Learner Outcomes Assessment Portfolios

College > Snapshot > Program Changes

 

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has approached changes in three ways. The first approach is a review of the College’s core outcomes to determine if they are current and future oriented. The second approach is to make changes in the core course requirements to better enable our students to achieve the core outcomes. And the third approach is changes made by individual departments in their courses or requirements to better enable their students to achieve the College’s core outcomes. Examples of those three approaches follow:

Core outcomes
A description of the College’s ongoing efforts to review its core outcomes is described in the Measurement section.

http://www.ag.iastate.edu/assessment/measures.htm

Core course requirements
In the Spring Semester of 2004, the Department of Animal Science reported that their faculty surveys indicated that some of the courses on the Ethics list (list of courses approved to meet the Ethics Requirement) were not helping Animal Science students to meet the Ethics outcome. The Curriculum Committee established a subcommittee (which included a faculty member from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) to review the Ethics list. The conclusion of the subcommittee was that some of the courses on the list were not appropriate for meeting the College’s Ethics outcome. The Curriculum Committee subsequently voted to retain the ethics outcome but to eliminate the course list and develop an alternative way to assist students in achieving that outcome. Specifically the College will cooperate with a Philosophy faculty member to develop a web based course that is intended to give students a common vocabulary and common understanding of ethics. Departments will either develop new courses or modify existing courses to use discipline specific examples as a means to further help students achieve the ethics outcome.

Since the alternative courses are not expected to be ready until the next catalog, the Curriculum Committee is reevaluating courses on the current list by asking instructors of those courses to indicate how those courses help student achieve the College’s Ethics outcome.

Changes in departmental courses or requirements
Readers are referred to individual program sites. Selected examples can be found at the following sites:

http://www.ageds.iastate.edu/assessment/snapshot/changes/prochanges.htm
http://www.fshn.hs.iastate.edu/outcomes/snapshot/changes.php
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/assessment/snapshot.htm#changes