California State Polytechnic University, Pomona



2009 Revised GE Assessment Policy

David Kopplin, Chair of the Academic Senate General Education Committee

Claudia Pinter-Lucke, Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Studies

Approved by Academic Senate – 1/7/2009

Approved by President Ortiz – 2/3/2009

In 2000, the Academic Senate approved a new general education program. It removed a general upper division requirement and replaced it with the requirement of three upper division synthesis courses, designed to give the program more coherence and integration. The revised program also specified broad learning outcomes for these three GE areas. In 2004, the Senate developed a GE Assessment Policy. It was agreed that this was a necessary tool to measure how well the redesigned GE Program was achieving its goals. This policy went beyond the three new synthesis areas to require the development and assessment of learning outcomes in all 16 GE areas. Prior to this time, there was no program-level assessment or review of the General Education Program. The Academic Senate should be praised for these important actions. Unfortunately, the approved policy has not been as successful as hoped.

Status of Current GE Assessment Plans

A successful assessment plan should result in meaningful, manageable, and sustainable assessment. (Assessing General Education Programs – Mary Allen, Anker Publishing, 2006). The current policy has not been successful by these criteria, either for the departments involved or for the administration supporting them. For example, as it now stands, Undergraduate Studies is to poll the committee members each year to determine which members will continue on the committees, and poll all instructors of the particular GE area for substitutes. Some departments, such as English, have been asked to contribute faculty members to multiple GE Areas. This model is not manageable. In an effort to make some plans more manageable, instructors have been given considerable latitude to select the type of work product to use for assessment purposes. This makes the results less meaningful.

Undergraduate Studies cannot provide adequate administrative support for the growing number of active assessment committees required by the existing policy. Sixteen committees working concurrently but independently results in plans that are neither efficient nor cost effective. Some committees have collected data that they do not have the funds to analyze. These plans are not sustainable.

In addition, the current policy has provisions that have been difficult for the groups to fulfill. The introduction to the current assessment policy indicates that the assessment should not “concern itself with the question of whether the outcomes are explicitly learned in a particular class,” but about “the outcomes of a program segment.” However, in the charge to the committees, it requires that each course be examined at least once every five years leading the assessment committees to create different assessments for different courses within a GE area. The policy asks that one piece of evidence be from some activity occurring after students have completed the GE area, although the students may have gone in quite different academic directions following the completion of the course in that GE area. The policy also asks that some of the data be examined for differences “between native Cal Poly Pomona students and transfer students. It is not clear if the intent of this instruction is to ensure that transfer students have the appropriate prerequisites, or to determine if they have achieved the same outcomes at their prior institutions.

Finally, the current assessment committees have been unable to meet the timeline suggested in the Senate Policy. (The policy proposed that assessment plans be developed for four areas in the first year, for the remaining eight lower division areas in the next year, and the three synthesis areas in the third year.) Most committees have needed more than one year to develop their plans, and implementation after development has been uneven. The policy directed the lower division GE areas be assessed before setting up plans for the upper division GE areas due to the experience to be gained from the “more homogeneous lower division GE.” The committees convened thus far have found the courses in the lower division GE areas far from homogeneous. In meetings this fall of the GE assessment chairs, there was a strong feeling that the synthesis areas might actually be easier to assess due to the ability to look back at the preparation of the students (both native and transfers) and the relationship of that preparation to their ability to synthesize several different lower division GE areas.

Proposed Policy

We recommend that a new single GE Assessment Committee be formed. This committee would be an Academic Senate University-wide Committee with representation from each of the colleges, from the ASI, and from Undergraduate Studies. Academic Affairs would be asked to offer financial and administrative support to the committee. Undergraduate Studies (UGS), Institutional Research, Assessment and Planning (IRAP) and the Faculty Center for Professional Development (FCPD) would support the committee with guidance on assessment techniques, assistance collecting and analyzing data, and support to share the work with the campus community. It should be noted that this would not be an additional Senate committee, but a decrease of 15 committees, actually easing the service obligations of the faculty.

We do not recommend that the existing Senate GE Committee assume this role for two reasons. First, this committee already is charged with reviewing new GE course referrals, interpreting EO 595 for the Cal Poly Pomona campus, and dealing with other referrals related to general education. Second, at a GE Affinity meeting sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office this year, it was pointed out that Executive Order 595 (since replaced by EO 1033) requires “regular periodic reviews of general education policies and practices in a manner comparable to those of major programs. The review should include an off-campus component.” At this time, there is no such review in place. We recommend that the Senate GE Committee assume the responsibility for this GE Program Review, which will certainly include a review of assessment results, but will have a more broad focus in its review of, and recommendations for, changes to the GE Program. It is due to the effort involved in the development and implementation of both a GE Program Review policy and a GE Assessment policy that we recommend that two separate committees be assigned to perform these two tasks.

One aspect of the original policy that should be retained is the importance of having the instructors who teach the general education courses involved in the assessment. This does not mean that these instructors (a large number of which are lecturers) need to serve on the committee. They may be involved through the collection or review of evidence, or through meetings to discuss the results of the assessment and the actions that might be taken.

In the first year, it is recommended that the committee complete the first three steps of a successful assessment plan:

1. Review the learning outcomes that have been developed for the various GE areas and formulate additional learning outcomes as needed to develop a comprehensive set of learning outcomes for the entire GE Program, The Committee shall also summarize the relationship between these outcomes and the University’s learning outcomes.

2. Map the alignment between the curriculum and the outcomes, with the assistance of other members of the campus, as appropriate.

3. Develop an assessment plan that will describe:

• How each outcome will be assessed;

• Who will collect and analyze the data;

• Where and how the data will be collected;

• When and how often each outcome will be assessed;

It is further recommended that in each successive year, the GE Assessment Committee, with the assistance of other members of the campus, as appropriate, complete the following steps:

4. Collect assessment data.

5. Develop rubrics or other tools necessary for the assessment.

6. Perform the assessment.

7. Reflect on the results and recommend appropriate changes to the GE Committee.

8. Regularly examine the assessment process to ensure that the process is:

• Valid – do the results reflect what we are trying to measure?

• Reliable – are the results reliable across time, version of the instrument, and evaluator?

• Actionable – can we determine what action is required?

• Engaging – are the respondents engaged in the process?

The GE Assessment Committee should seek to use a variety of assessment techniques, including direct assessment techniques such as standardized tests, locally developed tests, embedded assessment, and portfolios, and indirect assessment techniques such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews. The University has pledged to take advantage of the relationship between various initiatives on campus, and assessment should be no exception. As the GE Assessment Committee discusses the possible techniques, it should seek to use evidence already being collected for other purposes. Just a few examples are:

• Student’s written communication and critical thinking skills could be measured through our campus’ participation in the Collegiate Learning Assessment Program.

• Programs conducting exit interviews could measure oral communication skills after a common rubric was developed.

• Questions from the National Survey of Student Engagement administered to seniors could be used to measure students’ ability to be lifelong learners.

• A suggestion that arose from discussions with the current GE Assessment Chairs is to re-write the prompts for the Graduation Writing Test to serve the dual purpose of assessing students’ writing skills and assessing some aspect of the GE Program. This approach would take advantage of the organization already in place for administering and grading the GWT, and could be funded from the fees students pay to take the GWT.

It should be noted that this is not a course-level assessment, or an assessment for particular content. There is no requirement that particular courses be a part of any step of the assessment. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that any suggestions for action that result from the assessment will have the form of a recommendation to create, discontinue, or make specific changes to a particular course. (It is recognized that some GE areas have so few courses that a suggested action may have the effect of a recommendation for changes to a particular course.) The suggestions are more likely to reflect on the structure of the program and the paths that students take through the program (including paths that pass through community colleges) to ensure that students are introduced to, allowed to practice, and expected to master, the learning outcomes at the appropriate time and level.

In summary, this plan would be a step forward in GE Assessment. This plan will be more efficient because it will make use of evidence that is already available for some of the assessment. It will be more cost-effective because the funds that were allocated to support sixteen committees will be consolidated to support one committee. It is more likely to be manageable because the plan will ask one committee of 8 to 12 faculty to focus on two to three learning objectives each year rather than assigning a minimum of 64 instructors staffing 16 committees to assess at least 16 learning objectives each year. Academic Affairs can ensure that the plan is sustainable if its offices need only support one committee.

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