Discussion

A novel approach for the collection, aggregation, analysis, and reporting of General Education assessment data has been developed. Computationally reproducible reports can easily be generated and distributed to improve the program over time. A meta-analysis of data collected from a 200-level Biology course was used as a proof-of-concept.

Over a span of 13 semesters, 46.2% of courses had mean scores considered to be proficient. Of all students in all semesters, 59.9% met or exceeded the competence threshold. From these data it is inferred that the students meet (just barely) the threshold of competence.

Faculty feedback

This report was distributed to members of the General Education Committee, Academic Senate, and the Department of Biological Sciences. These individuals were asked to provide their comments, suggestions, and concerns about this report and the processes involved in its creation. A simple SurveyMonkey instrument was developed to gather some feedback. The instrument consisted of the following six questions. The first five questions were five-level Likert scale items (Strongly dislike, Somewhat dislike, Neutral, Somewhat like, and Strongly Like). The format of the final item was free response (short answer).

  • Q01 - What is your opinion of the format of the General Education assessment report?
  • Q02 - What is your opinion of the content of the General Education assessment report?
  • Q03 - What is your opinion of the data provenance plan for General Education?
  • Q04 - What is your opinion of the use of meta-analysis in the General Education assessment report?
  • Q05 - What is your opinion of the plan to publicly share assessment data, analyses, and reports?
  • Q06 - What suggestions do you have to improve the General Education Report?

A total of 12 responses were obtained from the faculty. The results for the first five questions are summarized in Figure 5.

Results of the faculty survey (n=12)

Figure 5: Results of the faculty survey (n=12)

Plan of action

After analyzing the data and considering the comments provided in the faculty feedback, the relevant General Education sub-committee members will make one or more recommendations for future work. Some of the possible actions could include:

  • No modifications – continue to gather data
  • Convene a training session to get better inter-course reliability
  • Suggest modifications to the types of assignments that are used
  • Suggest modifications to which data workbooks are used
  • Suggest that instructors consider modifying the scope or sequence of instruction
  • Modify the learning outcomes themselves
  • Modify the competency as a whole

Acknowledgments

This report was built using Rmarkdown and the bookdown R package. The valuable contributions made by the members of the General Education Committee, Academic Senate, and Department of Biological Sciences are also greatly appreciated.