General Education Assessment

SUNY New Paltz began to assess General Education (GE) knowledge and skills areas in capstone courses in AY 2020-2021. Prior to that year, we assessed GE in courses that were randomly selected. The GE knowledge and skills areas assessed in AY 2020-2021 were American History, Other World Civilizations, and Basic Communication-Oral. The following year, in AY 2021-2022, we assessed The Arts, Mathematics, Foreign Language, and Basic Communication-Written.

The GE Board, Institutional Research (IR), and the Associate Provost for Strategic Planning and Assessment coordinated the GE assessments and provided information to the campus about how the assessments were to be administered. IR surveyed the faculty who taught the capstone courses in which the assessments were administered and the faculty who taught GE courses in the knowledge and skills areas that we assessed. The survey to the capstone course instructors invited comments on the administration of the assessments and ways the process could be improved. The survey to the GE content area faculty asked them to reflect on their teaching of the courses and on their expectation of students’ performance.

During fall 2020 and 2021, faculty teams developed assessment prompts and scoring rubrics for the content areas that were assessed. The prompts and instructions for completing them were placed in SharePoint and accessible to students and faculty from the site. The GE Board co-chairs and other board members emailed information about the assessments to faculty and solicited their support to encourage students to complete them. Faculty and students uploaded responses to the assessment prompts to the SharePoint site.

A brief summary of the GE assessment results for 2020-2021 is presented below.

THE ARTS
Assessment Raters: Andrea Kantrowitz (Team Leader), Frank Boyer, Aurora De Armendi, Rena Leinberger, Jovana Stokic
Results: Of the 142 student essays evaluated, 113 (78%) met the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and were able to demonstrate understanding of at least one principal form of artistic expression and the creative process inherent therein.

MATHEMATICS
Assessment Raters: Madeleine Arseneault, David Hobby (GE Board), Christina Koehne, Rachel Lilley, and Ramon Prusak
Results: Only 23% of the 95 students met the Math SLOs.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Assessment Raters: Adolfo Bejar Lara (Team Leader), Victoria St. George, Mary Stevens, Patricia Fitzpatrick, and César Barros Arteaga
Results: This assessment prompts administered had a multiple-choice and an essay component. Of the 177 students who completed the multiple-choice questionnaire, 143 (81%) met SLO 1 and of the 106 essays evaluated, 93 (88%) of the students met SLO 2.

BASIC COMMUNICATION—WRITTEN
Assessment Raters: Nikki Wilson Clasby (Team Leader), Mercedes Rooney, Peggy Hach & Joan Perisse
Results: The outcome showed 69 (65.1%) of the students met SLO 1, 58 (54.7%) met SLO 2, and 46 (43.4%) met SLO 3; only 45 (42.5%) students met all three SLOs and 35 (33%) of the students did not meet any of the SLOs.

Each of the four teams proposed actions that should be taken on the basis of the results. These include improving the student participation rate, using the data to improve student learning, changing the way the math assessment is administered, and refining rubrics and assessment prompts. Assessment helped faculty to gain information about their courses. As a result, faculty revised their courses and modified their teaching methods based on the assessment findings.

The GE Board, associate deans, and associate provost are supporting departments to carry out ‘close the loop’ activities regarding these assessments. The Board has set-aside this academic year for loop-closing activities. Discussions with faculty were held in October and November of 2022 and focused on assessment results and improving GE education on campus.

Consistent with past practice, departments are required to submit annual assessment reports to their associate deans. The reports include information about activities departments implemented to address the findings from the assessments. The associate deans are expected provide feedback to departments on their assessment reports and to draft a brief summary of key issues from the reports for the associate provost.

The complete Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes in General Education Summary Report for AY 2021-2022 is available on the General Education Program’s website.