Core Education Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Geoffrey Barstow, Abigail Crowell, Kelsey Emard, Daniel Faltesek, Colin Johnson, Lori McGraw, Brian Mills, Rene Reitsma, Randy Rosenberger, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Paula Weiss
Voting members absent: Matthew Kennedy
Ex-officio members present: Academic Affairs – Heath Henry; Ecampus – Karen Watte; Difference, Power & Oppression – Natchee Barnd; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: Pat Ball, Stephanie Baugh, Kristin Nagy Catz, Caryn Stoess

Academic Regulations 26, 27 and 28

• AR 28 effects the CEC, but the co-chairs have no concerns.
• No comments were sent in by committee members.
• The co-chairs will alert the Faculty Senate office that the committee has no concerns or comments with any of the of the AR revisions.

Policy: Open Educational Resources

• ADD a question to the process: request an explanation as to why OERs are not being considered.
• OR we need to stop sending proposals back asking for explanations, based on the current policy.
  • What if we don’t like their explanation?
  • The idea is to encourage them to think through why they are using those resources.
    • The committee will respect the instructor’s decision on which resource they will be using, but an explanation will resolve any questions that may come up.

Action: Motion to add a question to the form requesting an explanation if Open Educational Resources are not being considered; seconded. The motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Course reviews

• Labs
  • The co-chairs have developed a few questions regarding reviewing labs:
    • How do we know if the full spectrum is met? Full Spectrum – observation, interpretation, analysis, communication
    • Is physical and biological universe the primary element of the class? Does the class focus on human activity of the use of physical/biological science rather than the nature of the universe?
    • Is it centered on fundamental scientific concepts, basic properties of the universe, specifically no applied regardless of the short-term application of that knowledge? Does it meet the LOCR definition: ‘basic science is knowledge for knowledge’s sake?’
    • If the lab activity is deterministic, is there meaningful depth in how the rest of the spectrum of science is treated?
    • Was our answer for any question that we needed more information? Are we ready to judge the lab experience in its totality?
      • Heath believes this data should be available in CIM, so it should not be additional work to find this information.

• SUS 102
  • Recap from last week:
    • The department chair was not in the liaison chain and opposes the course going forward. He would like the course to be sent back so that he can review the course and make his own notes and suggestions.
    • The department chair did ask why he is not an approver step in the CIM workflow and it is somewhat of an odd situation because of the way the department is structured.
    • How can the committee address these issues in the future? Can the co-chairs review the liaisons before assigning reviewers? What happens when the college curriculum committee is inoperative?
    • The labs in course differ between on campus and Ecampus.
      • The labs are ill defined or not defined at all. The ones that are defined do not meet the definition of a lab assignment.
        • They were approved back in 2018.
        • What constitutes a lab assignment has since been more strictly defined.
    • Grades are provided through a third-party vendor, rather than Canvas.
    • Potential to send back for adding the department chair to the liaison path (or let him know he can comment), concerns with the lab assignments and third-party course materials.
    • There are some additional procedural issues that would be preventing this course from moving forward at this time.
    • Ecampus has 9 listed labs but it’s unclear how/if each lab meets the co-chair’s/LOCR’s criteria for a lab.
    • Corvallis syllabus has 9 labs, but students only need to complete 8. It is unclear how/if each lab meets the co-chair’s/LOCR’s criteria for a lab.
    • Cascades syllabus matches the Corvallis syllabus.
    • Some of the labs lean more towards communication, some lean towards data analysis.
    • Outside some of the procedural issues, the reviewers felt the course met the category, but other members of the committee felt that students should be selecting or collecting their own data as part of the scientific process.

Action: Motion to send back and request resources be listed in the bookstore per HB 219; seconded. The motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Action: Motion to send back and request additional detail on which labs address the criteria laid out in the LOCR document and how they do so. The motion pass with 8 votes in favor, 2 votes in opposition and 3 abstentions.

• SUS 103
  • Some similar issues as SUS 102 regarding labs
  • Confusion regarding contact hour total
    • Labs do not have outside work but it’s more of an institutional question. There is a precedent for 3-hour labs.
  • Unclear how it is a hybrid course.
  • Will be discussed more next week.
• ECON 201
  • $81 textbook.
  • The learning outcome explanation has been subsumed into the table, so there was some confusion on the reviewer’s part.
  • A good course, but the grading scale could use some clarification.

Action: Motion to approve, with a recommendation to clarify grading criteria; seconded. Motion passed with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• WR 460
  • Will be discussed next week.
• BI 221
  • Will be discussed next week.
• BI 222
  • Will be discussed next week.
• BI 223
  • Will be discussed next week.
• COMM 218Z
  • Will be discussed next week.
• GEO 101
  • Will be discussed next week.
• MTH 105Z
  • Will be discussed next week.
• MTH 112Z
  • Will be discussed next week.