2019 Agendas
March 11, 2019
Time
9-10am
Location
Reid 415
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Dean Adams, Craig Carr, Jenny Green, Janet Heiss-Arms, Colleen McMilin, Amber Raile, Matthew Regan, Mike Wittie, Tony Campeau, Michelle Miley, James Meyer Meg Konkel, Sally Moyce, Sara Rushing, Shannon Willoughby
Agenda
- Review revised documents
- Draft language for presenting this to groups listed in the notes section below
Desired Outcomes:
- List of key things we should have on the Core website
- Format for gathering feedback
Notes From Wednesday 3.6.19 meeting:
Work on Documents:
The group agreed that a graphic might be more useful than the table we have currently at the bottom of the Core Qualities one-page document. Shannon agreed to reorganize the framework document based on suggestions from the committee. For now we decided to list the framework courses in alphabetical order and get rid of the foundation, perspective, and expertise nomenclature.
These decisions were based on a general feeling from the group that we want feedback on the three qualities and the more things going on in our documentation, the more distracted people might be in providing feedback or fixating on something other than those three qualities.
Communication out: Work on webpage that will be attached to the Core Curriculum Committee page (MSU Core Planning)
Need Plan for presenting key work (Core Qualities and Framework) to the following:
Invite Faculty Senators, AY17/18 Core Committee members and Update Core Committee members to extended Monday or Wednesday meetings after spring break to get feedback. (Need to get this invitation out before spring break).
Assistant/Associate Deans Council
Present to Academic (Deans) Council
Offer lunch and invite faculty to eat, discuss and offer feedback.
Present to ASMSU???
Applications for core designations will require the following:
Syllabus demonstrates that course meets the criteria for a particular designation within the Core Framework(see Criteria for Core Framework document)
Syllabus should identify the Core Quality(ies) and associated Learning Outcomes
Submitting faculty/department required to identify assignments/exercises/exam questions (embedded assessments) that can be used to assess student success in developing and mastering the learning outcomes for the identified Core Quality(ies). (Show example from KU who uses CIM system for Core course nominations)
March 6, 2019
Time
1-2pm
Location
Reid 330
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Tony Campeau, Meg Konkel, Sally Moyce, Sara Rushing, Shannon Willoughby
Agenda
- What should be on the website?
- Forums, focus groups, some key invitations to our meetings on Mondays and Wednesday?
- Scheduling a 2 hour working meeting of the committee to complete a draft for sharing out at these forums, etc.
Desired Outcomes:
- List of Key things we should have on the Core website
- Format for gathering feedback
Applications for core designations will require the following:
- Syllabus demonstrates that course meets the criteria for a particular designation within the Core Framework (see Criteria for Core Framework document)
- Syllabus should identify the Core Quality(ies) and associated Learning Outcomes
- Submitting faculty/department required to identify assignments/exercises/exam questions (embedded assessments) that can be used to assess student success in developing and mastering the learning outcomes for the identified Core Quality(ies). (Show example from KU who uses CIM system for Core course nominations)
Potential options for reporting out quickly to a lot of people:
Open forums (students, faculty)
Open focus group sessions (students, faculty)
February 25, 2019
Time
9-10am
Location
Reid 415
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Dean Adams, Craig Carr, Jenny Green, Janet Heiss-Arms, Colleen McMilin, Amber Raile, Matthew Regan, Mike Wittie, Tony Campeau, Michelle Miley, James Meyer
Agenda
- Check with those who promised edits to one page presentation of the Core Qualities and Framework
- Review criteria for framework courses (based on learning outcomes worked on in the Fall)
- What should we do next to prepare to present this out to the university community?
Desired Outcomes:
- Outline for communicating out and getting feedback.
Applications for core designations will require the following:
- Syllabus demonstrates that course meets the criteria for a particular designation within the Core Framework (see Criteria for Core Framework document)
- Syllabus should identify the Core Quality(ies) and associated Learning Outcomes
- Submitting faculty/department required to identify assignments/exercises/exam questions (embedded assessments) that can be used to assess student success in developing and mastering the learning outcomes for the identified Core Quality(ies). (Show example from KU who uses CIM system for Core course nominations)
Potential options for reporting out quickly to a lot of people:
Open forums (students, faculty)
Open focus group sessions (students, faculty)
February 20, 2019
Time
1-2pm
Location
Reid 330
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Meg Konkel, Sally Moyce, Sara Rushing, Tony Campeau, Shannon Willoughby
Agenda
- Draft Mission Statement for MSU Core Education
- Review the documents from the mapping exercise folder in Box (Mapping the LOs to courses)
- What should we do next to prepare to present this out to the university community?
Desired Outcomes:
- Narrow to no more than two proposals for mapping the LOs for the three Core qualities (Communicator, Thinker and Problem Solver, Local and Global Citizen) to the framework.
Potential options for reporting out quickly to a lot of people:
Open forums(students, faculty)
Open focus group sessions (students, faculty)
February 11, 2019
Time
9-10am
Location
Reid 330
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Dean Adams, Craig Carr, Jenny Green, Janet Heiss-Arms, Colleen McMilin, Amber Raile, Matthew Regan, Mike Wittie, Tony Campeau, Michelle Miley, James Meyer
Agenda
- Review Meg’s one-page draft describing the Core Learning Outcomes. (Language, presentation, clarity)
- Review the documents from the mapping exercise folder in Box (Mapping the LOs to courses)
- Foreign Language – Response from other group and 10 faculty members.
- What should we do next to prepare to present this out to the university community?
Desired Outcomes:
- Narrow to no more than two proposals for mapping the LOs for the three Core qualities (Communicator, Thinker and Problem Solver, Local and Global Citizen) to the framework.
Potential options for reporting out quickly to a lot of people:
Open forums(students, faculty)
Open focus group sessions (students, faculty)
February 6, 2019
Time
1-2pm
Location
Reid 330 (Feb. 6)
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Members
Tony Campeau, Meg Konkel, Sally Moyce, Sara Rushing, Shannon Willoughby
Agenda
- Review Meg’s one-page draft describing the Core Learning Outcomes. (Language, presentation, clarity)
- Break into pairs and map the Core Learning Outcomes to the Core Framework.
- Foreign Language – brought forward by other subcommittee
- What should we do next to prepare to present this out to the university community?
Desired Outcomes:
- Agreement of this group on a what we need to do to get this ready for the university community
January 23, 2019 and January 28, 2019
Time
1-2pm (January 23) and 9-10am (January 28)
Location
Reid 330 (January 23), Reid 415 (January 28)
Facilitators
Tami Eitle
Committee
Dean Adams, Craig Carr, Jenny Green, Janet Heiss-Arms, Colleen McMilin, Amber Raile, Matthew Regan, Ken Silvestri, Mike Wittie, Tony Campeau, Meg Konkel, Michelle Miley, Sally Moyce, Sara Rushing, Shannon Willoughby, James Meyer (all members invited to provide input on Honors request for IA)
Agenda
- Discuss Dean Lee’s request to develop a HONR3?? IA course
- Where are we? What are we comfortable with? What should we do next to prepare to present this out to the university community?
Desired Outcomes:
- Agreement of this group on a what we need to do to get this ready for the university community
January 14 Core Meeting Notes and Follow-up Messages:
Q: What is the purpose of revisiting the core?
- Communicating the core to be more holistic, rather than a checklist
- Hope that students will invest in the core
- Ensure core courses are meeting the learning objectives
- Assessment, core courses will have to be approved by a central committee (rather than individual core committees)
Q: “So we’re adding a ‘super-CORE’ layer”– yes Why?
- Give clarity about what every student should have
- It gives us a chance to communicate what we value and hope that their entire education will help to support their development in these areas; these are not “skills” that develop in one class alone, but rather “traits” that develop over their entire educational experience – the “super-CORE” is the “WHY” of education
Q: How are we going to get buy in?
Look at what other institutions (e.g., Minnesota) are doing and find places to communicate it at an institutional level, e.g., convocation, marketing, etc.
- Students: Why you should care about a liberal arts education
- IDEA: Find people who have gone to MSU and have them discuss how their liberal arts education was important to them and their success
- Faculty: Why they are spending their time advising
Q: Why are we specifying the value of these areas/courses and not letting students reflect on the courses that helped them achieve the “super-CORE?”
- This lays the groundwork to build ePortfolios, etc.
- It’s also our job – we shouldn’t just leave it up to the students to figure out why they are taking core courses; It needs to be clear and inspiring
Idea: We need clarity and brevity
Q: What is the question we are exploring? What are “perspectives?”
- Perspectives are a new way to repackage the distributional core
Q: If I’m a faculty member proposing a course, which learning objectives do I need to be satisfying?
- Idea: We should map the distributional core areas to which “super-CORE” the courses
should address (supported by a few committee members, but not all)
- Counterarguments:
- Telling faculty what they have to do is going to make them upset
- These categories help us articulate why our courses matter! This is language you can use to communicate to students why a core course matters – and how this course helps you to develop as a “communicator,” “thinker and problem solver” and “local & global citizen.”
- Counterarguments:
Comment: Like the shift in language in super-CORE to nouns – seems like more of a focus on an individual. Does this need to be articulated as a separate thing rather than a one-by-one mapping to the distributional core?
FUTURE IDEAS:
- Write a guide for how one would apply to be a core course. (Sara Rushing had great language throughout the meeting! “Traits,” etc.)
- Write narrative(s) for the rationale.“If you are meeting the learning outcomes in the core, you are contributing to the development of these traits” (Sara Rushing)
- Can we get a whiteboard? This might help everyone better visualize how this all fits together.
- Revisit: Perspectives are anew way to repackage the distributional core
- All core courses should be able to demonstrate how they are contributing to all three traits
- Onboarding to committees
- Create short paragraph to summarize what we’ve already done so that we can share it with others who are new to the committee
Other thoughts sent via email:
Something that we need to consider more and began to do so towards the end of the meeting (the debate between Mike and Sara) are the two options:
- Students achieve the life-long learning qualities of communicator, think/problem solver, and local and global citizen through completing the perspective core courses
- CORE courses contain both an outcome from the life-long learning qualities and perspective courses
At our next meeting, using the whiteboard, maybe we can put up these options and come up with pros/cons for each to help make that decision.
Additional comments received:
The main issue we struggled with was how the distributional core connects to what we internally referred to as the 'super core' (communicator, thinker and problem solver, local and global citizen).
The issue I brought up as a part of that discussion is that it's not clear how we
can guarantee that we get a reasonable coverage of the super core through the distributional
core. For example, all the proposed distributional core courses could satisfy their
distributional learning outcomes, but also only the learning outcomes in thinker and
problem solver, for example. In a less extreme case, we could find that we have a
very small coverage of global citizen, for example, and it is possible that students
can take a set of core courses that don't hit that rubric at all!
I see two solutions there:
- The wording of the learning outcomes of the distributional core explicitly includes/satisfies some super core learning outcomes. That probably means adding more learning outcomes to the distributional core categories.
- We specify that certain distributional core areas must also satisfy certain learning outcomes of the super core.
I would be in favor of option 2, because it avoids rewriting the super core learning outcomes in the distributional core learning outcomes. Jim and Sarah thought that would be too restrictive on faculty proposing distributional core courses. Jim thought that faculty designing distributional core courses would know how to and should have the freedom to meet the super core how they see fit. My opinion is that that approach would disconnect the distributional core from the super core and make it difficult for students to see how their distributional core courses are connected to the super core.
Another suggestion was that the core committee should make sure that proposed distributional core courses cover the super core appropriately. I think that would be difficult and too political to ensure, if for each proposed distributional core course the committee would have to determine how it changes the super core coverage in the context of the set of distributional core courses already approved.
Dean volunteered to try to define the process of how distributional core courses would be approved. I think it's a good start that could help us with out discussions. I'm still of the opinion though that it would be most straightforward for the core committee to define which super core learning outcomes should be satisfied by each distributional core area.