Starting in Fall 2009, EMCC's ECN faculty (adjunct and residential) have developed and implemented the common ECN212 (Microeconomic Principles) final exam. We first started by collaboratively identifiying what we expected all of our students to be able to do as a result of completing our courses, our Learning Objectives (LO) (see attached). We then created multiple choice questions related to each LO (attached), and we all included the questions as part of our independent final exams. Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analzed the results (See attached). We then each filled out a "Learning Outcomes Improvement Plan" (LOIP), a plan to focus on 3 areas where are students were weakest at and see if we can improve our teaching practices in those areas to improve the scores for next time (see attached for data on the effectiveness of the strategy).
Comments
Erik - Excellent CATS! The improvement plan template is a good mental exercise to go through following any assessment. But is it necessary to write down every thought? It seems to me that it would take a lot of time after each assessment if an instructor engages in this process (in writing).
In reply to Erik Excellent CATS The improvement plan template is a by Peter Turner
Pete, the LOIP is a bit on the laborious side, but we need to clear with ourselves on what changes we are going to making to address our concern. It is a good point that we probably don't need to spell out why something is a problem as much as we have been doing. Perhaps this is a way to streamline the process.