On July 24 and 25, faculty, staff, and students from multiple colleges met with Provost Fellow for General Education Transition Dr. Josh Smith and the Assessment of Student Learning team, led by Dr. Keri Franklin, for a Collaborative Assessment Workshop. The workshop set out with several goals—to review General Goals 1, 2, 10, and 11 and their associated Student Learning Outcomes, to create rubrics for these goals, and to look over General Education Rubrics that were created in recent years.

Day One:

Workshop participants, Ethan Amidon, Dr. Richard Biagioni, Kathy Gibson, Dr. Sarah Lancaster, Dr. Kyle Miller, Mary Roccaro, Erica Stark, and Dr. Shannon Wooden, along with Dr. Smith and Assessment staff, reviewed the 13 Areas of General Education and the 15 General Learning Goals. We also spent some time looking over Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Depth of Knowledge Wheel. This study led to a valuable conversation regarding the importance of specific language, definitions, and precise action words when creating the rubrics.

Participants had a chance to chat during a shared lunch of Panera sandwiches and salads and then we returned to work. The afternoon portion of the workshop consisted of looking closely at each of the General Goals and Student Learning Outcomes. We spent some time going over the AAC&U rubrics and comparing those rubrics to those developed at Missouri State.

At the conclusion of Day One,  we reviewed the goals of the rubrics. Everyone agreed that the rubrics should be designed to be helpful to instructors in these courses and should represent skills that will be useful to students as they progress through their degree programs and post-graduate careers.

Day Two:

As workshop participants gathered, we began the day by looking at comments from the Human Cultures/Information Literacy workshop held in May 2018. We specifically reviewed comments dealing with General Goals 6 (Information Literacy) and 7 (Collaboration). The majority of comments suggested simplification of goals, clarification of language, and the introduction of a glossary that would provide reviewers with a definition of the action words used the rubric.

Once we reviewed these goals, we turned our attention to General Goal 1 (Critical Inquiry, Analysis, and Problem Solving) and General Goal 2 (Creative Thinking and Expression). We agreed very quickly that these two goals could potentially be combined. We reviewed, not as quickly, the language and the specific Student Learning Outcomes. It was wonderful to see how many people, from many disciplines, came together with a common objective and worked through a document, word by word, creating something that would be useful to instructors and students and best communicate the purpose of the goal. There was much dialogue, debate, listening, respect, and cooperation among colleagues, as we developed the SLOs.

After agreeing on the language of the newly-created General Goal 1 (Critical Inquiry, Analysis, and Creative Problem Solving), we turned our attention to General Goal 10 (Life Sciences) and General Goal 11 (Physical Sciences). The consensus was that, while similar, these two goals needed to remain separate. A new SLO was added to General Goal 11, however.

The next step for the participants of the workshop will be to work together in small groups to develop the actual rubrics for each learning outcome within these three General Goals. We will reconvene on August 7 and 8 to review the progress and make any necessary changes.