instructional Council and Faculty Senate. They have discovered that "content" course linkage is essential, but even where introduction to campus resources, self esteem strategies, etc. alone took place, retention is very high. Paul and Fred are currently part of the college discussion of Learning Community links as a more profound curricular advance. Centralia College has taught 15 such linked Learning Community programs in the past, but this aspect of our curriculum has been dormant recently. Some signs of faculty collaboration are obvious in Stephanie Carter's and Dave Martin's study of their combined Library Research and Biology/Botany/Forestry work. They used their expertise to assess the change in understanding by students of their career choices and resources on-line and in the career center. We've attached their report; the interest of students in interlinked sites on the internet and other resources is palpable. Much of their work is replicable in other programs.

The librarians have also created an assessment tool (see attached report on linked Business Administration and Library Research and English 102 -- Composition, including research paper); the survey is a fine model for other research links. Finally, Lucy Feldkamp's Presidential Archive project involved virtually every constituency on campus. Faculty and students contributed photographs and memoirs of the Clinton/Gore visit to Centralia, and the Library has become repository of the "time capsule" Lucy created.

 

4. The Assessment Initiative has had a profound impact on our campus because it has truly been a process: we began with minigrants, proceeded to Cycle of Assessment teams, identified five Learning Abilities themes which the faculty has some "ownership" in. This led to our strengthening or creating ties between Assessment and Instructional Council (with students on both committees) and the publishing of the themes in all major college catalogues and schedules and course outlines. We are now poised to assess (through Byways, and mini-grants, and collaborations like the Library Research links with content courses) what actually is happening here. How do we know our students are learning what we say is being taught? To get to this point has been no small task. It could not have been done without SBCTC and CC faculty/administration funding and commitment. Next Fall we hope to continue our Assessment Committee/Instructional Council discussions of an exit survey and/or graduation requirement capstone experience, possibly involving portfolios with artifacts on each of the five themes. How to do this and not slow student progression is not clear, but if it can be done, we'll figure out a way to do it.

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