Teaching, Learning & Assessment

(From the CSUMB Assessment Plan)

Assessment at CSUMB will focus on several specific goals, organized by particular structures and processes, and supported by the resources needed to achieve those goals. These goals,developed by the Assessment Committee, include the following:

• Demonstrate student proficiency at the degree level.
• Improve student learning at all levels of the curriculum.
• Provide opportunities for faculty development that inform and improve teaching and learning practices.
• Create a coordinated, integrated, flexible, efficient, and transparent assessment system that serves multiple assessment needs.
• Provide a means for evaluating and improving student learning outcomes with regard to the relevance of those outcomes to the needs of students, the university and society.

CSUMB assessment plan

Quantitative reasoning assessment project

This page contains information and guidelines for contributing student work for CSUMB's campus-wide assessment of quantitative reasoning (QR).

How to submit assignments & student work

General notes

1. No group projects. We can only use individual student work.
2. Electronic & hard copies are both acceptable. Student work can be submitted electronically or in hard copy (see below).
3. Submit ALL samples of student work. TLA will then randomly select a sub-sample for assessment.
4. Include assignment guidelines: Include assignment guidelines with student work. However, if the student work is not yet available, please still submit the assignment guidelines.
5. Include course identifier. Make sure your course prefix, number, and section are identified in the email.

Submitting student work

1. Hard copies: If you have hard copies of student work, TLA can collect the work from you, make copies if requested, and return the originals. Please email (tla@csumb.edu) or call (582-4574) to make arrangements.
2. Electronic copies: Electronic copies of student work can be emailed to tla@csumb.edu. Please make sure your course prefix, number, and section are identified in the email.
3. Bulk downloading electronic copies from iLearn (see screenshot below):

• Click on the link for the assignment you want to download from iLearn
• Click on "View/grade all submissions"
• From the "Grading action" drop-down menu (upper left-hand corner), select "Download all submissions"
• Send zip file to tla@csumb.edu
• Contact TLA (582-4574 or tla@csumb.edu) for assistance if needed.

Instructor confidentiality

The purpose of this assessment project is to measure our students' quantitative reasoning skills, NOT evaluate individual faculty. National assessment leaders consistently highlight the importance of separating program and institutional assessment of student learning from instructor evaluation. To ensure confidentiality, prior to assessment TLA will remove all course identifiers, faculty names, and student names from assignments and student work.

Student consent

Because student work will be used solely for institutional improvement, student consent to use their work is not legally required. This project is classified as a Quality Improvement Activity and CSUMB's IRB conforms to the guidance provided by OHRP regarding QIA. Therefore, it is not subject to IRB review and does not require student consent for participation. However, faculty may choose to communicate the following to students or insert into course syllabi:

CSUMB conducts ongoing assessment of program and institutional student learning outcomes to improve teaching and learning for all students. I may be asked to submit student work for this purpose. Instructor and students names will be removed from all samples of student work and assessment results will have no impact on your grade in this course. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please contact me.

Courses were selected to provide a representative sample of courses from across campus at multiple levels. In addition to the GE Area B4 courses sampled, each college's Faculty Associate, in consultation with department chairs, will identify two courses from each program that meet the following criteria:

1. One mid-level QR course: should represent students at the mid point of development in QR in the program (generally 200/300) - a good choice is a course that has a B4 or STAT 250 as a pre-req, for programs where that occurs.
2. One high-level QR course: should represent the students highest attainment of QR in the program. May be capstone, but cannot be group work.

1. What DO department chairs need to do? Work with your Faculty Associate to identify appropriate courses AND communicate to the instructors of those courses that TLA will be contacting them to request student work.
2. What do department chairs NOT need to do? Your college's Faculty Associate will contact you. Once you identify the courses, your college's Faculty Associate will communicate those to Judith Canner and TLA. TLA will work with directly with instructors to collect student work and will provide TLA staff support.
3. Can these assessment results be used to evaluate faculty? Institutional assessment results cannot be used to evaluate faculty nor play any role in hiring or RTP decisions. The goal of institutional assessment of student learning is to better understand how we are doing as a collective so we can improve teaching and learning campus-wide, not to evaluate individual faculty. To ensure confidentiality, TLA will remove all faculty and student names from all course assignments and student work prior to assessment. All data presented in assessment reports will be anonymous (for example, see below for last year's report on the campus-wide assessment of critical thinking and information literacy).
4. What are possible QR courses in my college/department? This spreadsheet identifies courses -- by college and department -- whose instructors indicated in a response to a prior survey that they expected students to have quantitative reasoning skills for their course. Department chairs will use this list to help identify QR courses in their department.
5. What constitutes QR? In addition to skills typically associated with QR (e.g. skills needed to complete an assignment for a statistics course), the assessment committee defines quantitative reasoning broadly to include skills such as the ability to interpret quantitative information presented in the popular media. For example, an HCOM 211 assignment asking students to comprehend and interpret opinions presented newspaper articles containing quantitative information on a social issue can be assessed for quantitative reasoning.
6. What are the goals of assessment at CSUMB? How should faculty submit work? What about faculty confidentiality? What about student consent? See above.
7. How can I learn more about the QR assessment project? See Quantitative Reasoning ILO Assessment Project.
8. How will assessment results be reported? Last year CSUMB conducted campus-wide assessment of the critical thinking and information literacy (CTIL) components of the Intellectual Skills ILO and then released the results to the campus. To view the assessment results, see the "CTIL Assessment Reports" box on the CTIL Website.
9. How will assessment results be used? Faculty participating in a TLA QR Teaching Cooperative in fall 2015 will interpret the results and facilitate campus discussions on how to respond. For example, CTIL Assessment Coordinators Swarup Wood and Sarah Dahlen's "Closing the Loop" report is available on the CTIL website and they are available to speak to colleges and departments about the CTIL results and gather ideas for improving the teaching and learning of CTIL across campus.