MINUTES FOR

LEARNING ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE (LAC) MEETING

October 16, 2013

3:00-4:30 p.m., G1-301A

Members Present: Rick Gamboa, Sara Alkire, John M. Long, Martha C. Garcia, Rick Crawford, Alex
Immerblum, Satoshi Kojima, Dario Rodriguez, Brigette Thompson, Michael Kasnetsis, Ryan Cornner,
Carol Kozeracki, Cathleen Rozadilla, Linda Kallan, Barbara Dunsheath, Gerardo Gutierrez, Mike Tsai,
Joshua Rodriguez, Jorge L. Calienes, Esteban Bautista, Amanda Ryan-Romo

Call the Meeting to Order: A. Ryan-Romo called the meeting to order at 3:10pm

Approval of Agenda: The agenda was approved with the addition of #4 “Announcements” M/S/P (J.
Long/A. Immerblum)

Approval of Minutes: The minutes of Oct. 2 were approved with corrections. M/S/P (A. Immerblum/ R.
Crawford)

Announcements: A. Ryan-Romo announced that the Learning Assessment Office has moved into G1-
103.

A.Immerblum pointed out that Senate Exec modified the recent motion regarding SLOs and Curriculum
to make it more precise. It was presented at Senate as a joint Senate Exec-LAC motion and approved by
Senate.

Action/Discussion Items:

5a. Proposal: move LAC meeting from 3:00-4:30 to 1:30-3:00: Tabled

5b. Course Learning Outcome rubric and evaluating our process: To start this discussion, A. Ryan-Romo
pointed out that we have two tasks: 1) to determine if the rubric is good quality descriptions of our
process and 2) how will we use the rubric?

A lengthy discussion followed centered upon these topics:

How to use the document: L. Kallan asked if the rubric is just for departments to use or if those
departments or persons will be using it to look at each other. A. Ryan-Romo explained that she uses it
to prepare a report for departments on how well they are doing in the process; she pointed out that
departments can and have responded with “thank you, we disagree” to her report. A. Immerblum
suggested we need further clarification on how the rubric will be used; A. Ryan-Romo responded that
first we need to determine if we accept it as it stands or if it needs corrections.

Components of the document: L. Kallan questioned the use of “Bloom’s taxonomy” in the rubric and
expressed concern about being penalized for not using Bloom’s taxonomy but having true outcomes. A.
Ryan-Romo pointed out the “and/or” and said she takes that into consideration. S. Kojima asked for a

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definition of “big picture.” A. Ryan-Romo answers the question “what will a student know or be able to
do at the end of a course?” D. Rodriguez asked if examples could be provided of good or bad outcomes.
A. Ryan-Romo does have examples in the new SLO Handbook. She will add the “big picture” question at
the bottom of the rubric as a footnote. C. Kozeracki offered an example that clarified the “big picture”
question. M. Kasnetsis questioned the sentence “Many outcomes are written in such as way that the
assessment method is defined in the outcome.” He suggested that is too limiting for faculty because it
ties them to a specific assessment method; he would appreciate more freedom in the process. R.
Cornner made the recommendation that “when appropriate” be added. B. Dunsheath suggested it be
converted to bullet points. A. Ryan-Romo explained that had been tried in previous versions and was
too confusing because faculty wanted to know how many “bullets” they had to achieve in each category
to move it. It took away from a holistic approach to the process. A. Ryan-Romo also pointed out she is
using this rubric to look at a whole discipline because it is more broad. A. Immerblum suggested we
change the title to “Rubric for Course-Level Outcomes Process in a Discipline.”

Rubric’s reflection of accreditation standards: B. Thompson asked how closely the criteria parallels with
the standards from the ACCJC. A. Ryan-Romo explained it is very close; she and Veronica worked on it
for a couple of years; A. Ryan-Romo added to it based on her experience at workshops and through
reading. SLO Coordinators at other campuses have seen it and vetted it as well. A. Ryan-Romo feels we
are articulating as closely as we can in the rubric to what the ACCJC would expect to see. C. Kozeracki
pointed out that the descriptors match the ACCJC rubric; A. Ryan-Romo reminded the committee that it
is missing “Sustainable Continuous Quality Improvement.”

B. Dunsheath asked if it says anything about dialog. A. Ryan-Romo clarified it does not but that if the
“results reports” are written at the level of “proficiency” the dialog is evident in those reports. A. Ryan-
Romo pointed out that putting “dialog” in there would be hard because it is hard to identify. It is hard
from the reports to determine if dialog occurred or if one faculty wrote a very dynamic report. M.
Kasnetsis likes the rubric because he believes it leads to the next step and how the training curriculum
will be developed. A. Ryan-Romo stated that the training curriculum has been built.

Faculty use of document/authentic assessments: A. Immerblum made suggestions to add “faculty” to

some of the descriptors. A. Ryan-Romo expressed hesitation at this. A. Immerblum said this is where
clarification of how the rubric will be used would be necessary. Corrections were made to the rubric to
include “faculty” in the “results report” and “plan” areas under “proficiency”.

S. Kojima asked about “most of the assessment tools being used are authentic.” He questioned what
the ratio was for achieving that. A. Ryan-Romo clarified that in looking at a discipline she is looking for
when it would be appropriate for outcomes to have authentic assessments because even if the ratio is
low, a discipline could still achieve proficiency. She admitted it is a subjective look at the discipline.

Motion that we adopt the “Course Learning Outcomes Process in a Discipline Rubric” as quality
guidelines. M/S/P (A. Immerblum/L. Kallan)

A. Ryan-Romo then suggested moving to the second area of discussion: how should the rubric be used?
She reminded the committee that she uses it and often it seems to be disregarded by a discipline. M.

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Role of Facilitators: Kasnetsis believes that the Department Facilitators will help to provide clarity on
these issues because they will be trained using the rubric. He has been helping his department move
forward and hopes the Department Facilitators will take over this process. He believes the rubric will be
a tool the Department Facilitators will use. A. Ryan-Romo pointed out that the Department Facilitator
Proposal is clear that feedback reports will still be issued from the Learning Assessment Office. M.
Kasnetsis then suggested that the Department Facilitators should receive the feedback report and be
responsible for helping the department use the report.

Encouraging/disciplining non-compliant faculty: L. Kallan clarified the second part of this discussion:
what do we do about faculty and/or departments who do not improve in this process? L. Kallan argued
this is not something the LAC can address, it is really an administrative issue. E. Bautista asked where
they are no repercussions for instructors who don’t do their job because students are the ones who are
losing if instructors don’t do their job. M. Kasnetsis explained there is a “Progressive Discipline
Handbook” that outlines the process. C. Kozeracki asked if there was value in making the link to the
departments public. A. Ryan-Romo said she and R. Cornner were considering that as an option. M.
Kasnetsis said he found feedback to the process in the 4-column report in TracDat; A. Ryan-Romo
admitted she is not sure how the feedback got into the 4-column report.

Accountability: S. Kojima clarified that Department Facilitators are not held accountable, but A. Ryan-
Romo is held accountable for their deficiencies. He questioned why we would not have a paid person be
held accountable. A. Ryan-Romo said she wasn’t sure how we would account for that. S. Alkire said to
some extent the Department Facilitators will be accountable if they demonstrate they have made an
effort and tried their best to reach out to all faculty. A. Ryan-Romo argued there really is no
accountability and that she is the one who will face the ACCJC in answering such questions and justifying
where we are in the process. S. Alkire believes the facilitators will help to provide clarity in the process.
M. Kasnetsis explained he introduced his department’s facilitators and they nearly backed out. He made
clear to his department that facilitators were simply “advisors” and that no department facilitator would
tell faculty that what they were doing was wrong. L. Kallan suggested the department facilitators do
have to provide correction. M. Kasnetsis disagreed and said that was the duty of the “paid” campus
facilitators. A. Ryan-Romo pointed out that we do not have any despite having 8 applicants because of
some AFT confusion. Currently, the Learning Assessment Office consists of just her. M. Kasnetsis then
said that as chair, it would be his responsibility to enforce corrections to the process. B. Dunsheath
pointed out the department facilitators are getting paid; M. Kasnetsis said their pay was a “pittance”
and that if there is too much trouble, the department facilitators will back out. A. Ryan-Romo said that
if the department chairs will be the ones making corrections, they will need to receive training as well.
M. Kasnetsis agreed. A. Immerblum agreed that was a good idea and suggested that the training
address how to speak with faculty about the rubric in a way that is not heavy-handed.

A. Ryan-Romo clarified that the rubric serves just as guidelines. M. Kasnetsis said that additionally, the
training will help provide guidelines and clarity in the process. S. Alkire said we need to be able to
define criteria. A. Ryan-Romo questioned whether or not the rubric provided that criteria.

Items from the Floor:

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  L. Kallan asked about the facilitator training. A. Ryan-Romo gave the dates and offered to re-
send the flyer. She said the facilitators should email her with which session and that she will
only take 18 people per session so it will be first-come, first-serve.
 M. Garcia thanked A. Ryan-Romo for doing a good job on her own without a team.
 S. Alkire asked about taking it during the semester and doing homework; A. Ryan-Romo
recommended that multiple-facilitator departments take the training as a team to better
accomplish the work.
 L. Kallan asked about facilitators moving between sessions; A. Ryan-Romo would prefer that not
happen.
 M. Garcia asked about getting flex. A. Ryan-Romo clarified that flex is available for the in-class
time; the pay is for the homework.
 M. Kasnetsis asked if chairs were required to do training, how that would set up. A. Ryan-Romo
said she would contact the VPs. M. Kasnetsis wasn’t sure how a chair could execute the
department facilitator process if the chair didn’t have the same training. A. Immerblum
suggested perhaps a more abbreviated form of the training. A. Ryan-Romo believes she could
come up with a 6-hour training focused on the rubric. C. Kozeracki asked about recording the
sessions. A. Ryan-Romo could arrange it but doesn’t think anyone will actually watch the
recordings. B. Thompson said it would be to the chairs’ advantage to acquire the knowledge. A.
Immerblum said the rubric should be presented at Chairs Meeting.

Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 4:11pm