The First-year seminar

1. J. Corey Butler, Co-Chair of the LEC SMSU Professional Development Day August 17th, 2011 Assessment Data from the First Year of… The First-year seminar

2. Small, discussion-oriented course Taught by faculty across the university IDST, but housed within the Liberal Education Committee (formerly LACOB) Themes of interest to both faculty and students Explicit library skills component Common text: Weston, 4th Ed. First-Year Seminar

3. World War I Good King, Bad King Issues in Law, Politics and Business Blues and Jazz Meaning of Life So You Want to Help People Freedom Fries Example themes

4. Development of critical thinking skills An introduction to the community of Southwest Minnesota State University Progress in written and oral communication skills Learning Objectives

5. Common Course Evaluations Critical thinking Assessment Test (CAT) Institutional Retention Data Faculty Involvement Statistics 2010-2011 Assessments

6. 16-item Scantron survey Questions focused on the course, not the instructor 16 of 26 FYS sections participated in the evaluation process Total sample of 351 students (59% of students taking FYS) Course EVALUATIONS

7. Over 2/3 of the students had favorable impressions about… • Improvement in critical thinking • Understanding of academic honesty • Interest in their section’s theme • Active learning in class • Positive contribution to their education Results

8. Students had less favorable impressions on some of the items… • Library usage • Improvement in writing skills • Understanding of the Liberal Education Program results

9. Not all sections participated Self-report data Limited response range on the Scantron Limitations

10. Critical thinking Assessment Test (CAT) Standardized test from Tennessee Tech 15 “essay” questions Measures 12 critical thinking skills chosen to reflect a consensus among faculty Scored by our faculty Critical thinking

11. Administered in 4 of 12 sections in Spring, 2011 Administered during regular class hours Pretest during the first week of class Posttest during the final week of class One of the 4 sections omitted from analysis due to high dropout CAT Assessment

12. Pretest/posttest design No control group Previous research shows minimal practice effects Research design

13. 50 students took both tests 36 students (pairs of tests) randomly selected for scoring One student omitted due to incomplete test Blind scoring scoring

14. A perfect score is 38 Pretest average = 15.42 (SD = 4.85) Posttest average = 16.24 (SD = 5.35) t(34) = 1.03, p = .313 NOT statistically significant results

15. One of the three sections tested did show a significant improvement 13.88 (SD = 5.04) vs. 17.09 (SD = 4.74), t(10) = 2.37, p = .039 Our students outperformed the Tenn Tech norm of 13.66 for comparable schools, p < .01 The good news…

16. Small sample Inexperienced scorers Low student motivation Wrong kind of critical thinking? Limitations

17. Part of Goal 2, integration into the SMSU community Also a focus of the Retention Planning Team Doug Sweetland’s objective of 80% Retention

19. 68.0% of 2009 Freshman returned in 2010 • 69.9% of 2010 Freshmen returned in 2011 • 73.4% of 2010 Freshmen that enrolled in FYS returned in 2011 • 46.2% of 2010 Freshmen that did NOT take FYS returned in 2011 (n = 65) Data from August 3rd, 2011 Retention stats

20. FYS students are retained at higher levels than the 10-year average BUT… these are correlational data Students who missed FYS may have been less prepared for college interpretation

21. 15% of SMSU faculty have participated in FYS Class size should be limited to 20 Class size is often 25 to 28, after transfer students are added Faculty involvement

22. Generally positive course evaluations Little impact on critical thinking or retention Staffing challenges Where do we go from here? cONCLUSIONS