CURRICULUM MINUTES
APRIL 8, 2010
Curriculum Members:
ASCC Student / Bellas, Monica / X / Bettino M.L. / X / Farmer, Bill / Cameron Rich / XChambers, Pam / X / Clemans, Susanna / X / Edwards, Carrie / Holmes, Judi / X / Leon, Ruben / X
Hoppe-Nagao, Angela / X / Lopez, Terrie / X / Malkin, Hal
/ X / Matsuura, Ken / Mitchell, Val / X
Murguia, Stephanie / Sharp, Mageya / X
Proxy:
Sugiyama, Chris proxy for Ken Matsuura
Guest:
Buffington, Debbie / Price, TerryMayfield, Connie / Reece, Bryan
Nolan, Jenine / Senf, Jan
Novinski, Pat / Torres-Bower, Anna
I. HUMANITIES/SOCIAL SCIENCE
Discussion regarding the lowering of class size for ANTH 100 and ANTH 115.
Rich: Request for modification of class size. Let’s see if I can bring you up to date on what’s happening with class size. As you know we have approved two class size reductions this school year, and I continue to hold the feeling that we have an obligation to discuss pedagogical issues. I do recognize how ever that it is woefully entwine with working conductions for faculty which is clearly a negotiable issue, and I don’t know how you separate them short of negotiations. The college has taken the stands that it is a negotiable item, and why we might choose to officially lower the class size that vote will not be put into effect until after any negotiations take place depending upon the outcome of those negotiations it may void what we have done. I think as we proceed we have two requests today I think we will have additional ones. I think as we discuss those we should make sure that we discuss them in pedagogical terms. What works for students, and what works for the class? I don’t have enough time to grade my papers are a working conduction, and with that in mind is there any discussion on ANTH 100 or ANTH 115?
Ruben: Regardless of, I share your feeling about holding pedagogically but I think we have to completely separate ourselves from our feelings whether something should be done or not. Title 5 in its careful defined of the role of the curriculum committee include class size?
M.L.: No!
Rich: No, the only mention of class size in Title 5 puts it is a negotiated realm.
Monica: If you take a look at however at the Academic Senate for California it does include class size under the rubric of curriculum committee.
M.L.: No it doesn’t
Ruben: Is that law?
Monica: Yes it does.
Rich: Title 5 has the effect of law not the faculty senate. ???????
Monica: Those are recommendations by the Faculty Senate of California.
M.L.: Alright, excuse me that is not correct what it says is the words are from the State Academic Senate in its handbook on page 61 on curriculum under class size says “it is not in Title 5, and in most colleges it is a negotiable issue” that’s what it says.
Rich: Okay
Monica: I have to disagree with you.
M.L.: I will get the document
Monica: I’ve got the document on my desk.
Rich: I don’t think it is going to change what we do today but it would be good to have that for our next meeting.
Ruben: Okay
M.L.: I think I brought it to the POL meeting this year it’s in the minutes.
Rich: Okay, we will pull it out so we will have that in front of us
Ruben: I agree that in one word clearly that is so much more important whether we agree or not.
Monica: There are a couple of other thing I wanted to bring up. Pam I gave you a stack of papers to handout.
Pam: Yes
Monica: Those are to be distributed to everybody here so I can talk about those. What is being passed around right now are two examples of what not just me but everyone is having to deal with in the classroom. So for instance the first two pages in the packet are examples of vocabulary quizzes that I give in my Physical Anthropology course and the way the vocabulary quiz is set-up is the students are to match the vocabulary word with the definition which comes straight out of the book. You have two examples there of two of the vocabulary quizzes that I just gave on Tuesday where one student scored seven, and another student scored 11 out of 25, and the way you can tell which ones are correct and which ones aren’t. I have a number with a hash mark through the ones that are incorrect answers. Now granted not everyone performed this poorly and I will be honest with you guys this particularly vocabulary quiz I would say three quarters of the students earned a passing grade. The first vocabulary quiz given to them I didn’t hold back any of them back as a sample but the first quiz that I gave them more than half of them failed that particular quiz and it is the same vocabulary matching quiz, and the last two pages those are examples of a paragraph that I pulled out of a textbook for my Cultural Anthropology class, and I do this in my Physical Anthropology class also, and what I have them do is go through an summarize the paragraph for me, and the two examples you have here I wanted you guys to take note this is the sixth summary of this semester that I have had them work on , and the two examples I gave you the one there summary is to copy down exactly what is already written which is not a summary, and then the second one you have is an example of a student summarization which doesn’t follow what the paragraph said what so ever and you have my corrections too. That is the level of students we are faced with working with. As I said here in the justification these students are nowhere near the level on what I was teaching ten years ago as far as having the basic skills they can’t read, with , and they can’t do arithmetic.
M.L.: Do you have prerequisites on this class?
Monica: No
M.L.: Isn’t that what you are speaking to here? It doesn’t have anything to do with class size it has everything to do with a prerequisite.
Monica: Because of Academic Freedom we cannot have prerequisites on these classes.
Rich: That’s not true.
Monica: Yes, it is true in our case it’s true
M.L.: What?
Monica: I can’t go into it with you I had a study done for prerequisites seven years ago.
Rich: It might be time to do another one.
Ruben: Yeah, I don’t get it.
M.L.: I don’t buy it at all.
Angela: I just want to add to that the Speech Department we have put prerequisites in place for all of our classes, and when I came we didn’t have them but we did some studies on them and we looked at the students that had completed ENGL 52 vs thoughts that didn’t and there was a clear pattern of success and when I am looking at this I understand the channels that your facing but it seems to me that this is about college readiness and the ability to be able to write, and I don’t know if class size would address it but a prerequisite would be a screening tool that would allow student who are prepared to enter your class.
Monica: I cannot go into it because of Academic Freedom we cannot have prerequisites on these classes.
Ruben: It seems if you reduce the class size you’re going to have fewer students who don’t have a clue.
Hal: Rich, because we actually have the next two items believe are Philosophy to add 52 as a prerequisite it has been a recommendation and now it’s time to make it a requirement, and I agree that the problem here is readiness if you want to take this to go down to one student, one teacher because if they are not prepared they are not prepared these are disasters, and I agree with you a potential disaster but I am not so sure that taking it down to a smaller class size is going to solve that. Your philosophy is that it will give your more time to work with them.
Monica: That is correct. My philosophy is at this point and the way we are doing our classes when we go ahead for instance like with these summarizes using me as an example the only thing I can do with these students is to say to them come and see me. I can’t have them come in and talk to me on an individual bases. What I am reduced to doing in class is going ahead putting the original summary up there and saying here are the main ideas in there, here is how I would summarize it. This is what you have as an example on the last page. The Anthology Department argument is because these student are not ready we need to spend more time with them getting them ready and we can’t do that at a 60 level class pedagogically we can’t we just can’t.
Hal: I think that gets back to what my original argument was when we started the whole thing that the situation we are looking at is more than a departmental problem in the school this whole class size is tied to a much bigger much larger suggestion which is student readiness, and the start to arbitrary start changing class size to say we are trying to solve a problem which might or might not be militated by that by going to a smaller class size.
Monica: Why do you say may not because the literature supports small class size.
Hal: The literature first of all you yourself just said that the students that are coming in are far less prepared then they were even 10 years ago a lot of literature is over 10 years old they were facing different situations.
Monica: If you take a look at in here for insentience the literature that I have sighted I have got stuff in there that are less than 10 years old.
Hal: But again is it the same situation is it student readiness.
Monica: I have two sets of data in here on the very last page of the justification we’ve got the literature that was submitted by Political Science talking about smaller class size just prior to me talking about the difference in student readiness so if you take a look at the bottom where I’ve got work sited alright that is the literature that pertains to the readiness of high school students for college education so I am not mixing that data those are two separate sets. I am sorry not data I am not mixing citations, those are two separate sets of citations.
Hal: I agree 100 percent and that is what noticed in there but I am saying that the situation we are trying to correct here students being able to answer those questions which are what you want. I am not so sure that class size is going to correct it as much as better student readiness that’s my philosophy.
M.L.: Then lowering it to 48 the same argument could be used for why 48 being too many, and then you lower it to 45 if you really believe what you say you would be asking for it to be equal to an English class which is what 25 cause you’re going to have that kind of writing in there the class doesn’t call for that kind of writing nowhere in your course outline is there a reference to research papers or any kind of major papers. I have a hard time buying your numbers.
Monica: The argument for 48 is to take it down to the same number that we have on our 200 level classes those were capped at 48 that is what we would like to happen.
M.L.: Don’t use data that argues for small class size because 48 is high.
Monica: Relative to 60, 48 is smaller.
Angela: I was just going to say and I know you have provided some of the data from the History Department I would really like a complete picture on this because it goes up to Spring 2002 then there is a gap from 2002 to 2009 so I really wonder what happened all those years in between and then it shows success rate with 82 percent for summer 2009. I think historical on this campus summer success rate is always higher than the rest of the year. So if we are going to use some of that success rate I would like to see a more complete picture.
Monica: I would like to ask Bryan about that because I did get the history data from Bryan.
Bryan: It is a question about summer or 2002 jump?
Angela: I want to know what happened between 2002-2009 and also the summer. If we are going to use that data to support the argument that it is increasing student success I think we really need to see the complete picture.
Bryan: Well I don’t have the data on me from 2002-2009. I think what we are referencing in the document is the History Department. I think there is a demarcation 2002 on most the student success data I took a look at the Speech data, History Department data, and Philosophy Department data. This thing where they took off in 2002 it is connected partly to prerequisites as you mention because I think in PeopleSoft that is when we locked down prerequisites around 2002 prior to that we had our old Legacy system and while we had prerequisites it had to be enforced inside the classroom. That is where the data really starts to take off. I do agree that prerequisites and class size are connected it’s all kind of mixed up together. A prerequisite speaks to the readiness and class size speaks to what kind of teaching you can do that speaks to the readiness. That’s a long way to saying you need more data yes I agree with you.
Ruben: As a faculty member I don’t rely so much on the data as usually with the option of the individual departments. I do have a question though about whether with the reduced class size if that identical time spent on time task with the student is spent discussion prerequisite materials? Do you understand what I am saying? I would really like to know that, and what are you doing with the students even with a summer 09 thing is increasing success rate and can that be done by attaching a prerequisite?
Rich: How important to the committee is it to have additional data?
Hal: More always helps Rich, but this is the analyze/paralyze philosophy it would be nice to have.
Ruben: If there is more data take it. If there is more data which I assume this data is valid there. Then what would we do with it if we have more data? At least be thinking about that if we are going to require them to go dig some more.
Rich: Anyone else?
M.L.: I don’t think we should be discussing this at all.
Ruben: Why!