Major Geology, Oceanography, Earth Sciences
Stage 4
Assessment Activities
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| Assessment Description | Mid-semester exam across all courses -- covering program SLOs related to the same department SLO -- Develop an understanding of both the spatial and temporal scales of earth processes. Assessment was a 5-question exam, same question for all courses (oceanography, geology -- environmental + physical, lectures only). 3 questions asked about scale (age of Earth, end of last Ice Age, and realistic speeds of plate motion). Question 3 asked how much timescales, rates, or speeds had been discussed in class so far. Question 5 asked how they rate their own comfort with discussing processes taking place over thousands, millions, or billions of years. This exam was administered by scantron to ALL students about 1 week around midterms. 5 minutes max. Closed notes, closed book. No penalties. |
| Learning Outcomes | D. Recognize complex problems and develop strategies for understanding and solving them (where possible with current methods). F. Evaluate the results of humans attempting to redirect or change the forces of nature; and understand the role each person plays in the politics and economics of this problem especially as relates to earth science phenomena |
| Number of Courses | 8 |
| Number of Students | 152 |
Data Analysis
| Data Shared With |
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| Data Sharing Methods |
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| Data Summary | Question 1: age of Earth -- correctly answered by almost everyone. Question 2: end of Ice Age -- correct answer was most popular answer, but barely. Every other option received a large number of answers. Question 3: rates of plate motion -- correct answer was the dominant answer by most students. Question 4: most common frequency -- every class or once a week Question 5: only a very small % are not comfortable at all. The rest were evenly distributed among very | comfortable | somewhat. |
| Data Analysis | Assessment questions were not the best ones. Midsemester was not the best time. Comfort level will only improve. Ice Age ending is not a topic usually broached until 2nd half of semester in geology classes, which explains its poor performance. As a whole though, students seem pretty good at scales and rates. |
| Next Steps Planned | Different assessments needed. See Future plans section. Also plan to purchase more iClickers for loaner use by students and formalize a policy for shared use and iClicker storage in all our classrooms. Goal - help us use iClickers more. |
| Learning Outcomes | No options chosen |
Changes
| Details | We installed a laptop computer lab based on donations. This lab allows students better access to online data sets, satellite images, and maps during lab classes and lectures. Activities that use this resources are slowly being embedded into all classes. The student-mentoring/lab aide program became entirely volunteer due to the loss of funds from the Office of Mentoring and Service Learning. This impacts our study sessions (we offered fewer of them, and often only faculty were present -- no student mentors) and lab assistants. |
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| Learning Outcomes | ALL |
Tentative Future Assessment Plans
| Assessment Term | Fall 2013 |
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| Assessment Activities | Assessment (measurement) of outcomes |
| Assessment Details | In Fall we will conduct an assessment that coordinates with ongoing ILO assessment. Outcome to assess: recognize the interdisciplinary nature of science and synthesize ideas from multiple disciplines. Aligns with critical thinking ILO #1. We will use a class assignment to coordinate assessment. The class assignment will work for course-level SLO assessment AND program-level SLO assessment. Assignment = concept sketch that will be graded and ranked into same bins as ILO assessment for comparison. MULTIPLE ideas for the concept sketch question were considered. Each course will make its own to fit its own content. May very well be a 30-minute in-class assignment. |
ILO Alignment and Assessment Plans
| I.A. Use reason and creativity... | A. Understand how scientists think and be able to think, analyze, and discuss issues with similar rigor, skepticism, and evidential support; includes understanding the dynamic nature and limits of scientific knowledge. C. Collect data, measure, analyze results, form hypotheses from data, test hypotheses especially as relates to earth science phenomena. D. Recognize complex problems and develop strategies for understanding and solving them (where possible with current methods). F. Evaluate the results of humans attempting to redirect or change the forces of nature; and understand the role each person plays in the politics and economics of this problem especially as relates to earth science phenomena. |
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| I.B. Apply diverse viewpoints... | B. Work successfully in groups. D. Recognize complex problems and develop strategies for understanding and solving them (where possible with current methods). F. Evaluate the results of humans attempting to redirect or change the forces of nature; and understand the role each person plays in the politics and economics of this problem especially as relates to earth science phenomena. G. Recognize the interdisciplinary nature of science and synthesize ideas from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology to evaluate earth science phenomena. |
| I.C. Locate, retrieve, and evaluate information... | A. Understand how scientists think and be able to think, analyze, and discuss issues with similar rigor, skepticism, and evidential support; includes understanding the dynamic nature and limits of scientific knowledge. C. Collect data, measure, analyze results, form hypotheses from data, test hypotheses especially as relates to earth science phenomena. E. Participate in field work including making observations at outcrops, understanding the difference between observations and interpretations, taking field notes they have to use; developing the “eyes of an earth scientist;” especially as relates to earth science phenomena. |
| Fall 2013 ILO Assessment Plans | Yes we plan to assess one of the above-mapped SLOs in Fall 2013. |
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)