Minutes of the Meeting of the Assessment Committee
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Academic Affairs Conference Room (2147), Founder’s Hall 3:30 p.m.
Present: Jeanne Butler, Greg Anderson, Karin Covalt, Kim Elliott, Jessy Hansen, Mary Kommers, George Lawson, Tami Moore, Sarah von Schrader and Gloria Vavricka
Absent: Paul Bishop, Ron Crocker, and Scott Unruh
The meeting was called to order by Director of Assessment, Jeanne Butler, at the above time and place.
Old Business:
None
New Business:
- Assessment Website:
The plan of the Office of Assessment is to make the Assessment website more user friendly. Kim Elliott, Coordinator of Academic Publications, presented the website to the committee, showing the links that she has activated and explaining what will be done in the future. From the initial page of the website, links are set out in the upper left box to easily access
| NCA 2008 |
Dept/Prog Materials |
| Assessment at UNK |
University-Wide Data |
| Resources |
Office of Assessment |
The “NCA 2008” sets out the areas on which NCA will focus during their site visit in April 2008. Annual reports can be easily found in the “Dept/Prog Materials”, etc. Elliott asked committee members to consider what they use on the website, how easily accessible areas are, and any suggestions for improvement. She asked them to e-mail the information to her.
Some suggestions discussed included
- Moving department and program assessment reports to the “Office of Assessment” area
- Defining acronyms, i.e., “FAH”, “COE”, etc.
- Adding “faculty funding” to website
- Date of April 2008 visit should be on website
- A link to the newsletter might be good
- Contact person at the bottom of the page
- NCA Page – could be done with narrative with links, or with a menu bar.
- “The self-study for each area should be the first thing in that section, i.e., distance learning, General Studies, WI, and CD
- Putting hyperlinks in blue
- Initial CD Survey Results:
The CD survey was sent out electronically earlier this year, and Assessment Coordinator von Schrader shared a handout of the results. Basically the results indicate that the best predictors of high scores on the scales of CD knowledge, attitudes, and interactions are completion of CD requirement, age/year in college, and size and cultural mix of students’ hometowns.
- Talking points document for the NCA visit:
The Committee members discussed whether or not a “talking points” document would be helpful for faculty to review prior the NCA focused visit. Members were asked to forward to Director Butler ideas for questions and topics to be considered for inclusion in such a document.
North Central will be seeking information on what UNK departments and programs are doing with assessment, how are we using assessment; and general feelings about assessment. Some faculty seem comfortable with assessment and understand how it can be useful. Others may understand accreditation requirements, but haven’t really considered the relationship with assessment outside accreditation requirements.
There being no further business to come before the Committee, meeting adjourned at 4:20 p.m. The next meeting of the Committee will be announced at a later date.