Engaging Faculty in the Purposes of General Education and the Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes at Michigan State University Mark Sullivan Assoc.

Engaging Faculty in the Purposes of General Engaging Faculty in the Purposes of General Education Education

and the Assessment of Student Learning Outcomesand the Assessment of Student Learning Outcomesat Michigan State University

Mark SullivanAssoc. Professor of [email protected]

Duncan SibleyDirector for Center for Integrative Studies General [email protected]

Suzanne WilsonProfessor of Teacher [email protected]

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/snapshot.php?id=787

For more information on this project please see our website:

Integrative Studies –Integrative Studies –MSU’s Program in Liberal General

Education

Team Workdifferent expertise , different cultures working together as equal partners

CIAH CISS

CISGSProject Goals

1. strengthen faculty culture and capacity to assess student learning outcomes

2. mobilize campus expertise

3. initiate systematic classroom-embedded assessment of student learning

GOALS OF INTEGRATIVE STUDIES

Courses in Integrative Studies help students to:

1. become more familiar with the ways of knowing characteristic of intellectual activities in the arts and humanities, biological and physical sciences, and social sciences;

2. grow in a range of intellectual abilities, including critical thinking, logical argument, appropriate uses of evidence, and interpretation of varied kinds of information (quantitative, qualitative, text, and image);

3. expand their knowledge about other times, places, and cultures, as well as about key ideas and issues in human experience;

4. learn about the role of scientific methods in understanding the natural and social worlds;

5. appreciate the role of knowledge, values, and ethics in understanding human behavior and solving social problems; and

6. recognize some responsibilities and opportunities associated with citizenship in a democratic society and in an increasingly inter-connected world.

Pervasive, faculty driven assessment of student learning outcomes is a cultural change and one that we have partially affected at our university.

To change the culture costs money:

$75K MSU$75K Hewlett Foundation

Assessment in

General Education

Michigan State UniversityJanuary 18, 2001

Presented by

Trudy W. BantaVice Chancellor

Planning and Institutional ImprovementIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

To change the culture requires expertise

The Design and Developmentof Assessments

Mark D. Reckase

Innovative Teaching to Achieve

Active Learning

Our own experts create the sense of community

Diane Ebert-May

Cultural change takes time

24 2-hour meetings over 2 years

Multiple types ofclass-embedded instruments

• Pre-post multiple choice

• Extended responses with rubrics– Case-based studies

• Faculty ranking (modified Bloom’s taxonomy) of test items

• Concept mapping

AssessmentMark Sullivan

From Hostility to Productivity

Hostility, Indifference, Dread

• The initial attitude toward issues of assessment– Fear of bureaucratic “bean counting”– Looked at assessment as another form

Of unproductive, administrative harrassment

Hewlett Project

• Provided the necessary experiences over a sufficient period of time to create a new model of, and disposition toward, assessment

• Provided examples of assessment I had never considered, provided models of assessment used by my actual peers

• Provoked a meaningful debate about which forms of assessment were productive in relation to our actual disciplines, teaching styles and philosophies, and so forth

First tries

• Pre-test, Post-test – confirming the obvious• Assessing the introduction of students to a body

of material and knowledge• Conceptual spirals in writing assignments

– Themes related to racism– National context in the thirties Langston Hughes– International context in the recent past – Idi Amin,

Mississippi Masala– Recycling writing under different themes

What next?

• Some ideas I plan to try out in the future– Use of interviews and ethnographic profiles

Of students

- Use of faculty visitation among peers teaching in general education

Consequences

• Faculty Meeting with other Music Faculty teaching general education who did not participate in the institute– Initial attitude: from hostility to indifference– Became interested when presented with

models they deemed to have promise, in terms of helping them do something they wanted to do, or in terms of finding out something they wanted to find out

Professional Development for University Faculty

Creating a New Generation of Subject-Specific, Targeted

Support

Suzanne Wilson

Traditional Professional Development

• For a long time, K-12 teachers have found professional development, or “inservice” as it is traditionally called, unhelpful

• So it is with University faculty who often find talking heads and one-day workshops devoid of content meaningless

“Best Practices” of Professional Development

• Professional Development Practices– focuses on teachers as central to student learning;– focuses on individual, collegial, and organizational improvement;– focuses on student work; – is long term– respects and nurtures the intellectual and leadership capacity of teachers,

principals, and others in the school community;– reflects best available research and practice;– enables teachers to develop further expertise in subject content, teaching

strategies, uses of technologies, and other essential elements in teaching to high standards;

– promotes continuous inquiry and improvement embedded in the daily life of schools;

– is planned collaboratively by those who will participate in and facilitate that development;

Next Steps

• Sustainability of such professional development requires:

– substantial time and other resources;

– a coherent long-term plan;

– On-going evaluation of its impact on teacher effectiveness and student learning

To sustain change requires:

I. Challenges: (at your institution)A.B.C.II. Strategies for engaging faculty (at your

institution)A.B.C.

I. Challenges: (at MSU)A. Assessment takes time away from other thingsB. Faculty believe essential aspects of quality teaching

are intangibleC. Faculty are unsure of the reward for teaching

general education

II. Strategies for engaging faculty (at MSU)A. Lilly FellowsB. Peer reviewed teaching awardsC. Curiosity