MEMORANDUM TO: Johannes Britz, Interim Provost FROM: John Boyland, APCC Chair 2010-11As described in the attached document, APCC is producing a report on GER assessment this year. This report requires input from departments offering GER courses. From every department that is offering more than two GER courses, the APCC needs some information immediately (by May 15) and then self-study materials by July 31, 2011. What we need by May 15th from every department offering more than two GER courses is a list of courses that will be sampled for GER assessment. They may use courses offered in previous semesters as long as assessment data was collected for them already. Otherwise they should use courses offered this semester. The courses should represent at least 25% of the GER student credit hours (SCH) of the department. This list of courses should be sent to the APCC <apcc-ger-review@uwm.edu> by May 15th. The self-study materials (due July 31, 2011) should be sent electronically to the same address AND an additional paper copy to Academic Affairs, 230 Chapman Hall for our records. Please consult the attachment to see what materials are needed in the self-study. If anyone has any questions about applicability or process, please contact John Boyland, APCC Chair 2010-11.
Updated July 11, 2011, noon
Prof. Andrew Porter of Foreign Languages and Literature has provided a good example of what we'd like to see for each course being reviewed. You can access it either as a ZIP archive of MS Word documents or as a single PDF document (converted imprecisely by OpenOffice).
The example does a bit more than required:
The following answers reflect my (John Boyland's) understanding of how the GER review will take place. I am posting them with the intention of being helpful. If APCC or Academic Affairs decides something different than this, that is their perogative; I will post corrections as soon as feasible.
Q: Are you assessing the instruction or the learning?
A: The learning. Ultimately, we wish to know whether GER courses are enabling students to achieve certain outcomes.
Q: If we assess a single large course in our department, that will handle 25% of our SCH; doesn't that mean that many GER courses go unassessed?
A: Yes. But (1) we did not think it wise to try to assess everything at first, and (2) the GER program presumably has an effect on students. It is student learning that we are ultimately interested in.
Q: Asking an instructor to assess their own course is open to all sorts of gaming and abuse. Why do you permit this?
A: Since we are not particularly interested in the absolute numeric results of assessment, but rather that assessment be done to improve student learning, we are less worried about gaming the system. But yes, eventually, external assessment should be set up.
Q: You can't require instructors who are not on contract to do work over the summer.
A: The instructors only need to do work (assessment) during the semester. The department chair is responsible for collecting the information and getting it to the APCC GER review list.
Q: It says ``collation'' will be done July 31-Sept 15. How is the department supposed to do this, especially without compensation, or is academic affairs going to fund that?
A: Collation be will be done by Academic Affairs, and they may pay people to do that, but it will not be done by the department. Once the department has delivered the required information, they have no more responsibilities for the 2011 review.
Q: Our department offers GER courses under several different curricular codes. Do we need to assess 25% of each code separately?
A: It would be ideal to have a good sample, and so have courses from all GER curricular codes, but this is not required.
Q: We don't have GER syllabi for our GER courses. We don't know what this is all about.
A: Contact me and I will put you in contact with someone who can help you generate a GER syllabus. The basic idea is that the course should explain what GER outcome will be assessed and how (explaining the rubric).
Q: Our GER courses are taught by ad hoc instructors / graduate students who don't know about GER outcomes and aren't aware of the GER syllabus. How can they be expected to do assessment?
A: Some education may be required. Eventually all GER courses should only be taught by those who understand what the GER program is about and are able to assess whether outcomes are met.
Q: We are currently assessng LEAP/ELO goals for our department courses; do we need to assess using the GER criteria?
A: Yes you need to assess the existing GER criteria, but with a little bit of care, it is possible to use the same assessment for both ELO and GER criteria. And you need only assess one GER criterion, and can thus choose the criterion that closest matches an appropriate ELO.
Send GER review information to the apcc-ger-review mailing list.