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Key documents:
Summary:
By the time the GEAR group promulgated guidelines for plan
submissions, campuses faced a choice from among 3 SUNY-specified options for
assessing learning outcomes in the “big three” general education knowledge
areas of Writing, Mathematics, Critical Thinking:
Key Components
of UB’s Modified SCBA Plan
In response to the SUNY/GEAR
review of UB’s submitted plan for SCBA and in light of communications regarding
the funding of the assessment initiative, UB will be spending the next 3 years
piloting a unique assessment process based upon the GRE. Essential features of
the modified plan include:
- Unlike other campuses, UB will meet its 20% sampling
target spread across all 3 years of the assessment cycle rather than only
assessing once each 3 years. This will provide yearly data and allow more
fine-tuned analysis of the impact of changes in our programs.
- We will conduct stratified sampling of key student
groups: (1) traditional first-time, 4-year freshmen, (2) transfer
students, and (3) part-time students. This sampling will be random within
each group, except that sampling of part-time students will be weighted
based on their enrollment credit hours.
- Selected students will attend a workshop relating to
post-graduate study. The workshop will involve general information about
opportunities, the application/selection process, and relevant entrance
examinations. Students will then take a “practice GRE” examination which
will be the basis for assessing Writing, Mathematics, and Critical
Thinking (the required SCBA assessment areas). Participating students will
then receive individual feedback on their performance and will be given an
opportunity to register for a lottery to take the graduate examination
test of their choice at SUNY/UB expense (needs clarification and
negotiation with SUNY). Students taking actual graduate examinations as a
result of the lottery will be required to report those scores to UB.
- Election of registration for a lottery protects
students against forced participation in high-stakes testing, the results
of which would become a semi-permanent part of their record. Students also
can register to take an appropriate graduate examination in earnest (GRE,
GMAT, MCAT, LSAT), based on their individual disciplines.
- The workshops/testing will be targeted to students
during advanced sophomore standing.
- Discipline-Based Review Panels, comprising UB
faculty, will map practice examination items to specific SUNY learning
outcomes and set performance guidelines for classifying students into the
SUNY-specified learning categories of: Exceed, Meet, Approach, and Does
Not Meet.
- The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE),
which provides benchmark measures for 5 key student engagement factors,
will be administered at least once each 3 years (SUNY funding guidelines),
but with the aim of conducting the survey annually (UB funding for 2 years
of the 3-year cycle). (Unfortunately, this sample will be independent from
the sample selected for the post-graduate workshops.)
- Value-added analysis will be accomplished by pairing
students’ incoming SAT scores with their practice-GRE scores to discern
what UB has added above and beyond basic student abilities possessed upon
entry into UB. Other analyses are possible through Institutional Analysis
with other institutionally recorded data.
- Additional validation of the practice-GRE as an
assessment measure will be performed through analysis of reported scores
of students taking the lottery-based examinations compared with the
practice test scores and other available data.
- Confidentiality standards will be strictly followed,
as currently done in relation to students’ personal information in existing
UB databases.