A Project to Develop Support for Articulation Agreements Facilitating Biology Student Transfer from Maine Community Colleges to UM System Four Year Programs

Rationale

An increased number of Maine community college students are expressing an interest in transferring to four year programs. The recent granting of community college status to their schools and their development of Associate of Arts degree programs should promote and facilitate this process. Articulation agreements between the community colleges and UM programs demonstrating adequate curricular coherence in key areas through articulation of learning outcomes and their assessment in year 13 and 14 courses and experiences will facilitate the transfer process. Articulation agreements to date have focused on general education courses and Bachelor of Arts degrees. Acceptance and transfer into specific programs, such as a B.S. in Biology, have not been seamless for the community college student. Receiving four year institutions have been reluctant to accept all of the courses for their discipline (excluding any technical courses).

An alternative focus on learning outcomes rather than individual detailed representations of course curriculum as represented in syllabi may ease the transfer process. For example, each year 13 and 14 course within the community college and four year school would be represented in terms of its relative emphasis on five to ten learning goals for each year. The relative emphasis of each course on year 16 general education and discipline goals would also be determined.

Proposal

Focus:

The comparison and continued development of learning goals, activities and assessment at two lead schools, Kennebec Valley Community College (KVCC) and the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), will be conducted during the spring of 2004. The area of concentration will be courses and experiences in the first two years of biology with attention to their relative emphasis on core skills and goals and discipline goals for those years and their place in progress toward year 16 expectations.

The lead people in the project will be Kathy Englehart, Chair of the Biology Department at KVCC and Richard Robinson, Professor of Biology at UMF. Cooperating faculty include Drew Barton, Ron Butler, Jean Doty, Rick Baga and Tiane Donahue at UMF and Judy Harris, Earl Coombs and Steve Duren at KVCC. When project activities warrant wider purview, they will be shared with the other Maine community college and UM biology programs. At the end of the project a meeting of the personnel from these units will be held to outline our work and share assessment and transfer articulation ideas.

Activities:

(1) A pilot articulation link is being established at the <neasc.umf.maine.edu> website. By clicking on Discussion Board, all interested community college and UM system personnel will be able to exchange ideas and help develop strategies to facilitate the student transfer process. Doug Rawlings, UMF Director of Institutional Research, can be contacted at rawlings@maine.edu for help regarding site use.

(2) Preliminary work by KVCC, NEASC, and UMF administrators, staff and faculty is outlining the status quo and new partnership activities that would benefit the academic lead sites for this project and all others choosing to participate. This work will appear on the website.

(3) The identification of roughly five to ten learning goals for year 13 and another set for year 14 students in biology will be determined. Appropriate learning goals in writing and chemistry for these years will also be determined. As a part of this effort, responsible faculty will address the relative emphasis of each of their courses to each appropriate set of learning goals. The relative emphasis of their courses toward learning goals for general education skills and year 16 program goals will also be determined. The general education skill areas of writing, research, technology and public presentation will be targeted.

Cooperating biology faculty teaching year 13 and 14 courses are Kathy Englehart and Judy Harris at KVCC and Ron Butler, Drew Barton and Jean Doty at UMF. Cooperating faculty in writing will be Tiane Donahue (UMF) and Steve Duren (KVCC) and in chemistry, Rick Baga (UMF) and Earl Coombs (KVCC).

(4) Assessment tools to ascertain the level of success of students in these courses and experiences will be identified. As performance indicators, these tools will very often consist of various types of exams and projects and various levels of achievement. Over time, these levels of achievement should correspond to certain letter or pass-fail grades. All performance indicators are graded via a rubric for scoring, e.g. a sample assignment is the indicator and the rubric, the way it is scored. And the rating on the rubric is the indication of progress toward each learning outcome.

For this study we are most interested in the outcomes since there may be several ways (exams, case studies, group research projects, peer reviews, writing, reading and finding journal articles, use of technology, etc.) to achieve them.KK KVCC faculty will identify common assessment tools or will adopt some of the UMF assessment tools and rubrics to facilitate the comparison of student work during this project.

(5) Learning outcomes for years 13 and 14 will be articulated and assessed as incremental steps toward year 16 goals. Year 16 or four year learning goals will be articulated by UMF faculty with opportunity for input from KVCC faculty. The assessment of the relative emphasis will be studied in a dual mode; for individual courses, and for core or general education goals appropriate for year 13 and year 14 transfers, since different expectations are reflected in the rubrics used. Once the learning outcomes are determined for year 13 and 14, each institution will indicate the performance indicator, rubric and course(s) in which the learning outcome is assessed.

(6) The instructors of year 13 and year 14 courses and the lead persons of this project at KVCC and UMF will be asked to meet twice, once at each institution, to share ideas and discuss implementation of the project. The second meeting would continue with the discussion of project goals and comparative study of anonymous and randomly selected student performance on a selected paper using the same rubric on an assignment determined at the first meeting. The following courses would provide student work for this effort; BIO 102-Biology II (KVCC) and BIO 161-General Zoology (UMF).

(7) To assess the success of project implementation, a group of faculty from each institution will be asked to judge the quality of a subset of anonymous and randomly selected student papers or assignments using the same rubric and randomly selected papers one and two years hence.[F1] This is a continuance of (6) in an attempt to continue the discussion and (to some extent) determine the degree of success.

(8) Any performance indicators that can serve as baseline data for measuring student progress will be sought for demonstrating progress or the lack of it and indicators measuring year 16 final achievement will be sought.

(9) A meeting at a community college or UM system school will be held in the late spring to share our work with science colleagues from all Maine community colleges and UM system schools. We will have a format to encourage brief presentations from them involving first and second year course content and any assessment strategies they use. This list of faculty will include biologists, chemists, physicists, geologists and science educators.

Timeline:

February 9-13 Rich and Kathy will complete a draft of biology learning outcomes for year 13 and 14. The draft will be disseminated through the articulation link to the cooperating faculty and others for comment. (#1, #2, &#3)

February 16-20 Kathy and Rich will submit a draft of learning outcomes for year 13 chemistry and writing courses. The draft will be disseminated through the articulation link to the cooperating faculty and others for comment. (#1, #2, &#3)

February 23-27 We will hold a meeting at KVCC for the cooperating biology faculty at both lead institutions (UMF and KVCC) to review the current learning outcomes for year 13/14 biology students and begin to identify the courses, tools for assessment and the rubric for scoring the learning outcomes at both institutions. Faculty would bring sample assignments, etc. to share with colleagues. (#4, #5, and #6)

March 1-5 KVCC and UMF student work will be assigned to assess a learning outcome in the spring 2004 semester. KVCC faculty, working with the UMF faculty, will identify a common assessment tool or adopt an appropriate UMF assessment tool and rubric for scoring the assignment. This will provide the student work for comparison at the joint meetings. (#6, #9)

March 22-26 Faculty members at both institutions have identified the biology courses, assessment tools and rubrics for each of the learning outcomes for year 13 and 14 students. Results can be shared electronically before the next joint meeting. (#4, #5, #6) A meeting will be scheduled for sharing all results and the work of others during the week of May 24-28.

April 5-9 KVCC faculty will identify the learning outcomes that are currently not being assessed and will develop a plan to incorporate the learning outcomes into their courses.

April 14 A second meeting for cooperating faculty to discuss progress and results will be held at UMF. Student work will be evaluated by faculty from each institution using a common rubric (#7). This date coincides with the UMF Symposium Day. KVCC faculty and students are welcome to attend any of the presentations and poster sessions. The meeting would be scheduled for later in the day (2:00 P.M. or after) to evaluate the common assessment tool with a common rubric for scoring. If necessary, the activity could be completed electronically later which could help in the randomization effort.

May 24-28 A previously scheduled meeting (another proposal to support this is contemplated) with all interested colleagues from all of the Maine community colleges and UM system schools will be held during this week. The format will allow all to share their work in assessment and articulation. (#9)

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: BIOLOGY LEARNING OBJECTIVES IN YEAR ONE

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: GENERAL YEAR 13 BIOLOGY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: UMF YEAR 13 BIOLOGY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: KVCC YEAR 13 BIOLOGY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: OTHER COLLEGE YEAR 13 BIOLOGY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: GENERAL YEAR 13 CHEMISTRY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: UMF YEAR 13 CHEMISTRY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: KVCC YEAR 13 CHEMISTRY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: OTHER COLLEGE YEAR 13 CHEMISTRY LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: GENERAL YEAR 13 WRITING LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: UMF YEAR 13 WRITING LEARNING OUTCOMES

GO TO ARTICULATION PAGE: KVCC YEAR 13 WRITING LEARNING OUTCOMES