[Plsfaculty] FW: Curriculum Committee assessment activity update

[Donna-Rae Marquez]

On Behalf of Dr. Karen Schumaker:

 

 

__

 

Hi Everyone,

 

The Curriculum Committee (Betsy Arnold, Mark Beilstein, Chieri Kubota,
Shelley McMahon, Becky Mosher, Mike Ottman, Ravi Palanivelu, Tanya Quist,
Dennis Ray, Karen Schumaker, Steve Smith, Bryan Wang, Ramin Yadegari) is
developing a plan to assess undergraduate and graduate student learning as a
source of knowledge for instructional and learning improvement.  With this
e-mail, I want to give you a progress report and ask for your input.

 

We began our assessment activities with our undergraduate program and have
focused on the four PLS core courses (240, Plant Biology, Steve Smith; 312,
Animal and Plant Genetics, Dennis Ray; 359, Plant Cell Structure and
Function, Ravi Palanivelu; 360, Plant Growth and Physiology, Becky Mosher)
that all PLS undergraduate majors take.  As part of our activities, we are
updating the School web pages on the University of Arizona Assessment site
(http://assessment.arizona.edu/).  We have written a paragraph for our
general overview and one for our undergraduate program.  We would like
everyone to have the opportunity to participate in this activity, so we have
included drafts of these paragraphs and would welcome your input before we
put them on line.  The instructors of the four courses have developed a list
of learning outcomes that are included for your information.  We know that
all of you are carrying out assessment activities in your courses and
encourage you to continue this important activity.  It should be possible to
expand our assessment activities in the future to integrate additional
courses and outcomes, but for now we will just focus on the core courses.
We are working on ways to assess undergraduate learning and have begun pre-
and post-tests in the core courses and are developing methods to assess
learning outcomes in the Senior Capstone and in student exit surveys.  We
are just beginning assessment activities for our graduate programs and will
keep you updated in the coming weeks.

 

Will you please take a look at the overview paragraphs and send me any
suggestions and comments.  If I don't hear from you by Wednesday, February
1, I will assume that you approve the documents as written.  

 

I am happy to try to answer any questions.  Best regards.  Karen

 

 

Karen Schumaker

School of Plant Sciences, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and
the BIO5 Institute

University of Arizona

 

Contact information:

School of Plant Sciences

303 Forbes Hall

1140 E. South Campus Drive

University of Arizona

Tucson, AZ 85721-0036

 

Phone: (520) 621-9635

Fax: (520) 621-7186

 <http://ag.arizona.edu/research/schumaker/>
http://ag.arizona.edu/research/schumaker/

 

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