Academic Senate 2007-2008

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Minutes of the MPC SLO Articulation Committee.

September through November, 2007 (This committee was only in existence during the fall semester, 2007. It's work culminated in the presentation at the Spring 2008, Flex Day events)

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Commitee, 11-6-07 (via e-mail)

-Members participating: Fred, Robynn, Yesenia

-Approved the SLO Articulation Report for the Academic Senate on Nov 15.

-Approved Fred's responses to comments on the job description from the Nov 1 Academic Senate meeting. 

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 10-30-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred, Yesenia

-Finalized Robynn's list of objections to be incorporated into the report

-Approved the SLO Coordinator job description for the Academic Senate on Nov 1.

-Talked a lot about how our SLOs should not guarantee retention or future abilities

-Discussed the possibilities of legal action by students who passed the class, but perceive they cannot perform what was promised in SLOs

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 10-16-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred

-Reviewed Robynn's list of objections and how we should respond to them.

-Robynn is revising this list on the basis of Fred's comments, and it will be reproduced here next week.

-Reviewed communication from Mark Bishop, and Fred's response.

-This e-mail exchange is reprinted below this list of minutes. 

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 10-9-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred

-Fred briefed Robynn on SLOs being on the AAAG agenda 10-12-07.

-Fred sent John Gonzalez and AAAG members an e-mail note including the 10-8-07 progress report and asking them for an update on progress that each division has made with SLOs.

-Updated first paragraph of SLO course definition:

 

Definition

An SLO is a measurable or evaluable description of what a student is expected to be able to “do” at the end of a course. The word “do,” in this context, could mean, for example, “perform,” “paint,” “produce,” “analyze,” “demonstrate,” “discriminate,” “synthesize,” “use the scientific method,” or any number of verbs appropriate for a particular course. Development of SLOs for MPC courses is totally and completely the responsibility of MPC faculty members, as are the methods of evaluation of the SLOs, which may be quantitative or qualitative. Evaluation of SLOs may or may not be part of student evaluation methods currently in place for a given course. Development of SLOs for MPC courses is totally and completely the responsibility of MPC faculty members, as are the methods of evaluation of student attainment of the SLOs. Evaluation of student attainment of the SLOs may be quantitative and/or qualitative, and may be part of student evaluation methods currently in place for a given course.

 

-Talked about what to do next

-Robynn will develop a list of objections to SLOs and "replies" to the objections.

-She will write the "replies" as if Fred is responding to the objections

-Fred will investigate what other community colleges have done to organize program and institutional level SLOs and how they have organized the assessment of the SLOs.

-Fred will find data on which programs most MPC students are taking

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 10-2-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred

-Met Briefly to consider what we should do next. Objectives include:

  -List objections to SLOs and write some replies to include in the booklet (Robynn)

  -recognizing that assessment of these SLOs is coming, research what other schools have done in the area of assessment (Fred)

  -write a job description for a SLO czar or czarista

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 9-27-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred

Endorsed the Progress Report, which articulates a definition of SLOs for MPC

Talked about what to do next:

• Think about adding a section of "SLO objections and responses" to the progress report

• Collect SLO Czar job descriptions from other colleges

• Write a SLO Czar job description for MPC

• Think about record keeping methods for SLO-related documents

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 9-24-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred

-Visitors: Doug, John

-Talked to John and Doug for two hours.

-Received Doug's responses to the questions that we requested that he pose to WASC at his accreditation site-visit team training.

-Summary of Doug's responses

to

Our Questions

-Talked for a long time about assessment of the SLOs. We came to the conclusion that it is the dialog that is important, and that assessment of SLOs is up to the faculty. Assessment of SLOs for a single course need not be uniform across all classes taught of the course by different instructors. Dialog is the important thing, not uniformity.

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 9-18-07

-Members present: Robynn, Fred, Jon

-Practiced the SLO process by writing SLOs for our classes

-Critiqued each other's SLOs by emphasizing verbs that connote demonstrable skills or  higher level thinking skills

-Came to the conclusion that this kind of exercise can focus one's teaching in some cases, but it also somewhat belittles what we do by compressing the main outcomes into one to three sentences. We all think we do so much more than we can convey in one to three evaluable outcomes.

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 9-11-07

 Members present: Fred, Robynn, Jon

• Approved the minutes of September 4.

• Recognized the value of our conversation with Doug and John on Monday Sept 10. We recognize that Doug uses his experience teaching in his decisions today. We appreciate this.

• We also appreciate the WASC document Doug shared with us showing that there are many different forms of student measurable work that is not necessarily quantifiable, including works of art, portfolios, etc….

• Discussed at length the ephemeral distinction between an SLO and an objective. Realized that some peoples objectives are really pretty good SLOs. We realized that we should probably de-emphasize this distinction.

• Robynn reported that she has been looking at “lots” of SLO websites. She thinks many of them are overly complicated and would produce onerous amounts of documentation and paperwork.

• Discussed at length whether or not there is “value” behind this SLO movement.

• Fred can see value in SLOs in that they can help focus instructor’s thinking and planning for a class and form a structure for conversation between teachers about teaching and student learning.

• Fred thinks that focusing on what the student should be doing or learning in each class is more valuable than thinking about what the teacher should be doing in class.

• Fred thinks the glass is at least half full.

• Robynn feels she already does all of these things, and thinks that the vast majority of Creative Arts faculty do too. She also thinks the SLO are a (republican) political ploy to transfer the blame of poor education from administrators and politicians to teachers, when our education problems are really a societal problem. Therefore, the SLOs become an extra burden of busy work.

• As a result, Robynn believes that we should make this effort as streamlined as possible and as easy as possible for instructors to accomplish.

• For these reasons, Robynn thinks the glass is not all the way full.

• Jon thinks that if we’re going to do them we should do them because there is some intrinsic value in them. If we’re just doing them because we have to and continue to believe that they are just busy work, then it will never be a worthwhile effort and we might as well give up now.

 Minutes: SLO Articulation Committee, 9-10-07

-Members Present: Robynn, Fred, Marianne; Visitors: Doug

 

-Met with Doug and delivered a set of questions that he could ask the WASC folks as he met with them in a training session his site visit team to Marymount College in LA.

-The questions were developed at our previous 9-5-07 meeting

 

Minutes: SLO Articulation Commitee, 9-5-07

-Members Present: Robynn, Fred, Marianne

1. We began to formulate some guiding principles for this group. We came up with four statements that we all agreed upon.

a. We believe in the general education community college system

b. We believe in accreditation.

c. We believe in professional teachers talking to each other about teaching.

d. We believe in this committee producing a product.

2. We recognized that one of the biggest problems on campus is that faculty don’t know what an SLO is and want examples of “acceptable” SLOs.

3. We recognized a benchmark of September 18^th as a date when Doug Garrison goes in for WASC training for his accreditation team visit to another college.

   1. Began to formulate questions for Doug to ask at the accreditation training.

   2. Learned after the meeting that the training was Sept 11

   3. Fred, Robynn, Marianne met with Doug on Sept 10 to talk about what we needed to learn from the training session.

   4. The following list of questions was given to Doug and discussed.

 

Questions for Accreditation Training           Sept 10, 2007

 

What is an SLO, and is mine good enough?  This is the main question on campus right now. Are there any endorsements on how to write an SLO?

 

SLO vs objective: is there really any meaningful difference?

 

How many per class? Most “informed” people employ the KISS principle and say one or two. Kosher?

 

Relative importance of SLOs at the institution, program and course level: should we concentrate on any one of these before the other? Top-down or bottom-up approach?

 

Some faculty are responsible for more than 25 courses each. SLOs for each and every course offering, or is this a situation where carefully constructed program SLOs make more sense?

 

What about Credit/NC classes?

 

Disciplines vary considerably. Are ~10 different models of SLOs across campus OK?

 

Are faculty evaluated based on SLOs? Page 48 of the guide. This is in direct violation of evaluation being a locally negotiated issue.

 

How are student grades different than “assessment of student learning outcomes”? Or is the question “how” the SLOs are evaluated (graded)?

 

Academic Freedom vs SLOs. “Unanimity is anathema to academic freedom and intellectual life” This is the notion of intellectual pluralism and the basis for our Academic Freedom policy. I worry when the accreditation standards “requires that faculty engage in discussions of ways to deliver instruction to maximize student learning” (first paragraph page 8 of the Guide). I agree that faculty should engage in conversations about teaching and student learning, but these standards seem to suggest that faculty come to some consensus about how to teach or “deliver instruction”. In many places, the guide talks about using the data generated by SLO assessment to improve teaching techniques and student learning. I worry about a perceived need to agree on what to do or how to do it.

 

Situations where multiple instructors teach and assess SLOs of a single course. How do we design the assessment of student learning outcomes when different instructors may assess the outcome differently? I don’t think we necessarily want all instructors assessing the same SLO in the same way. I think asking an instructor to assess a certain outcome in a preordained way would interfere with a teacher’s academic freedom as we are currently defining it (“unanimity is anathema to academic freedom and intellectual life”).

 

What would happen if we as an institution, after careful, widespread, and documented “dialog”, decided that one or more of the standards directly conflict with our mission statement or Academic Freedom policy. Consider this one, the third in a list defining the outcome for a general education program (page 28 of the Guide):

 

“A recognition of what it means to be an ethical human being and effective citizen: qualities include an appreciation of ethical principles; civility and interpersonal skills; respect for cultural diversity; historical and aesthetic sensitivity; and the willingness to assume civic, political, and social responsibilities locally, nationally, and globally.”

 

That’s downright scary. General education didn’t “work” on me! I am certainly not ready to seek, much less accept, a unanimous and recognized definition of “what it means to be an ethical human being and effective citizen”. It directly opposes the notion of intellectual pluralism.