/ Rev. 5/10/17; minor edit 9/19/17

Academic First Year Experiences/University 100: 2016-2017 Annual Program Assessment Report

Please submit report to your department chair or program coordinator, the Associate Dean of your College, and to , Director of the Office of Academic Assessment and Program Review, by September 30, 2017. You may, but are not required to, submit a separate report for each program, including graduate degree programs, which conducted assessment activities, or you may combine programs in a single report. Please identify your department/program in the file name for your report.

College: Undergraduate Studies

Department: University 100

Program: (same)

Assessment liaison: Susanna Eng-Ziskin; report submitted by Cheryl Spector

  1. Please check off whichever is applicable:

A. ____X____ Measured student work within program major/options.

B. ____X___ Analyzed results of measurement within program major/options.

C. ____X___ Applied results of analysis to program review/curriculum/review/revision major/options.

D. ______Focused exclusively on the direct assessment measurement of General Education Basic Skills outcomes

  1. Overview of Annual Assessment Project(s). On a separate sheet,provide a brief overview of this year’s assessment activities, including:
  • an explanation for why your department chose the assessment activities (measurement, analysis, application, or GE assessment) that it enacted
  • if your department implemented assessment option A, identify which program SLOs were assessed (please identify the SLOs in full), in which classes and/or contexts, what assessment instruments were used and the methodology employed, the resulting scores, and the relation between this year’s measure of student work and that of past years: (include as an appendix any and all relevant materials that you wish to include)
  • if your department implemented assessment option B, identify what conclusions were drawn from the analysis of measured results, what changes to the program were planned in response, and the relation between this year’s analyses and past and future assessment activities
  • if your department implemented option C, identify the program modifications that were adopted, and the relation between program modifications and past and future assessment activities
  • if your program implemented option D, exclusively or simultaneously with optionsA, B, and/or C, identify the basic skill(s) assessed and the precise learning outcomes assessed, the assessment instruments and methodology employed, and the resulting scores
  • in what way(s) your assessment activities may reflect the university’s commitment to diversity in all its dimensions but especially with respect to underrepresented groups
  • any other assessment-related information you wish to include, including SLO revision (especially to ensure continuing alignment between program course offerings and both program and university student learning outcomes), and/or the creation and modification of new assessment instruments
  1. Preview of planned assessment activities for 2017-18. Include a brief description as reflective of a continuous program of ongoing assessment.

University 100 Assessment Report: SLO 1 (Fall 2016 Students)

Introduction

In fall 2016, we completed our first full SLO assessment cycle by collecting data about the extent to which students met SLO 1:

SLO 1: Upon successful completion of your U100 class, you will be able to describe CSUN policies and resources central to your success as a student.

All U100 faculty members were asked to participate in the assessment by rating each student listed on their U100 rosters using the following scale:

3 points / Exceeds the SLO
2 points / Meets the SLO
1 point / Developing; does not yet meet the SLO
0 points / No response submitted or student is no longer attending

Participation

We received ratings for 867 students out of 1412 enrolled, or 61.4% of the enrolled students. These 867 students were enrolled in 38 sections (out of 59 total sections offered), and represented responses from 30 faculty (out of 45 faculty teaching the course).

The student prompt and the instructions to faculty appear below in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2.

Results

Campus policies:

# of students / Rating / % of students
363 / Exceeds the SLO / 41.9 %
302 / Meets the SLO / 34.8 %
86 / Developing; does not yet meet the SLO / 9.9 %
116 / No response submitted or student is no longer attending / 13.4 %

Campus resources:

# of students / Rating / % of students
517 / Exceeds the SLO / 59.6 %
212 / Meets the SLO / 24.4 %
25 / Developing; does not yet meet the SLO / 2.9 %
113 / No response submitted or student is no longer attending / 13.0 %

Discussion

Faculty ratings of student performance varied from class to class and from professor to professor, as was to be expected. The aggregate results are therefore more likely to provide useful conclusions.

Students evidently had a harder time describing policies than resources. That may be a result of the fact that in U100, “policies” are typically encountered as written rules, while “resources” are represented by a series of people (e.g., Sharon Aronoff for the Health Center, Jamie Johnson for the Library, and other engaging representatives for other traditional Campus Partners). It’s likely that students develop positive relationships with the partners that make their information more vivid in memory than the content of impersonal policies.

In the future we might want to explore whether there is any correlation between the “no response/no longer attending” rates and the failure rates for U100 students. The latter rates are shown in this data from the CSU Student Success Dashboard:

Course*Enrollment F11-F16D/F/W rate Students impacted

Course* Enrollment F16D/F/W rate Students impacted

*In each case, “UNIV100” includes students enrolling in the course through the EOP’s Bridge programs.

Recommendations

  1. We might want to consider how we could personalize campus policies. They’re abstract and rule-based, of course, but there are ways to make them more “relatable” (as students like to say), for instance by including them in case studies featuring realistic CSUN students.
  2. During the 2017-2018 academic year, we have the opportunity to review our assessment results and make a plan for future assessment. This opportunity dovetails well with the idea of reimagining University 100. It makes sense to do these two things together.
  3. For this particular SLO, we might consider whether our expectations are sufficiently rigorous. That is: were we asking enough of our students when we required them to “describe” these policies and resources? Compare to Bloom’s Taxonomy: is the simplest level the appropriate one for us?
  4. Two-thirds of the faculty participated in this assessment exercise, which seems pretty good. Should we dream of 100% participation by faculty or is this good enough?

Appendix 1: U100 Student Instructions for SLO 1: Fall 2016 Assessment

(Note: this version does not include the extra white space provided in the original for students.)

Student Prompt

According to SLO #1 for University 100, “Upon successful completion of your U100 class, you will be able to describe CSUN policies and resources central to your success as a student.”

Instructions: What makes a successful student? Pick three CSUN policies and three campus resources you see as important and applicable to you. For each one of your choices, describe it and then explain why it’s important by completing Part 1 and Part 2 below.

Part 1: CSUN Campus Resources: choose three from Klotz Student Health Center, University Counseling Services, Career Center, Associated Students, Oviatt Library, Financial Aid, University Student Union, Scholarships Office, JADE/BLUES/DATE, Study Abroad, Financial Literacy, or another campus resource important to you.

#1 Resource, description, and explanation:

#2 Resource, description, and explanation:

#3 Resource, description, and explanation:

Part 2: CSUN Policies: choose three from “good standing”; units required for a degree; academic honesty;CSUN attendance policy; drop/add deadlines (or at least where to find them), or another policy important to you.

#1 Policy, description, and explanation:

#2 Policy, description, and explanation:

#3 Policy, description, and explanation:

Appendix 2: U100 Faculty Instructions for SLO 1: Fall 2016 Assessment

Faculty Instructions

SLO 1: Upon successful completion of your U100 class, you will be able to describe CSUN policies and resources central to your success as a student.

Each fall we ask U100 faculty to assess how well students have met one of our six course SLOs. (The complete list is online at We started with SLO 6 in 2011, so fall 2016 marks the end of our first full assessment cycle.

The plan:

  1. Ask your students to complete the assignment described on p. 1 above in place of one of your Moodle posts or other homework assignments. You may collect it on paper from your students or create a Moodle quiz. Your choice.
  2. Using your roster of all enrolled students, you will assign THREE ratings for EACH student:

a)Campus Resources rating

b)CSUN Policies rating

c)Total rating (add your campus resources and CSUN policies ratings together)

  1. Use this simple rubric for your ratings:

3 points / Exceeds the SLO: gives 3 examples with thorough description and explanation
2 points / Meets the SLO: gives 3 examples with description and explanation
1 point / Developing; does not yet meet the SLO; missing any example, description, or explanation
0 points / Many missing pieces or no response submitted or student is no longer attending
  1. Email Cheryl your results. You probably should number the students to preserve their anonymity; there’s no need to include their names. Your email could be as simple as a list like this:

Student 1: 3, 2, 5

Student 2: 2, 2, 4

Student 3: 0, 1, 1

Student 4: 3, 3, 6

  1. If you have any comments about the process or your students’ performance, please share that in your email, too.

***** Please send your results via email no later than Friday, December 23, 2016. *****

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