1. Assessment Data from the First Year of… J. Corey Butler, Co-Chair of the LEC SMSU Professional Development Day August 17th, 2011

2.  Small, discussion-oriented course  Taught by faculty across the university  IDST, but housed within the Liberal Education Committee (formerly LACOB)  Themes of interest to both faculty and students  Explicit library skills component  Common text: Weston, 4 th Ed.

3.  World War I  Good King, Bad King  Issues in Law, Politics and Business  Blues and Jazz  Meaning of Life  So You Want to Help People  Freedom Fries

4.  Development of critical thinking skills  An introduction to the community of Southwest Minnesota State University  Progress in written and oral communication skills

5.  Common Course Evaluations  Critical thinking Assessment Test (CAT)  Institutional Retention Data  Faculty Involvement Statistics

6.  16-item Scantron survey  Questions focused on the course, not the instructor  16 of 26 FYS sections participated in the evaluation process  Total sample of 351 students (59% of students taking FYS)

7. Over 2/3 of the students had favorable impressions about…  Improvement in critical thinking  Understanding of academic honesty  Interest in their section’s theme  Active learning in class  Positive contribution to their education

8. Students had less favorable impressions on some of the items…  Library usage  Improvement in writing skills  Understanding of the Liberal Education Program

9.  Not all sections participated  Self-report data  Limited response range on the Scantron

10.  Critical thinking Assessment Test (CAT)  Standardized test from Tennessee Tech  15 “essay” questions  Measures 12 critical thinking skills chosen to reflect a consensus among faculty  Scored by our faculty

11.  Administered in 4 of 12 sections in Spring, 2011  Administered during regular class hours  Pretest during the first week of class  Posttest during the final week of class  One of the 4 sections omitted from analysis due to high dropout

12.  Pretest/posttest design  No control group  Previous research shows minimal practice effects

13.  50 students took both tests  36 students (pairs of tests) randomly selected for scoring  One student omitted due to incomplete test  Blind scoring

14.  A perfect score is 38  Pretest average = 15.42 (SD = 4.85)  Posttest average = 16.24 (SD = 5.35)  t(34) = 1.03, p =.313  NOT statistically significant

15.  One of the three sections tested did show a significant improvement  13.88 (SD = 5.04) vs. 17.09 (SD = 4.74), t(10) = 2.37, p =.039  Our students outperformed the Tenn Tech norm of 13.66 for comparable schools, p <.01

16.  Small sample  Inexperienced scorers  Low student motivation  Wrong kind of critical thinking?

17.  Part of Goal 2, integration into the SMSU community  Also a focus of the Retention Planning Team  Doug Sweetland’s objective of 80%

19.  68.0% of 2009 Freshman returned in 2010  69.9% of 2010 Freshmen returned in 2011  73.4% of 2010 Freshmen that enrolled in FYS returned in 2011  46.2% of 2010 Freshmen that did NOT take FYS returned in 2011 (n = 65) Data from August 3 rd, 2011

20.  FYS students are retained at higher levels than the 10-year average  BUT… these are correlational data  Students who missed FYS may have been less prepared for college

21.  15% of SMSU faculty have participated in FYS  Class size should be limited to 20  Class size is often 25 to 28, after transfer students are added

22.  Generally positive course evaluations  Little impact on critical thinking or retention  Staffing challenges  Where do we go from here?