MAC Meeting Minutes June 2005
Missouri Assessment Consortium
Meeting notes -- June 15, 2005
The meeting was held at the CBHE Annex in Jefferson City. Charles Van Middlesworth hosted. Dave Oehler served as historian. Attendees/participants: Mike Grelle, Dave Oehler, Ron Pennington, Delores Honey, Mardy Eimers, Kandis Smith, Kathy Marloct, Natalie Alleman, Steve LaNasa, Rick Mihalevich, Sandy Crews, Tu Men, Janet Juhlin, Beth Nolte, Paula Glover, Sue Pieper, Sally Borgerson, Joe Lange, Charles Van Middlesworth, Diana Parker.
10:00 Welcome, agenda preview
10:10 Value added (CLA) Project and MAC involvement
32 institutions participated in the project with 27 institutions administering the CLA in the spring. The report will be available in mid-July; the target date is the 18th.
The advertised cost nationally is $6,300 for 100 entering and 100 exiting students. CAE will discount this for Missouri; there is about $40,000 left in the Kaufman account. After other grants are examined and the number of institutions who intend to participate is more finalized, the actual cost per institution will be calculated.
Fall testing dates are scheduled to begin August 29. Several institutions need the window to open sooner; Sandy will pass that information on to CAE. As far as we know, next year will use the shorter time frame (like last spring) rather than the 3 hour time frame (like last fall).
Sandy asked for feedback about the benefits of using the CLA for institutional needs.
The DHE will receive some state level feedback from CAE (by sector only), which might be useable for communicating with the legislature.
10:45 Discussion: Participating institutions provide a short description of tools (test) and processes used on our campuses to answer the value added question.
Northwest compares individual student ACT composite percentiles and Academic Profile overall percentiles to examine change in student standing among peers. Based on last year's data, gains from freshmen to junior are larger than expected.
Linn State uses COMPASS, ASSET, and ACT and then use CAAP as an exit exam. ACT has a linkage report for analysis.
Jefferson computes expected performance based on entrance indicators. Exit results are then compared to expectations.
Missouri Southern gives the Academic Profile to freshmen and to seniors on assessment days. Gain scores for students who have taken both are computed.
Metropolitan Community Colleges assess clusters of outcomes within courses. Analysis at the student level is based on the percentage of their program that has been completed. Self-assessment surveys are also used, and performance results are analyzed against those data.
Central does not analyze their data in terms of value-added. They are focused on student attainment of required competencies, particularly as related to major expectations. Some programs do comprehensive assessment at program entry and program exit; external professionals come in to do the evaluation.
St. Charles Community College uses the CCSSE to examine student engagement. Those are analyzed against GPA, completion, transfer to see which engagement factors correlate to particular outcomes. Results will be used to prioritize innovative strategies to positively influence outcome measures. ACT will be used to remove incoming ability to strengthen the analysis.
UMKC uses percentile scores and subscores on Academic Profile and major field exams compared against NSSE self-assessment questions. There are some substantial correlations between perceived gains and actual performance scores.
Truman is examining past practice and looking for better ways to assess value added. For a long time, Truman has used nationally-normed tests, usually the CAAP and Academic Profile. Recently, the freshman pre-test has been discontinued. They have implemented a senior level liberal arts portfolio. They are interested in the potential of the CLA.
11:30 DHE website
Delores passed around a handout listing those institutions that have a link from the MAC Handbook to institutional assessment sites. Sandy has asked that all requests for web changes filter through one person from MAC. Kandis has graciously agreed to serve as MAC web guru for the foreseeable future.
11:40 Evaluation of Assessment Instruments
The past materials have not been posted to the DHE website. Mike will forward those materials to Kandis.
11:50 Joint meeting with CAOs
Is this something we want to try to do? The CAOs are no longer meeting regularly. Sandy will let us know when there is an impending CAO meeting so we can see if we can send a few people to talk about assessment issues.
11:50 Proposed changes to the Data Sharing Project
In the current process Wei keeps including all historical data. This is getting cumbersome, so he would like to send only incremental data from the last year. MAC concurs with the change.
11:55 Developmental Math Project
This project developed out of a grant the Paula had received. The idea is to create a database on developmental math offered across the state. A cohort of students (fall 2000) taking a gateway math course (College Algebra) has been identified and the proposal is to identify which of these students took developmental courses, and performance data subsequent to fall 2000. If this is successful, this concept may be expanded to other colleges and other subject areas.
12:00 New developments in assessment from the Higher Learning Commission meeting in Chicago
Charles reported on the changing landscape on what constitutes assessment by the Higher Learning Commission. There is more discussion of how you analyze and use assessment data, and the role of survey data. There will no longer be an ?assessment expert? on visitation teams ? there is more of an expectation that assessment is broadly understood by team members.
There is an emerging emphasis on improving student learning, using assessment as a tool. Faculty participation and their role is increasing in importance.
MAC should request a session at HLC to talk about our organization.
12:25 Announcements
The Government Accounting Office is meeting with some institutions to look at transfer issues.
Professional Development
New vocabulary word - "skynical" - skeptical and cynical.
Next meeting date: Fall, in conjunction with Mid-AIR date and location TBA (November 9-11) unless a meeting is called sooner.
Next meeting host: Beth Nolte will host the meeting.
Dave Oehler will serve as historian.
Agenda for next meeting:
- Value added (CLA) Project and MAC involvement
- DHE website (follow-up?)
- Joint meeting with CAOs
- Data Sharing project (follow-up?)
- Developmental Math project (follow-up?)
- Vocabulary builders
