CSULB’s Work Plan contained in our Institutional Proposal, pages 31-32, as well as in Appendix F, pages 39-40, of this Report has undergone no serious changes. Our proposed CPR projects were completed in a timely fashion in part because we had already been contemplating many of the studies we outlined in our Institutional Proposal. Then, after we inventoried where we were, we proceeded to investigate if, how and why the changes we had proposed and recently implemented were affecting the university. Continuous assessment, common to our curricular processes, is part of our campus culture. A campus that is teaching intensive and research driven must, by its nature, be introspective and investigative.
Our self-study efforts have the full support of President Alexander who meets with the Steering Committee, as do the four Vice Presidents. The Steering Committee receives reports from its research teams in September, February and May. The Implementation Committee receives reports in October, December, January, March, and August. Each research team has developed an EER milestone calendar, samples of which may be seen in Appendix F. Indeed, instead of waiting until the CPR report was completed, our research teams immediately began to plan their study of the effects of our recently-implemented changes; they have already reported the initial progress on their EER research to the WASC Self-Study Steering Committee in September 2008.
This research team has already developed survey techniques to study these two topics:
The Staffing for Effectiveness research team has already begun to study these questions:
Through employing additional measurements in the Educational Effectiveness phase of our inquiry, the team will be able to assess our current activities and to make definitive recommendations that should, over time, result in an even more appealing workplace for CSULB’s employee community.
As might be expected, this research team is facing the most complex task. It has developed a very specific time line and has divided its research into manageable projects. Still, it faces a formidable research agenda.
The team will examine data on changes in retention and graduation rate by college, department, gender and ethnic groups and overall in order to learn more about where our strengths and weaknesses lie and how CSULB can thoughtfully undertake additional efforts to foster student progress to degree.
The research team will systematically evaluate several major projects on campus aimed at removing barriers to graduation, collecting data to determine how successful these programs have been in assisting students to make progress to degree and graduate. It will also identify remaining barriers and seek ways to reduce them.
In addition, in 2008 the Associated Students Incorporated (our student government) launched a “Student Success Committee,” that brings together student government leaders with selected administrators to foster student progress to degree and graduation. The administration is eager to support this effort and hopes to include this among projects reviewed in the effectiveness phase.
Finally, the research team will attempt to gauge the campus “student success culture.” Results of two 2005 studies showed that a key factor in student success is a campus culture in which, when asked “whose responsibility is student success,” everyone, from the custodian to the president responds, “mine and everyone’s.” It will attempt to gauge the campus commitment to a culture of success as an aspect of our efforts.
3. How effective have we been in employing the results of our assessments of student learning outcomes and student support services to improve our quality assurance practices for our off-campus and distance education programs?
The research team has made significant modifications in the oversight of CSULB’s self-support and distance education programs, and it will systematically examine the use of assessment data by those programs.
4. How has student learning been impacted by our efforts to assess student learning outcomes in every academic program, including General Education?
The research team has made strides in identifying and assessing student learning outcomes in degree programs as well as in GE and in learning how to utilize those results effectively for program improvement. It will systematically examine department level use of assessment data both in required annual reports and within the program review process to improve programs.
5. How successful have we been in integrating student learning outcomes in our programs and services outside the classroom? (Criteria 2.11)
Integrating student learning outcomes into our programs and services outside the classroom is a new undertaking for us. This research group will systematically evaluate our progress in defining learning outcomes, developing measures of those outcomes, gathering data and using results to improve programs.
6. How successful have we been in ensuring that our graduates have the skills and knowledge that employers and graduate schools expect?
Many programs already compile information from employers and graduate programs in connection with program reviews. This research team will systematically assemble these results to examine employer and graduate program input from a whole-campus perspective. It will also gather additional data from employers and graduate programs in the form of surveys and/or focus groups to enrich our understanding of these perspectives. Finally, it will review these findings with a wide cross section of the campus community to learn as much as possible from these outside perspectives. This should be a very valuable exercise for us. (Criteria 2.6, 4.8)
CSULB is well on its way toward the Educational Effectiveness Review even as we put the finishing touches on the draft of our Capacity and Preparatory Review Report. We have found the research both rewarding and stimulating, rewarding because we have gained new insights about how to modify our existing practices to better serve our students, and stimulating because our thoughts have been quickened and our resolve strengthened by the promise of greater effectiveness in our service to the people of California and the world.
