Meeting Agenda

• Informational Items

Informational Items

• Budget• Enrollment• Office Help• BRC Sign up• Projector Installations• Book Sale and Dept. Donations• New courses and website revisions in progress• Faculty Evaluations• Exploratorium Internship• Seminar Series is returning.• Storeroom announcements• Parking and street changes• Spring Preference forms

Biology Dept. Committees

• Biology Resource Center Committee• Information Technology Committee• Pride of Space Committee• Specimen Collection

Old Business

• SLO’s

Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)

• An Outcome– Broad skill or knowledge that you’d like students to

achieve through your course• Assessment

– A way to measure if students actually achieved the outcome

Match these two items!Trial & Error – subjective science“Backwards” design

Outcome vs. Objective

• Broad concept• Takes several class days

to achieve• Higher levels ability

– Bloom’s taxonomy • Apply, analyze, evaluate

• Narrow concept• Could be achieved in

one class meeting (or less)

• Lower level ability– Bloom’s taxonomy

• Describe, list, identify

Human Biology/BIO9 Examples

• Shannon Nixon• Sheri Miraglia• Chantilly Apollon

• Christopher Smith• Dirk Vandepol

“Structure & Function”

Basic units of structure define the function of all living things.

SLO: Classify and organize the building blocks of life from atoms to organ systems.

Assessment: Pre & Post Quiz5 questions, increasing difficulty

Data on Chemistry Quiz

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5

Before

After

“Ability to apply the process of science”

• SLO: Analyze and evaluate scientific information in the media.

• Assessment:– Current Event Assignments– 4 “practice assignments” with instructor feedback– 1 assessment, graded based on common rubric

“Ability to apply the process of science”

• SLO: Apply scientific method to laboratory investigations.

• Assessment:– 3 inquiry/open-ended laboratories

“Ability to use quantitative reasoning”

• SLO: Analyze and interpret quantitative information and represent it in graphical format.

• Assessment:– Generation of large data sets from multiple classes– Common graph rubric

“Learning how to learn”

• SLO: Gain and apply basic study skills for success in Human Biology and future classes.

• Offer “Study Skill Workshops”

• Assessment and implementation needs work.– Targeting the students that need it most– Tracking students– Measuring gains

Vision and ChangeAn Undergraduate Biology Education

Call to Actionwww.visionandchange.org

Places to start

• What are four/a few major things that students should have accomplished by the end of the semester?

• How do I know they have accomplished this?• Are the course outlines written such that they

have objectives leading to these SLO’s?• Existing Concept Inventories

Things to remember

• Educational data is neither “clean” nor objective.

• No one is telling you what to designate as an SLO.

• You may be shocked that your students do not come close to achieving what you think they do.

• This information should drive HOW and WHAT you teach.

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

ANAT14ANAT25

ANTH1BIO9

BIO11BIO20BIO23BIO24BIO25BIO26BIO28BIO31BIO40

BIO41LBIO70a-zBIO80a-z

BIO91BIO92

BIO100ABIO100B

BOT10GEN10GEN11GEN12

NUTR12NUTR51`NUTR52

PHYS1PHYS12PHYS67ZOOL10

Year of Last Course Outline Revision

New Business

•Greenhouse maintenance

•Future Goals (a discussion of our future hiring strategy)

•Other Business