Instructors' Workshop - Jan. 26, 2024

The January 2024 INTD 105 instructors' workshop featured a handful of reminders about developments in the course and resources available to instructors, but was otherwise devoted to preparing for an assessment of the course for general education that will be done in the spring of 2024.

Announcements

The changes to INTD 105 that we’ve been discussing for the past year and a half have now all been approved, so as of next fall we’re teaching 4-credit WRTG 105.

The wiki space for INTD 105 is now gone, and replaced by pages on the college’s main Web site: https://www.geneseo.edu/intd-105-resources.

We’re conducting a search to hire a new faculty member who will take over the directorship of INTD/WRTG 105. We expect to have candidates on campus for interviews in a few weeks, and want to have them do teaching demonstrations in actual INTD 105 sections. If you’d like to volunteer yours for one (or more) of these demonstrations, let us know.

The Writing Learning Center will be opening soon for the semester. Encourage your students to visit it as a place to get independent feedback on their writing. Remind them that all writers should and do seek such feedback.

Remember that every section is required to have some sort of library instruction, often in connection with a library research exercise or writing project. Contact Milne Library to schedule instruction for your section.

Assessment

This spring we’re doing a pilot assessment of 6 of the WRTG 105 learning outcomes. As a pilot, the process is still experimental.

The overall plan is to assess gen ed courses on a 4-year cycle; since WRTG 105 has so many learning outcomes it will assess on a 2-year cycle, half of the outcomes each time. Since we aren’t really teaching WRTG 105 yet, this assessment is very much collecting baseline data against which to compare WRTG 105 the next time we assess these outcomes, i.e., in 4 years.

The complete list of learning outcomes is available from the provost's web site. You should list these on your syllabus if you can (i.e., if what you’re doing isn’t too far removed from them). Starting next fall they’ll need to be listed on syllabi. The assessment process is pretty standard: evaluate students’ work on one or more of your assignments against a rubric, and enter the results into an online form. Or use a small “assessment tool” exercise, particularly if you need to capture just one or two outcomes that aren’t covered by your main assignment. In all cases, assessement is different from your grading of the assignment — you can do that against whatever criteria you like, in whatever way you like.

The rubric is a public Google document. In addition to the learning outcomes and standards to evaluate them against, it has some working notes on where some of the standards come from and ideas for kinds of assignment you might evaluate them in.

You'll submit assessment data through a Google form. It looks long, but much of that is because it contains a copy of the rubric and as much as possible guides you step by step through the process.

Once you’ve entered data, hold on to copies of work that’s representative of each evaluation level, because the GLOBE committee may want to see it. (This request makes more sense for gen ed areas that only have 2 or 3 outcomes; don’t interpret it as meaning you should hold on to 24 (= each of 4 levels times each of 6 outcomes) examples, just hold on to one or two typical of what was at level 1 for all or most outcomes, one or two at level 2 for all or most, etc., plus maybe anything that’s really unusual in some way).

Next steps

Watch for mid-semester reminder(s) and chance for in-person consultation.

Also watch for an invitation to help analyze the data and make recommendations. This will happen over the summer, culminating in a roughly 1/2 - 3/4 day retreat in the week before classes start — the hope is that there will be some payment and lunch for the retreat.

Any questions or problems, contact Doug (baldwin@geneseo.edu), Gillian (paku@geneseo.edu), or Melanie Blood (blood@geneseo.edu).