Academic Year 2007-2008 Plan / Phase II of QEP

Proposed agenda

•  Add the continental and international campuses, distance learning, and Ft. Hood / Service Area to QEP participation.

•  Add new academic initiatives regarding college study skills and writing performance and expand use of instructional feedback to all campuses.

•  Continue the departmental development of common course exam question sets.

•  Define and develop appropriate professional development for implementing QEP academic enhancements.

•  Continue Student Support Services service excellence initiative, developing new departmental goals as needed and including global sites.

•  Roll out Phase II plan and topics using electronic media-based Open House / Forum.

The new 2007-2008 initiative aims to improve students' study skills and hone professional-level writing skills. Desired outcomes are to increase student success in courses, increase enrollments into the next course in a sequence, and show growth in the proportion of students persisting toward completion of certificates and degrees.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1 - mainstreaming the QEP

In keeping with our goal to embrace quality enhancements as part of our culture, I recommend mainstreaming QEP processes into academic operations at the dean and department chair level, to facilitate discipline-oriented quality enhancements throughout CTC's various campuses.

Rationale: Responsibility for academic quality rests with deans and with department chairs in the disciplines. Course content, teaching styles and assessment consistency are best addressed when planning courses and resources, and reflected in syllabi, course materials and faculty professional development.

Recommendation 2 - enhancing study skills, writing across the curriculum, instructional feedback

Two processes are being considered to address the selected college-wide initiatives of writing practice, feedback, and reinforcement of learning.

•  A group of CTC faculty, led by Professor Dawn Green, president of the faculty senate, is interested in developing a new required first-year course to prepare students for college work. This is based on QEP goals and would include the director of Learning Outcomes Assessment in the planning group.

•  An integrated approach is also proposed to engage writing across the curriculum, use of interpretation and summary as study skills, and instructor feedback, all within classes having broad participation throughout the CTC system. The "Minute Paper" intervention was used successfully in at least one department in phase 1 and seems useful for our purpose.

The Minute Paper . . . really does take about a minute and, while usually used at the end of class, it can be used at the end of any topic. Its major advantage is that it provides rapid feedback on whether the professor's main idea, and what the students perceived as the main idea, are the same. Additionally, by asking students to add a question, this assessment becomes an integrative task. . . . Professors can read about four Minute Papers per minute. (T.A. Angelo and K. P. Cross, 1993. Classroom Assessment Techniques , 2nd ed. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass., p.148-53.) http://www.siue.edu/%7Ededer/assess/cats/minpap4.html

Important for our purposes is that the Minute Paper provides writing practice in the discipline that is not onerous, it reinforces the student's learning in an ongoing way, and it enables the professor to adapt instruction. Instructors could also ask students to hand in a minute paper regarding reading assignments or project work at the beginning of class meetings, to promote students coming to class prepared. This would be especially important in courses where you want students to practice reading in the field - like History.

I would expect outcomes of this intervention to be that with practice students would write better, that by summarizing promptly for each class session they would retain more and more effectively organize what they've learned, and that the instructor would receive valuable timely feedback to guide subsequent lessons.

Assessment: Departments would sample each class's early and end papers for analysis of writing development. Their exam scores, course grades, proportion of students succeeding in the course, and students' subsequent academic progress would indicate whether this intervention improved student learning in the course. Intuitively it seems right on target.

Recommendation 3 - Common Course Exam Question Sets

To ensure measuring learning outcomes throughout the CTC system, departments should continue developing common course exam question sets, implement their use, and collect the results for systematic analysis. We would pilot this in 2-3 departments this year, and those faculty would be resources for including other departments next year.

Recommendation 4 - Faculty Professional Development (FAST)

Revive the faculty professional development initiative - Faculty Academy for Superior Teaching - to continue to improve teaching and assessment skills, particularly targeting newer faculty. This might include a mentoring program to link full-time faculty with adjuncts, or at the sites, experienced with newer faculty.

Recommendation 5 - Service Excellence

Facilitate the administrative / student services units of the campuses and sites in surveying their students regarding quality of service / problems encountered in taking classes. Track changes made to address improved service to students. Include sites in Service Excellence Conference and other selected training using electronic media and site-specific meetings.

Recommendation 6 - QEP Forum

To be delivered electronically, with segments gathered from different initiatives, using  a feature / news-magazine format with contributing authors and discussion threads. It would be episodic rather than one time-specific event.