March 4, 2011
| Members Present | Ex-Officio Present | Guests Present |
| Ruth Beattie | Nikki Knutson | |
| Larry Grabau | Bill Rayens | |
| Karen Petrone | Mike Shanks | |
| David Royster | Debra Sharp | |
| Ben Withers | ||
| Ernie Yanarella |
1. Minutes were approved from Feb. 4th and Feb. 18th
2. Dr. Royster responded to the IGEOC inquiry from Feb. 18th regarding MA’s decision to not give Gen Ed credit for ACT/SAT performance, no matter what the level. Dr. Royster pointed made two points:
a) High ACT/SAT scores have not tracked well to successful completion of MA courses
b) The majority of students who come in with reasonably high ACT/SAT scores end up taking some course in the calculus sequence anyway, as part of their majors, thus would be able to satisfy the Quantitative Foundations requirement that way.
IGEOC expressed their appreciation for these explanations.
3. Four courses were brought forth for discussion:
a) GLY 185 (Inq Sci) – At issue here was both a split review and a confusing title and overview, which suggest that the course was intended for Quantitative Foundations. Dr. Beattie resolved the first by voting in favor of the sending the course forward. The latter proved more difficult. Dr. Rayens was asked to clarify the intent with the course proposer and if the course was intended for Inq Sci, ask for a new title that emphasizes the scientific over the computational and for a correspondingly changed overview.
b) JPN 351 (Global ‐ online) – This course arrived at IGEOC with one referee in favor and one opposed. At issue is whether the required 15% assessable artifact could be met with a 2‐3 page paper. General sentiment was that this was not substantive enough and Dr. Grabau agreed to re‐approach the course proposer with some options (e.g. bundling several writing assignments, if related and meaningful to bundle) as a way of increasing the substance of the artifact. This would involve some potentially serious redistribution of how credit is awarded in the course.)
c) HIS 202 (Global), HIS 203 (Global) – Both of these courses arrived at IGEOC already having been approved for Inq Humanities, but with a split vote for inclusion in Global. At issue was the contention that 202 with its emphasis on Britain could not be “global.”
Experts in the room agreed with Dr. Grabau’s vote to break the tie in favor of the passing 202, as well as passing 203. Dr. Withers made the point that he syllabus for 202 probably caused some of the reviewer confusion because it did not make its ‘global case’ as well as it could have. It was recommended that prior to going to Undergraduate Council, the HIS 202 syllabus should be revised to make connections with the Global template stronger. Dr. Grabau will facilitate that conversation with the course proposer. Dr. Petrone pointed out that the suggested changes would not damage the integrity of the course review in Inq Humanities. Ms. Knutson noted that we’d have to be careful to make sure the revised syllabus was the one posted in both the Humanities and Global archives, as well as the one the Senate has (since both courses have already going to the Senate as Humanities courses).
4. IGEOC has been asked to appoint subcommittees for developing rubrics for CCII, Global, and Citizenship. This duty was discussed briefly. It was decided that:
a) a three‐person team for each of these three areas was the right size for developing the rubrics;
b) training in rubric development was essential; suggestion to ask Assessment Director Rose for advice on what that should look like;
c) a five‐person team was probably right for scoring the artifacts this summer. Overlap between those developing the rubric and doing the scoring was seen as OK if appropriately limited;
A suggestion was made to go through Deans and/or Chairs to recruit these teams from lists of names that have already been submitted to IGEOC. The Committee felt it was premature to make any formal charge at this point since the duties and responsibilities of these subcommittees are not well understood.
5. There was no time to discuss GEOC’s role in the larger assessment plan for the University.
6. Meeting adjourned at 12:10 p.m.
