The full Committee on Pedagogical Improvement met for the first time since adding new members on Monday, December 1. The committee is composed of 3 subcommittees: assessment, peer review, and learning spaces. Each subcommittee chair presented what the subcommittee has worked on so far and its goals for the academic year. Below is a compiled list of what was discussed.
Learning Spaces
General Issues On Which to Focus:
- Access to Power
- Blackboards vs. Whiteboards
- Internet Access
Classroom Design Issue
- Projectors over blackboards
- Walk through of rooms to figure out what works best (SC rooms)
Goals for the year
- Document to describe issues with space
- Prioritized list of short-term vs. long-term goals
- Statement to get Faculty and students involved
Peer Support
- Support vs. review aspect
- Needs to be support to get support (haha) from faculty
- Peer Support groups consist of 2-3 faculty each, observe class rooms
- Reports would be written up
- Should they go into faculty dossiers?
- Also write-up executive summary about course (as opposed to professor)
Goals for the year
- Review series of models to choose best way to implement peer support
- Need recommendation of fundamental principles of PS
Assessment
- Expand quantitative assessment beyond CUE
- Perhaps add another quantitative number that would work w/ CUE
- Need better way to use the data that we have
- Concept tests (basic tests to test fundamental knowledge)
- Grades ≠ learning
Goals for the year
- Need something to give Mike at end of spring with lots of statistics about how best to implement assessment
Notes:
January meeting has been cancelled in favor of subcommittee meetings. Next full committee meeting is Feb. 8, 2009.