FACULTY EXCHANGE FOR CORE CURRICULUM ASSESSMENTS
Four faculty members volunteered to present their embedded assessments at the Faculty Exchange held on January 31st. Dr. Theron Francis described the Languages and Literature Department collaboration to create a prompt for students to address to measure their personal and social responsibility skills. Dr. Francis used the prompt as the final exam for his course. Dr. Joey Velasco presented a survey that he administered to students in his classes to gauge their skill levels. Professor Marjorie Scott described questions that she posed to students over a theatre selection for her embedded assessment. Professor Kendra De Hart (photograph) presented her assessment method of having students prepare a written response to a quote from history. Faculty attending gained ideas for new strategies for measuring students’ understanding of the core curriculum skills.
During spring semester, faculty who teach the core curriculum courses will continue to administer their embedded assessments, and students also will receive the Student-Self Survey (via Blackboard) that asks them to evaluate their own personal and social responsibility skills as developed in their courses.
NATIONAL SURVEY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
As part of the Core Curriculum assessments, all freshmen students in Alpine and all seniors in Alpine and RGC will receive an email invitation on February 20th to participate in the annual NSSE administration. All eligible students are urged to respond to the survey and provide valuable information about the university learning environment. Names of all students who complete the survey will be placed in a drawing on April 10th for prizes including an iPAD and two bookstore gift certificates of $100.00 each.
INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH: QUALTRICS RELEASE
We want to share the exciting news of the campus-wide release of Qualtrics, an online data collection and survey tool, which became available on January 23. All SRSU faculty and staff can use Qualtrics at no cost to their research projects or to their departments. If you’re using Survey Monkey for your research or other uses, we encourage you to check out Qualtrics and consider changing to Qualtrics.
How do I access SRSU Qualtrics?
You can find Qualtrics in your mySRSU portal or in the navigation menu of the Institutional Effectiveness website. Use your SRSU login credentials (same as you use for email) to access Qualtrics.
How do I learn how to use it?
Qualtrics has a great collection of self-help resources including:
Free recorded and live weekly webinars (register HERE)
Visit Qualtrics’ support page at support.qualtrics.com
If you have any questions about using Qualtrics at SRSU, please contact Qualtrics Support at (800) 340-9194 or contact the SRSU Qualtrics Brand Administrator, Alejandra Villalobos at x8585 or axv16gy@sulross.edu.
ADMIN REPORTS UPDATE
Libby Newman, IE Coordinator, will be visiting the RGC campuses February 27th through March 1st for department assessment trainings. Department assessment trainings will begin on the Alpine Campus in March. The non-Academic assessment reports deadline has been moved to May 31st.
UPDATE ON HB 2504
Danielle Lucero, Joey Velasco, Chris Estepp, Dave Gibson, Alejandra Villalobos Melendez and Sally Roche are members of a committee chaired by Jeanne Qvarnstrom to design the best way to post the course evaluations by students each semester on the SRSU website. Al Brautigam and Rob Stolz have been designing the data display to meet expectations set out in HB 2504. At the last committee meeting, members were enthusiastic about the design. Al and Rob plan to present a demo of the display at the March Faculty Assembly for their feedback. The roll-out of the display will be by Fall 2017, and it will be posted on the HB 2504 page, under Student Perceptions of Instruction.
ACADEMIC ASSESSMENT REPORT REFERENCES
Looking for some new ideas about academic assessments? Dr. Chris Estepp has found several good resources for thinking more holistically about the assessment process. More are on the IE web page.
http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/howto/assessprogram/tools/programoutcomes-curricularchangeschart.pdf
http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/howto/basics/objectives.html