Spring 2013 Course SLO Review

OCAN 1L - Oceanography Lab - Stage 5 - Katryn Wiese

Assessment

Assessment Methods	Analysis of exam, quiz, or homework items linked to specific SLOs Student satisfaction surveys
Assessment Description	4 exams happen each semester covering a variety of content. These exams are maintained in department files and reviewed for results that correspond to a particular SLO. The final exam also includes a student satisfaction survey.
Learning Outcomes	ALL
Number of Sections	2
Number of Instructors	2
Number of Students	29

Data Analysis

Data Shared With	Instructors of the same course (at CCSF) Faculty and staff within our department
Data Sharing Methods	Face-to-face meetings Email Shared document files
Data Summary	Assessment for Fall 2012 asked students to self-report comfort level in various areas (5=Excellent \| 1 =None): Average results for two sections (day, night): Q1: Comfort with using a hydrometer to measure seawater salinity: 4, 4.1 Q2: Comfort with using refractometer to measure seawater salinity: 4.1, 4.5 Q3: Comfort recognizing mid-ocean ridges on seafloor maps: 4.5, 3.8 Q4: Comfort recognizing trenches on seafloor maps: 4.4, 3.6 Q5: Comfort using latitude and longitude to locate global position: 3.8, 4.3 Q6: Comfort identifying and classifying marine organisms: 4.5, 3.8 Q7: Comfort observing and recognizing interactions of marine organisms in a variety of ecosystems: 4, 3.8
Analysis Summary	Overall average confirms that content coverage is sufficient -- all SLOs are covered. The averages are low in some areas due to a few very low comfort scores (students who were absent for different labs). Overall the faculty felt this type of self-reported comfort testing was not valuable enough to do it again.
Next Steps Planned	We will revise Exam 3 to include a new question in the hydrometer section that asks about whether or not the graph just used can also be used to correctly calculate salinity of distilled water + dissolved table salt? Why or why not? In this way we hope to get out of a measuring misunderstanding that appears rampant in the lab classes, where students blindly believe what registers on an instrument without understanding the basis of the internal calibrations (which might make the instrument's results useless). We will focus all remaining SLO assessment on the existing exam records gathered each semester. We will identify groups of questions related to each SLO and review a different group each semester for a different SLO (reviewing data from the previous semester).
Learning Outcomes	ALL

Changes

Details	Google Earth and internet access were embedded into weekly labs to take advantage of new Computer Lab.
Learning Outcomes	ALL

Tentative Future Plans

Term	Fall 2013
Activities	Assessment (measurement) of outcomes Analysis and discussion of assessment data and next steps
More Details	Will be working to more fully implement and assess value of in-class internet access for data, satellite images, and Google Earth.

SLO Details Storage Location

HARD COPY - In my personal filing system (my office)
ELECTRONIC COPY - In my electronic filing system (hard drive or web server)

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