Math faculty have developed a MAT091 complete common final exam to be required to be given by adjuncts and as an option for full time faculty. Since the first implementation, the questions have been reviewed and changes have been made as necessary. One of the purposes of the common final is to give instructors guidance on the competencies that are most important. Another purpose is to identify where students are doing well and also not so well so that we as instructors can adjust our teaching. Each instructor receives their individual reports as well so they can compare their data from semester to semester.
This final exam consists of 41 questions with the first one being matching and then #2-32 being multiple choice with 4-10 choices, including the choice of “other”. There is one exception, which has the choices of “yes” and “no” only. The rest of them are free response.
The department chair sends out a reminder and instructions to instructors before final exam week.
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Comments
Sarah, Congrats to you and the other Math faculty for having a program level assessment which is so detailed with feedback! Nice work! Smiles, Olga
Again, kudos to math folk. As I said before, a common final has so much potential for individual faculty members, for course level, and for discipline level all to monitor and adjust. Another CATS relating some of the adjustments that have been made as a result of this strategy would be even more informative.
Another idea (besides my last post from the previous CATS) is to use one of our 45 minute division meetings in the fall to discuss the common final results and come up with ideas of improvement. Again, thank you for taking time to submit the CATS for this. We can decide whether to update this CATS with Spring 17 results, or write a new one. We should discuss this at our next MPE division meeting.
Its great to have a consistent tool to measure learning. As we explore new uniques methods to helps students successful complete courses and persist, the common final can serve as a tool to ensurance of quality. At HLC last week I went to a session on the carengie hour. HLC has incidated that in addition to demonstating that accelerated and online classes require the same rigour in terms of instruction and homework time, they also want to verify actual student learning is similar accross delievry formats. They recommneded using commont finals to demonstate that accelerated and online courses produce the same results as traditional courses.. As the college expands accelerated developmental education pathways, it would be good to use common finals to document the achievemetn of learnign outcomes are equivalent. For example, you could compare common final performance for 8-week math courses versus 16 week math course.
Sarah,
Thank you very much for submitting CATS for our developmental common finals. It is nice to see our project being shared with everyone else. I look forward to a more indepth discussion and evaluation of the results we have been collecting.