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SENATE AGENDA ITEM III.D.1.
2 September 2008
August 24, 2008
TO: FACULTY SENATE
FROM: COUNCIL ON GENERAL EDUCATION
Submitted in behalf of the Council by Phyllis Farley Rippey, Chair
RE: ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE 2007-2008 ACADEMIC YEAR
Membership on the Council for the past academic year included: Martha Barclay, Steven Bennett, Safoura Boukari, Amy Carr, David Casagrande, Jongnam Choi, David Haugen, Kathleen ODonnell-Brown, Tessa Pfafman, Phyllis Farley Rippey (Chair), William Thompson, and Dean Zoerink.
Ex officio members included: Judith Dallinger, Candace McLaughlin, and James Schmidt
Council Approvals for the year:
Approved change in title and description of BOT 200 from BIOL 102 and ZOOL 200 from BIOL 103.
Approved the request from the Department of History that its teacher education majors be exempted from the Fine Arts component of the Universitys new General Education Requirement.
Approved the request from the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction, Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Special Education that its majors be exempted from the limit of 3 semester hours of general education humanities courses in the fine arts.
Initiatives Undertaken:
The Council has set up its own website to be a resource for general education faculty in their teaching as well as the site for forms and information necessary to petition the Council. That website can be found at: HYPERLINK "http://www.wiu.edu/gened/" \t "_blank" www.wiu.edu/gened.
The Council has arranged with the Tele-STARS system to send an email to all faculty shortly before the beginning of each semester to remind them of the guidelines regarding writing assignments in general education courses approved by the Faculty Senate.
The Council has composed a brochure for new faculty that provides basic information about general education at Western. The brochure is to be printed by the provosts office and should be available for distribution fall 2008.
Assessment of General Education
Together with the Office of the Provost, the Council elicited assessment plans for all general education courses to be offered in the fall of 2008, reviewed the submitted plans, and approved them with or without requested revisions for all but six departments. Four of the remaining six departments have submitted their plans which will be reviewed by the Council at its first meeting of this academic year. Two departments have yet to submit their plans and the Council will work with those departments to develop them.
All general education departments will implement their assessment plans in their gen ed courses this fall and will report their results to the Council by the end of February of next year. The Council will review the results and respond to the Faculty Senate regarding them by the end of the Spring 2009 semester.
Writing in General Education
Although the Council did not oppose the recommendation of the General Education Review Committee that the W requirement be removed from the gen ed curriculum, the Council is, nevertheless, concerned that this removal not undermine our commitment to writing as both a pedagogic tool and a fundamental academic and life skill. Consequently, the Council has focused considerable energy on determining the nature and degree of writing assigned within the general education curriculum and to developing an effective strategy for foster writing in general education courses.
Our first step toward that end was to survey the gen ed faculty regarding their inclusion of writing assignments in their gen ed courses. A subcommittee of the Council consisting of Amy Carr, Jongnam Choi, and Kathleen ODonnell-Brown led this initiative, developing the survey instrument and conducting the survey as well as analyzing the results. The subcommittee report is included below as Appendix A. This report was submitted to the Council for its review and action at its first Fall 2008 meeting.
Agenda for 2008-2009
Assessment in General Education: The Council will receive and review assessment results for all general education courses taught in the fall semester, reporting to the Senate on same by the end of the spring semester.
Writing in General Education: The Council will review the Subcommittee Report on Writing in General Education and develop an effective strategy for fostering writing in general education. The Council expects to make recommendations in this regard to the Faculty Senate by the end of the Spring 2009 semester.
With the approval of the revised general education curriculum, the freeze on submitting new courses for inclusion has been lifted and the Council will resume its role of reviewing requests for inclusion of courses in general education.
The Council will continue its initiative to raise greater awareness of the philosophy and goals of general education among faculty and students.
APPENDIX A
Council of General Education
Subcommittee Report on Gen Ed Writing Survey (Spring 2008)
Jongnam Choi, Amy Carr, Kathleen ODonnell-Brown
1. Overall response rate
Of 241 Gen Ed faculty surveyed in spring 2008 at ϲʷ¼ (excluding English 180 and 280), 111 faculty responded, for an overall response rate of 46%. Some faculty taught more than one course; a total of 214 courses were analyzed [see Statistics Report #2]. Of these courses, 48 (22.4%) were First Year Experience (FYE) sections.
Courses with no respondents at all were AAS 100, 282; BIOL/ZOOL 200; CHEM 101, 150; ENG 195, 202, 301; FR 122; GERM 122, 224; SPAN 121, 122, 223; GEOL 112; HE 325; HIST 145, 314; KIN 102, 121, 128 (these are all skills courses, but KIN did submit for other skills courses); MATH 101, 106, 123, 133, 134, 138, 139, 206; MUS 196; PHIL 120; POLS 101, 200, 228, 267, and 329. This list does not include sections of courses in which faculty members teaching another section of the same course did respond.
On the basis of this survey alone, it is impossible to provide an accurate picture of the degree of writing being done in Gen Ed courses overall. Did 54% of faculty members surveyed fail to respond because it was near the end of the semester; because they were tired of innumerable surveys; or because they do not assign writing, and do not want this fact exposed (even indirectly) to their peers? It is hard to know. A survey is unlikely to garner an adequate enough response rate to write an accurate report on Gen Ed writing. CGE should pursue alternative forms of data collection in subsequent years.
Some of the survey results are nevertheless informative. We will here note the most striking results, then some of the broader results; additional results can be seen by looking at the Statistics Report.
Note: some faculty answered only some questions. In CGEs analysis of the data, no response to a question is factored as an answer of none or no.
2. Opportunities for revision (with written or oral feedback)
With the abandonment of the W requirement, a new minimal expectation of writing in all Gen Ed classes was established:
For courses with an enrollment of 50 or fewer, students will have at least one written assignment with written or oral feedback from the instructor with an opportunity for revision.
For courses with an enrollment of over 50, students will, as a minimum, write short informal essays or responses to the course material that does not require feedback from the instructor. Please see the CGE working document Writing to Learn in General Education Courses for information on this technique.
Of the 214 courses with survey responses, only 46.7% provided an opportunity for revision, after written and oral feedback from the instructor. This suggests faculty members are unaware of the new writing expectations.
Some faculty volunteered the information that well under half of their students utilize an opportunity for revision.
3. Papers with citations
Of the 214 courses with survey responses, fewer than half (43.4%) assign one or more papers with citations.
More strikingly, of the 48 FYE courses with survey responses, only 62.4% assign papers with citations. Given the small class size (under 20) of these courses, and the opportunity for greater one-on-one time with students and for time to grade assignments that in vaster numbers are more difficult to grade with feedback, it is puzzling that there is not a greater emphasis in FYE courses on writing college essays that engage and properly cite outside sources (even if those sources are only assigned course texts).
4. Informal and Other categories
Of all courses with survey responses, 75.3% assigned informal writings assignments, while 36% assigned other kinds of writing assignments. An analysis of the descriptions of actual assignments reveals that some faculty listed an assignment under the category of informal, while other faculty listed the same assignment under the category of other. Such assignments include lab reports, brief in-class essays, short reaction papers, written reflections on daily readings, and FYE event reflection papers. It seems redundant to use both categories (informal and other); one should be used instead.
5. Essay exams
Of all courses with survey responses, 55.6% assign essay exams. However, some faculty members assign exams consisting entirely of essay questions, while others add one or more essay exam questions onto a largely multiple choice exam. The actual amount or intensity of essay exam writing is hard to measure from the above statistic alone.
6. Fine Arts degree of writing?
It seemed that some of the Fine Arts courses included 80 or more students. If the number of required Humanities Gen Ed courses is now capped at two, and if Fine Arts courses tend to be large, how much less writing is expected of students in Gen Ed, given the new Fine Arts requirement?
7. Overall degree and kind of writing in Gen Ed courses?
Even among survey respondents, it is difficult to tell what percentage of respondents assign no writing whatsoever. Among survey respondents, at least 75% assign informal writing, a little over half assign essays on exams, and less than half assign papers with citations. The range of assignments categorized as informal or other make it difficult to identify how much of what sort of writing is going on in Gen Ed coursesthough the subcommittee could be asked to go through and count each type of written description under these categories (where they appear at all). Broadly put, we might hazard to say that the survey results suggest that well over half of faculty emphasize the value of writing to learn, while about half value learning to write in more formal ways in Gen Ed courses.
Suggestions for future Gen Ed writing reports
1) Find out whether the minimal writing requirements for classes with enrollment over 50 is being met.
2) Find out whether classes (esp. FYE) utilize library services or have library training.
3) Eliminate the category informal and just use the category other information obtained was redundant in these categories, taken together.
4) Hone other categories: papers with citations/papers without citations.
5) Collect data on writing in Gen Ed every two or three years, to make the process less burdensome for individual faculty members and for CGE.
6) Do not seek responses from faculty members teaching courses in Category 6 when those courses focus on kinesthetic learning (no significant writing is expected in those courses).
7) Find out what percentage of Gen Ed courses assign no writing. This information was hard to glean from the survey, which focused instead on particular kinds of writing assignments.
Broader suggestions
1) Better educate Gen Ed faculty about the expectations regarding opportunities for revision based on written and oral feedback.
2) Consider proposing a more rigorous writing expectation, at least with regard to revisions. Should revisions (after written/oral feedback) be REQUIRED in classes under 50? What is the significance of the opportunity if few students utilize it?
3) If there is genuine resistance to offering written/oral feedback and revision opportunities, find out whyand what alternative to propose that will encourage an institutional focus on writing.
4) Consider strongly encouraging more formal paper writing in FYE courses (at least in humanities and social science courses). Learning to use citations, incorporate quotes, and engage others ideas in properly acknowledged ways should not be limited to Eng 180 and 280 and WID courses, but expected consistently across the curriculum. FYE instructors in particular have time to grade and respond to at least some such papers.
5) How many students enroll in classes over 50 in the Humanities, Fine Arts, and Social Sciences categories? Students enrolled in larger classes are likely to do far less writing. Should all courses in these areas be capped at 50? Or should students be permitted to take no more than one Social Sciences course with larger than 50 enrollmentand no 50+ Humanities/Fines Arts courses?
6) What sorts of writing should be expected and/or encouraged in Gen Ed courses (especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences)? An Association of American Colleges and Universities survey of employers found that 57% see gaps in global knowledge, self-direction, writing and critical-thinking skills, and that they prefer assessments that require students to demonstrate depth of knowledge, and problem-solving, writing and analytic reasoning abilities. They also endorse . . . essay tests that measure students problem-solving, writing and critical-thinking skills and electronic portfolios of students work and faculty assessments of them, as well as faculty evaluations of comprehensive senior projects.
113 faculty replied to the survey, but two did not answer any questions about writing; others answered only partially, and that partiality is factored into the statistics on specific questions.
AACU, How Should Colleges Assess and Improve Student Learning? Employers Views on the Accountability Challenge, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, reported in AFT on Campus (March/April 2008), 15; the survey itself can be found at HYPERLINK "http://www.aacu.org/advocacy/leap/documents/2008_Business_Leader_Poll.pdf" www.aacu.org/advocacy/leap/documents/2008_Business_Leader_Poll.pdf .
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