General Education Assessment

"It is the intent of National Park Community College to provide general education that will impart knowledge, intellectual concepts and attitudes that every educated person should possess regarless of their career paths. The College will ensure that the genearl education offered is consistent with its Mission and designed to ensure breadth of knowledge and to promote intellectual inquiry. The College recognizes the importance of general education and related studies as integral components of technical education."

-Academic Assessment Committee
Approved Spring 2003

The General Education component of the 2001 Academic Assessment Plan has been continuously reviewed by the Academic Assessment Committee. The Committee has recommended several changes to the General Education Assessment process since Fall 2001.

After completing and reviewing six semesters of general education data from Fall 2000 to Fall 2002, the Committee made the decision to change the process. The Committee felt the information gathered, even though it proved helpful and instrumental for the instructors, did not provide the data needed to make comprehensive curriculum changes and decisions. The committee's review of the process began with the six general education objectives. The decision was made in November 2002 to eliminate college level demeanor as a general education objecive. The Committee felt that college level demeanor was more of an expectation of faculty and staff rather than a learning objective and is mentioned in several College publications such as the College catalog, student handbook, and in freshman orientation. The decision was also made to drop the discipline-specific skills objective. This objective is better assessed through program assessment. In the spring of 2003, the specific wording of the objectives was also revised as follows:

The College will strive through general education to lead the student to:

• Write and speak clearly, concisely, and coherently
• Reason and think logically and clearly
• Understand world cultures, past and present
• Apply mathematics to solve problems

The process for assessing the general education objectives was also reviewed and revised. The Committee made the decision to replace the Outcomes Assessment Form (OAF) with a holistic scoring of selected student artifacts using standardized rubrics. A subcommittee of the AAC accepted the charge for developing the rubrics for each of the four general education objectives. The Committee also established a group of instructors called the "Reading Team" that would score the students' work. In addition, the Associate Vice President for Instruction provided a training session for the Reading Team in April 2003 on how to holistically score student work using rubrics.

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