COUNCIL FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
Minutes for February 23,
2001
A. Attending: Belzer
(Chair), Bain, Dean, Enos, Hjelm, House, Kruger,
Reynolds,
Nitse, Sato, Wabrek
Excused/Absent: Das, Fisher, Jones, Kunicki,
McKnight, Paulson, Pehrsson
B. Approval of the CTL minutes for
January 26, 2001
MOTION: Moved by Sato. Second by
Nitse. For approval of the January
26, 2001 minutes.
ACTION:
Unanimously passed.
II. BUSINESS
A. Update on
Center Activities (Janet House)
Updated Council on the impending visit of Dr.
Tinto. He will speak at 7PM on march
29, 2001 at the
WestCoast Hotel with a reception following. House will try to arrange for interested
Council members
to have breakfast with Tinto on March 30, 2001. Further discussion occurred on the URL
available
on Tinto’s work and planned events for his visit.
Results are already coming in for the TMII grants
awarded last fall. Nitse asked about
future funding
for the TMII grants. House indicated that she was planning to speak with Dr. Lawson
about subsequent
funding for next year and about increased future
funding for instructional improvement in general.
A new
faculty intern, Erin Francfort, is now working with Barbara Bain this semester.
The time
management discussion group will hold its’ third meeting on March 2, 2001 in
the Votech
conference room.
Participants have logged professional time and how it is spent during
the week.
A summary from this discussion group will be
provided to Council members when the discussion is
complete.
First year
seminar and CLASS program were briefly mentioned. House emphasized the importance of
faculty buy-in for these programs. Faculty are encouraged to recruit Level 2
freshmen. House indicated
that she would send further information to Council
members on the 8 different clusters.
House circulated 2 newsletters on faculty
development issues that are available to faculty through
the Center.
Belzer indicated that no real progress had been made
on establishing a committee to complete the Goal 6
assessment.
Belzer had contacted Gail Dial regarding data that had already been
collected and hoped to
have a committee in place by the next council
meeting.
Dean indicated that a committee was in place to
complete the Goal 10A assessment. Dean
suggested that
the template developed by Barbara Bain for Goal 9 be
utilized by all of the committees reviewing goals. The
Goal 10a committee was planning to gather syllabi
and tests for courses associated with the goal. The
time
consuming process of contacting and meeting with students enrolled in courses
for each goal was
considered inefficient, and in the case of goal 9,
not representative of students taking these courses. As an
alternative, Dean recommended that a questionnaire
be developed and administered in courses meeting each
goal requirement.
Council members discussed whether or not Human Subject’s approval would
be required
for a questionnaire of this type. Many members thought that Human Subject’s
approval would not be
necessary.
C.
Update on Assessment Handbook
Belzer reminded Council members that Faculty Senate
deferred approval of the Assessment handbook for
one year and, following study of its’ use, they have
requested a report from the Council by the end of this
academic year.
Dean and Kunicki generated a questionnaire to
determine how departments and colleges were using the
Assessment handbook. They had received a list of Assessment Coordinators who had
submitted
Assessment plans and those who had not. If possible, prior to the next Council
meeting, they were planning
to informally interview a representative sample of
Assessment Coordinators who had submitted Assessment
plans and all Assessment Coordinators who had not
submitted Assessment plans. Kruger
asked what was
considered to be a “program”. Hjelm responded that an assessment was
required for EACH degree. Reynolds
suggested that if the requirements for the degree
were different, a different assessment would be required.
Dean indicated that they had questions about the
role of Council in “monitoring progress”.
She wanted the
Council to avoid the image of “hall monitor”. Dean suggested that the directive from
Faculty Senate “to gather
information
about changes that need to be made to the Assessment handbook” was more
straightforward.
Dean asked for input from Council members on the
questionnaire they had constructed.
Kruger asked whether the procedure suggested in the
handbook was actually followed by departments.
If not,
the big question was how much extra work and time
would it take for faculty to get their assessment plans to
“measure up”.
Dean indicated that no one really knew what or how to assess, which
increases faculty
uncertainty about whether or not the plans are
“measuring up”. Kruger suggested that
written comments, not
numbers would be most valued and helpful. Nitse indicated that the College of Business
uses focus groups
for
assessment. Kruger stated that the
Department of Geology uses exit interviews.
Other Council members
also indicated that their departments used exit
interviews. Kruger raised the concern
about the time commitment,
money required for assessment, and who would pay for
that time.
Belzer suggested that the task force might ask
Assessment coordinators about their need for feedback on their
assessment plans and throughout the process. Dean felt that the need for feedback could
be subsumed under
“changes” that faculty might suggest regarding the
Assessment handbook.
Hjelm commented on the use of the word “monitoring”,
indicating that John Jones tried to make the handbook
systematic.
The real question to the Council is how do departments feel about the
handbook? Enos suggested
that they may be feeling a need for additional internal
help. Dean contrasted the departmental
vs. institutional
view of assessment, indicating the need for these
views to be compatible with accreditation needs.
Kruger stressed that the task force needed to
represent faculty and not the Office of Institutional Research as
it collected data on faculty use of the Assessment
handbook. Dean indicated that she and
Kunicki hoped to
have a preliminary report for the Council at the
March meeting. Kruger suggested that
one way to get additional
input from
faculty would be to attend a faculty meeting for a small department like
Geology.
D.
Revisiting Summary Reports
Clarifications on the summary report generated by
the discussion group that focused on learning in student
evaluations were discussed. Bain, who had participated in the discussion
group, indicated that the evaluation
form was developed by members of the group because
the faculty wanted to measure learning, not teaching.
Bain stated that the form was constructed for
optional use, and that it was being used by some departments
on campus. House
indicated that better evaluation was an issue at a national level. Some discussion
occurred regarding the need to send summaries from
discussion groups to Faculty Senate. It
was generally
agreed that discussion groups could be comprised of
faculty not on the Council. Although
discussion groups
were initiated by the Center and the Council and
reports from the discussion groups were summarized during
Council meetings, the Council was not setting policy
for the campus and probably did not need to endorse or
forward discussion group summaries to the Faculty
Senate.
E.
Review Criteria and Advertisement for Innovative Teaching Grants
Belzer provided Council members with a copy of the
criteria for the Innovative Teaching Grants and indicated
that she had been asked to have the Council review
the criteria by a faculty applicant who had not been
funded for a grant submitted last year. The applicant had requested money to attend
a conference to improve
a course that she was teaching. The applicant was not aware of other grants
that had been awarded and
wanted to again request funding for the annual
conference.
Belzer had asked Bain to gather data on grants that
had been awarded. Bain reported that
five matching grants
of between $195 and $500 each had been awarded
between July 16, 1998 and November 15, 1999.
Questions
were raised about where the money for the grants was
located. Belzer thought that
Institutional Research
had a $2,000 budget per year for the grants but indicated
that this needed to be confirmed.
Questions were raised about why the grant had not
been advertised, who wrote the criteria for the grants,
whether the criteria should be revised, and whether
or not it would be possible to obtain additional funding
to make the grants more attractive to faculty. Discussion of revising grant criteria to
allow for travel, only if
it related to improving teaching and was matched by
departmental funds resulted in the appointment of a
task force to revise the criteria for presentation
at the next Council meeting. House and
Nitse agreed to
serve on the task force. It was generally agreed that advertisemnt for the grant should
occur this year once
the criteria for the grant had been re-examined and
revised. The faculty list-serve was
suggested as a way
to advertise the grant to faculty. Other suggestions will be considered at the
next Council meeting.
Meeting adjourned 4:15 PM