Faculty Meeting VI14 – 7/25/2014

Faculty Meeting – VI14 7/25/14

Memorial Hall 127, 1 p.m. Friday

News and Agenda:

1. Total enrollment is around 700
2. Scott and Karen are out next week, Joe is in charge
3. Email Joe if you are changing your teaching load for the upcoming sessions, let Joe know as soon as possible
4. Practicum course for Session I and Session IV, any faculty member who wants to volunteer to be a mentor let Joe know.

Please review the Proficiency Scale that was attached to agenda.  This is the form that all students and sponsors see after each session that provides summary of learning outcomes.

Resolutions:

Link to resolutions considered

1. Discussion was lead about application of homework that allows the teacher to measure the student proficiency and follow the CEA standards.
   1. Participation in class can be measure for quality and not quantity.
   2.  If you can measure within curriculum and meet learning outcomes then use homework exercise for grade.
2.  Brief discussion about attendance and punctuality, and speaking with student for long term absences as to better understand and help the student with success within the classroom.
   1. Allowing the student to have a better understanding of how the effort score relates to late or missed classes, so that habits can be changed going forward.
3. Discussion about proposed Effort Score Rubric and the wording within the 7/19/14 draft, some revision was expressed, changing the effort grade to effort score.
   1. Working to reword the rubric to allow better scoring for the student based on their efforts.
   2. Effort grades are very important to the retention/dismissal decision and effort is also shared with the sponsor for those students with sponsorship.
      Working with Registrar Office, Erin to create a drop down field in an existing grade form to allow the explanation of the effort score.
      Further thoughts on how the Effort Score Rubric should be weighted, suggestion that the last two measurements are weighed more than first two.
      Keeping a constant communication between teacher and student on how the student is being assessed.
4.  Allowing students to be able to review grades on all test or essays was recommended at mid-session, whether a paper copy or allowing students a code to view on-line.
   1.  Often is the claim by students they don’t know why they received a certain grade, since they did not see individual grades within a session.
5.  Always be prepared to explain the reason for effort score.
6.  Discussion about the weight graded assignments during the first half of session vs. the second half of session to clarify the term “at least twice that of those earned during the first half” will be revised to allowing for better end result of grading.
7. Technology Committee and ELI Registrar working on adapting a software program for more consistent grading and in long term to create a partnership with the upcoming conversion with UD PeopleSoft program.

 Voted: Suspend the rules for voting and allow electronic vote for Resolution 1, all were in favor.  Nigel will send out an email on Monday to allow for the electronic voting for Resolution 1.

Vote Update: July 31, 2014

The full-time faculty has passed the first resolution on last week’s meeting agenda (12 for; 2 against; 1 abstention).

Therefore, effective session I, we need to make sure that participation and homework exercises (including online practice exercises from Q, Azar, etc) are removed from all grades in all classes. They can still count towards students’ effort scores. The full text is at the end of this email.

Level coordinators: (and others)  this may require changes to syllabi:

* If you just need to change the section on grading and the list of class assignments, please go ahead and make those changes, put an August 2014 revision date on the first page, and email the new syllabus to Lowell for the ELI website. The curriculum committee does not need to see these changes.

* If you would like to change the learning outcomes for a course, those do need to be approved by the curriculum committee, and proposed changes should be sent to me as soon as possible, please, or on opening day of session I at the latest. For example, if participation in small-group discussions is going to be part of your speaking grade, there needs to be a student learning outcome in the syllabus that clearly meets the relevant curriculum objective for your level (please see the recently revised speaking curriculum on FacBook); then there needs to be a consistent and fair way to measure students’ achievement of the outcome (e.g. assessed discussions with a rubric).

This is the resolution that passed yesterday (July 30):

1.      Whereas factoring attendance, effort, homework exercises* or participation into grades distorts the measurement of student progress on learning outcomes; whereas CEA standards make a distinction between more objective measurements of language proficiency and the qualitative reporting of student effort, be it therefore resolved that effective September 1, 2014 ELI faculty members will no longer include attendance, effort, homework exercises, or classroom participation in the calculation of any grades in skill areas and that all syllabi be adjusted, if need be, to reflect this change in policy.  *For the purposes of this resolution, a distinction is made between exercises designed to help a student practice material addressed in class (e.g., completion of worksheets or textbook/online exercises) and assignments that (1) can be directly linked to learning outcomes and (2) assessed in such a way as to measure student progress toward meeting learning outcomes (e.g., such as asking students to write an original paragraph incorporating the use of a newly learned verb tense studied in class or recording an audio file of discourse focusing on the production and incorporation of linking and reduced forms).