INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE Minutes September 29, 2005 Present: Tracy Ballinger, Mary Cantrell, Marvin Cooke, Cherie Hughes, Paul Johnson, John Kontogianes, Margaret Lee, Sandra Massey, Suzanne Reese, Susan Schoffman, Mike Sullivan, Bud Turman, Sharon Wright, Jody Worley Absent: Brett Campbell, Sally Kovac, Judy Leeds, Carol Messer Welcome and Introductions Cherie Hughes called the meeting to order at 2:05 pm, in the Metro Campus Boardroom. Approval of April 26 Minutes, 2005 Minutes were approved as submitted. Sub-committee Reports Entry Level: Margaret Lee, Sharon Wright Need next areas of focus. What do we need to do at the entry level to ensure students success? We do not have a placement tool that predicts students success at the developmental level in both reading and writing. College level placement is okay. If not at the college level, we don t know if they need Reading I or II or if they need Writing I or II. John Kontogianes suggested writing a formal letter to the English and Developmental faculty sharing results of research and developing a strategy. Copy the ADs and Deans of Instruction. Indirect data shows if students use development program in any area, their chances for success sky rocket. A huge number of people take Accuplacer and never enroll. An overwhelming number of students choose not to participate in developmental education. We have compelling reasons to need a way to advise students what to do if they are not at the college level. There are factors that students exhibit upon entry that we suspect will bear on their success/retention. We are in a position with new student support services program where we have a clearly defined at-risk population. We have specific, ambitious program objectives we are required to achieve by the Department of Education and we have specific requirements about the data we need to capture. o Plan to select a cohort for comparison of eligible but non-participating students whom we can compare with our grant cohort. Will provide a strong basis of information to interpret what s going on for our at-risk Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment 1
students. Will have a controlled environment where we can analyze some of the things we ve been talking about on an intuitive level. Cherie asked the Entry Level, UP, Gen Ed, and Workforce Development subcommittee chairs to talk with their subcommittees about linking entry level to outcomes. Will discuss at a later meeting. University Parallel Disciplines: Marvin Cooke, Judy Leeds Pleased with Convocation meeting. Premeetings in spring helped create energy. Asked English, Biology, Psychology ADs and one faculty member from each campus to attend and began with questions to get them thinking and chatting with colleagues before formal meeting. Advise groups to do what is useful to them. Assessment area gave feedback to make sure discipline is informed of review results and faculty have the AD s support. If disciplines understood that it is about what is important to them and what could make a difference to them, they would be happier about conducting assessment. Mary Cantrell suggested giving examples of data next time. General Education: Mary Cantrell, Susan Schoffman Provided handout of revised General Education Goals. Serving on subcommittee has been good experience, and everyone wants to serve again. All full-time and adjunct faculty will be assessing the same goal. John pointed out the State Regents still require computer proficiency (Goal #4). Takes four or five years to accumulate data. Committee will consider using critical thinking one fall and then again the next fall. It is important to make data more meaningful. In theory, the process is a good process, but in reality it s probably not telling us a lot. Form has been changed. Suggestions o Have faculty assess one goal each year. o Assign certain goals to certain disciplines. o Have all four goals assessed every semester. A site visitor would want to see syllabus, talk to instructor, and talk to student. Pick and choose until committee has a strong degree of confidence that the goals are being met. Students may not know what the instructor is assessing. Committee will discuss what else they can do to make data more meaningful. Share best practices so instructors would have models. Assessment should inspire searching for ways of doing it better. Some changes have been made in writing assignments. Instructors who didn t do writing assignments are incorporating them in their classes. Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment 2
Student Satisfaction: Sandra Massey, Tracy Ballinger Provided handouts of Goals / Initiatives for 2005 2006 and subcommittee member list. Have results from student satisfaction inventory and student focus groups done in the spring on each campus. A task force developed a survey the student recruiters administered as students left enrollment offices. Committee has 22 people and will strategize on how to get more student involvement. Plan to share data with offices that have the greater than one gap: Campus Safety, Student Financial Services/ Bursar, Advisement. Gap was based on what s important to a student and how satisfied they are that we re meeting their needs. Matched up with Noel-Levitz. Time to move from examining what s out there to what do we do about it. Have representation from all areas they are targeting, except Campus Public Safety. People are eager to look at the results. Mary asked if the dissatisfaction level identified leads to people leaving. There is some evidence, i.e., if a person doesn t get financial aid, they don t come back. We have no system to track where people go when the leave. Usually they leave because of personal reasons. TCC student satisfaction is high: 80 90%. Trying to identify biggest frustrations for our students. There is a considerable dissatisfaction regarding the number of work studies because of high rotation and time spent training people who leave the next semester. Cherie suggested sharing information in the Connection. Share with all areas involved, not just the ones with a gap. Financial aid is seasonal. Sharon suggested having a cohort of people who move during peak times and cycle back again. Could prevent the constant turnover. First Stop proposal is to disembed those front-line functions from their isolated departments and develop them to meet the needs that come through the door all the time. Not convinced students don t leave in frustration, we just don t have any way of knowing. We have students who come to us because they are aggravated with another institution and it works both ways. John, Brett, and Tom keep formal records of student complaints and track the resolutions. Reasons usually are regarding financial aid, the system, not getting proper assistance for a handicap rarely are they faculty related. Only two or three are received a semester. Not obligated to track complaints at the campus level. We could request Deans to categorize the last three years complaints. If retention and satisfaction are closely tied, need to link them. Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment 3
We have data that shows financial aid was overwhelmed. Need more people at peak times. Areas can use our report to have leverage to hire more people, locate more resources. Need to document when the data is presented to the area. NCA will look at feedback that was given and how those areas changed overall. Workforce Development Programs: Sally Kovac, Bud Turman Goal was to develop assessment procedures for Workforce Development Programs. Selected Management and Accounting faculty. Presented template for program assessment at Convocation. In the process of streamlining document to present to Management and Accounting Advisory Committees. Working on developing employer surveys. Looking at ways to package offerings to better meet employers needs. OK State Regents have now imposed on all institutions granting AAS degree to assess those graduates with either a degree or certificate in Work Keys, an ACT product. Three assessments are reading for information, applied mathematics, and locating information. NEC will purchase assessment software. State will provide certificates. Employers will be asked to require it. Will impact how AAS students will be assessed. Co-Curricular: Mike Sullivan Brett Campbell will be new cochair. Two goals: o Continue assessment of extracurricular learning activities. o Find a way for students to have a co-curricular transcript. The outside classroom learning activities could help reach Gen Ed goals. Administrative Units Assessment: Suzanne Reese, Brett Campbell Provided handout. Met with last year s group and requested input. Most had not done anything with what they learned. When people have yearly evaluation, their assessment has to be key to the evaluation. Suzanne will visit the Cabinet for assistance in identifying cohort. Faculty evaluations are personal goals. Program goals are not part of the evaluation. No feedback. Institutional Research / Assessment Report: Paul Johnson Created report last year based on Project Management objectives and had to pull the report for confidentiality purposes. Need to determine a way to publicize the data without compromising the private information. It is helpful for the units to see what other units are doing. Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment 4
Old Business John learned HLC site evaluators are recommending focus visits or progress reports and being critical because they are evaluating assessment programs at the institutions by using their own evaluations as the measuring tool. They are not getting into the mindset of the institution they are visiting and trying to see what that institution is accomplishing. Need to realize even our accrediting agency has difficulty with assessment. NCA will be looking at changes the institution has made as a result of our assessment. We need to make our assessment process clearly measurable by everyone who looks at it. Need to tie activities back to the mission goals of the institution. New Business Cherie suggested suspending the reports at the next meeting and taking written ones so the committee could have a discussion on Project Management. We need to give assessments and numbers but budget increase is 2% or 4% tied to enrollment, not assessment. Doesn t seem that research information is being used. Project Management should be tied to assessment of program units. Assessment is supposed to tie back to budgeting, decision making, and mission of the institution. Would be a culture shift for the institution. Some areas may need an increase in budget and some may need a decrease. A committee working retreat was suggested for the next meeting. Will invite Tom and Gary to attend. The meeting was adjourned at 4 pm. Submitted by Sally Mondragon Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment 5