CS 463 ASSESSMENT COORDINATION MEETING
February 16, 2005
MINUTES
Present: Hillam, Riley, Srinivas, Yang, Young
Moderator: Soroka
EXAMINATION OF COLLECTED MATERIAL
The first part of the meeting was devoted to examining assessment material collected over the past four quarters: Fall 2003, Winter 2004, Spring 2004, Fall 2004.
TOPICS OF DISCUSSION — OBSERVATIONS
The packets need some documentation of how the course covered oral communication. A reasonable approach is to present the student evaluations or a digest of the student evaluations.
Should talks be rated on the basis of effective presentation or of deep technical content or both? Does a good talk have good technical content or polished presentation or both?
Students may have trouble rating others’ presentations as poor.
The instructor should grade the student evaluations. Some instructors do this; others do not. It encourages students to give thoughtful responses.
How can the vocally handicapped succeed in the seminar?
How should ethics be handled? Some instructors assign papers specifically covering ethics. Others require discussion of the ethical aspects of the talk topic. Ethics is not always appropriate to deeply technical topics.
There is a slack period at the beginning of the course before students have had time to develop the first presentations. This is a good time to have students read chapters or papers about ethics.
Assessment packets differed in quality and in materials collected. We should aim to improve the consistency and quality of the packets. An attachment to these minutes describes the contents of an ideal packet along with some guidelines. Soroka will put this attachment at the front of the Learning Outcomes for CS 463 — it should then be visible to all who teach this course in future.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Three Learning Outcomes apply to CS 463:
- Students are proficient in oral communication.
- Students are proficient in written communication.
- Students understand social and ethical issues in computing.
These continue to be appropriate, and packets should demonstrate achievement of all three outcomes.
EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES & PROGRAM OUTCOMES
CS 463 continues to support the following Program Outcomes:
PO4. Proficiency in oral and written communication
PO5. Understanding of social and ethical issues in computing
CS 463 continues to support the following Educational Objectives:
EO5. Awareness of discipline-related ethics and social responsibility issues
EO6. Training as a software professional and preparation for lifelong learning
ATTACHMENT
STUDENT MATERIALS TO COLLECT FOR CS 463
This course has three Learning Outcomes, which we document individually.
1. Students are proficient in oral communication.
Collect instructor evaluation/summary plus handout/slides for three presentations — one Excellent, one Satisfactory, one Poor.
2. Students are proficient in written communication.
Collect three student essays — one Excellent, one Satisfactory, one Poor.
3. Students understand social and ethical issues in computing.
Collect three student essays demonstrating student consideration of ethical and social concerns of computing. Some instructors require special essays involving ethics topics; others require an ethics section in the essay corresponding to a student’s oral presentation talk. Be sure to identify the location of the ethics writing.
Don’t forget:
· Collect and submit copies of all assignments and the syllabus. This will aid a reviewer in interpreting the content of your course.
· Fill out a Course Assessment Form (Expectation Sheet) for the course. This tells which Learning Outcomes you expect students to have demonstrated. It includes pointers to the individual items which document each Learning Outcome.
· Fill out a Student Outcome Assessment Form (Fulfillment Sheet) for each of the three groups of student work — Excellent, Satisfactory, Poor. This sheet tells how well each group demonstrated mastery of each Learning Outcome. For example, it may be the case that even the Excellent students did not demonstrate mastery of a particular Learning Outcome, or it may be the case that even the Poor students mastered a particular Learning Outcome.
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