Campus Wide Assessment Project Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning Assessment Team: David Nelson – Faculty Lead, Math Division Janet Ash, Technology Division Brenda Bindschatel, Business Division Keith Clay, Science Division Sandy Johanson, Humanities Division

Goals of the Project 1.Peer review of the Learning Outcome Tracking System (LOTS) database  Do CARs support QSR claims? 2.Campus-wide assessment of the QSR outcome  Do students learn the claimed outcomes?

Peer Review of LOTS  Review CARS of all courses claiming Level 3 (instruction and assessment) for any of the QSR competencies  Science Division passed with flying colors (thank you, Michael)  No issues unless accreditors want language like “the instructor will teach and assess the following…”

Campus Wide Assessment  Determine an appropriate assessment  Implement assessment with the aid of instructors  Analyze the data  Report to the community

 Positive shift towards mastering  Approximately 67.6% achieve competent or mastering on the post assessment

Recommendations  Relatively few courses claim Competency 3 and Competency 6. Should we offer more? Do we expect mastering of all competencies?  Revise Competency 2, or use better assessment methods. Two different skills are listed.  Improve success rate of Competency 1  Increase communication between full-time, adjunct, day, evening and online instructors  Look at math prerequisites for courses with a minority of students reaching the competent or mastering level.

Unusual Classes Math 97, B A 220 and BIO 100 show improvement, but not nearly as much as other courses. MATH 97, B A QSR Competency 1 BIO QSR Competency 4

Question for Science Div: (no answer is needed today) What do we do about schisms between: 1.What we teach and test 2.What we claim on the CAR 3.The prerequisites for the class Examples: IDS 101 and 102, Astro 101, & Bio 100

IDS 101 and 102  There is a math prerequisite  The course deals with lots of QSR stuff  We don’t claim it has QSR outcomes  This could be a problem when assessing degrees for QSR skills.

Astro 101  QSR skills taught and assessed  No QSR outcome claimed  No math prerequisite  The instructor has considered adding a math prerequisite. Would that change the nature of the course? Should we claim a QSR outcome?

Bio 100  QSR skills are taught and assessed.  QSR skills are claimed on the CAR.  There is no math prerequisite.  Are the QSR skills unimportant? Are the skills beyond many of the students? Should more time be spent teaching them or a math prereq added?

The future  The QSR committee only reports to the faculty.  The college must take QSR findings into account. No specific action is required.  Findings specific to this division were few.  Larger issues face the whole campus  Improve success rate of competency 1  Figure out competency 2  Decide how many competencies are needed

Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning 1.Evaluate and interpret quantitative and symbolic reasoning information/data 2.Recognize which quantitative or symbolic reasoning methods are appropriate for solving a given problem, and correctly implement those methods 3.Demonstrate the ability to estimate a solution to a presented problem 4.Translate data into various formats such as symbolic language, equations, graphs and formulas 5.Implement calculator/computer technology to solve problems 6.Demonstrate logical reasoning skills through formal and informal proofs.