MAC Meeting Minutes April 2004

Missouri Assessment Consortium
Meeting notes - April 15, 2004

The meeting was held at University Hall on the UM Columbia campus. Delores Honey hosted. Kandis Smith served as site host. Dave Oehler served as historian. Attendees/participants: Nancy Asher, Pat Gillman, Martha Kirker, Steve LaNasa, Ron Pennington, Delores Honey, John Spencer, Joe Lange, Michael Cunningham, Steven Beal, Charles Van Middlesworth, Kandis Smith, Robert Stein, Mike Grelle, Dave Oehler.

10:00 Welcome, agenda preview

10:05 Evaluation of Assessment Instruments (Mike Grelle, Chris Frazier)

Mike distributed an explanation of MAC's review of commercial general education instruments for posting on the MAC website. This is a cover letter for the matrices that we created. The matrices will follow in a single file.

Additional instruments may still be assessed and included in this project. COMPASS has been evaluated by one institution.

10:15 Links to local general education information (Delores Honey, Dave Oehler)

Materials were compiled and will appear on the website soon. Additional URLs were collected at the meeting for updating this directory.

10:23 Joint meeting with CAOs (Mike Grelle, Dave Oehler, Charles Van Middlesworth)

The agenda item we would like to see presented is for regional cooperative meetings to see how assessments are done on the campuses and to share best practices. There was some discussion of the format and success of Central's assessment sharing sessions that were held in conjunction with their recent accreditation visit.

Robert suggested that we might want to become involved in the DHE review of the five-year program review process, which is currently underway. The State Auditor's office has some interest in the impact of the program review process. The DHE goal is to redesign the substance and approach for conducting these reviews. MAC might become involved in policy development and how these processes actually drive change and improvement on campuses. MAC members should look at how campus assessment systems can be folded into the program review process. We agreed on the need to align program review with new accreditation systems (AQIP, PEAQ) as well as campus assessment systems.

There will be a workshop on May 18 for four-year CAOs and/or their designates to share best practices and to begin to design a new approach to statewide requirements associated with campus-based academic program review. Dr. William Massy will serve as facilitator. Robert would like to receive from MAC a memo stipulating those things that we feel are important to be included in the discussion. A mailing to those who will be in attendance May 18 will be going out around May 7 or 8. Robert would like to receive something from us by the 7th for inclusion in that mailing.

Key items are:

• Internal institutional review, assessment, institutional accreditation (HLC), program review process all need to be integrated. Additional integration of program level accreditation is also desirable.
• Mike will write up a general list of kinds of information that should be requested from departments.
• Should peer input be required? What constitutes peers? Robert will send us information on the state auditor's comments about program review. We'll look at sections of the white paper to include in our document.

Comments are due to Dave Oehler oehler@mail.nwmissouri.edu by April 30. Dave, Delores, and Mike will draft a memo to send back out to MAC.

11:27 Data sharing project (Ron Pennington)

The service is up and running. There is a link on the MAC portion of the DHE website on the processes/procedures for participating in this service. There is a one-time sign-up, and data are available each March. Data are historical beginning 1996. Additional data are added on each year.

11:42 Embedding assessment (Charles, Mike, Dave)

There is a lot of interest in doing embedded assessment, but not standard methodologies. Eventually we would like to create some guidelines or standards that could be posted with the MAC handbook. The project needs to collect methodologies and then, through collaboration, create some best practices materials as well as general guidelines and standards.

11:50 MAC activity and impact on accreditation ()

Charles encouraged us to look at the HLC models. These are well aligned with assessment processes. By 2005 the expectation is that all assessment models will be fully implemented. Charles will head up developing a position paper.

11:57 High school data requests for the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) ()

The DHE provides a report to DESE on a variety of high school follow-up data. Additional data requests from high schools to specific institutions should be handled on individual bases.

Robert informed us that there is emerging concern about remedial instruction in higher education. This is something we will probably need to address in the future. This will be a future agenda item. We need to identify the issues related to this, and the status of current practice.

12:12 DHE website (Robert Stein, Kandis Smith)

DHE wants to put up a table of links to institutional course equivalency tables. Please provide a link that goes directly to a course equivalency table or to an 'under construction' page.

12:22 Value added (CLA) Project & MAC's involvement (Joe, Robert)

Joe raised some very good questions about the scope and intent of this project. Robert responded with a description of the various approaches and intentions of institutions around the state.

A negotiating team is being formed to work on cost and other key issues that were raised at a meeting earlier this month. MAC will attempt to review this instrument/process as we have other nationally marketed assessments.

Delores has George Kuh's most recent research on NSSE and the CLA project. She will post a copy on the listserv.

Michael Cunningham asked for feedback and input on others' use of pre-post tests and the degree to which these can be used to demonstrate value-added.

Next meeting date: May 27, hopefully at the CBHE.

Next meeting host: Steve LaNasa will host. Dave Oehler will serve as historian.

Agenda for next meeting:

1. MAC Activity and Impact on Accreditation - PEAQ accreditation criteria
2. Evaluation of Assessment Instruments (MG, CF)
3. Links to local general education information (DO, DH)
4. Joint meeting with CAOs (MG, DO, CVM)
5. Data Sharing Project (RP)
6. Embedded assessment - design of a mechanism (MG, DO, CVM)
7. Remedial instruction/placement in the transition from K-12 to higher education (CVM)
8. DHE website
9. Value added (CLA) Project & MAC involvement (JL RS)
10. Announcements