Archived Assessment Report
| Program | ECON Social Behavioral Gen Ed |
| Assessment Reporter | [email protected] |
| Theme | Practicing Community |
| Review Year | 2024-2025 - Final Report |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Focus Area |
|---|---|
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | Show how ethical reasoning can be applied to the concept of supply/demand. |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | Show how personal and social responsibility can be applied to the concept of supply/demand. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population or Courses Assessed | Hypothetical Analysis/Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | We will use a quiz in Brightspace for our tool. | ECON 2120 Microeconomics | A score of 80% or higher on the quiz. |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | We will use a quiz in Brightspace as our tool. | ECON 2120 Microeconomics | A score of 80% or higher on the quiz. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Summary of Results | Reflection on Focus Area | Intepretation of Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | As we move into this assessment cycle, the ECON faculty have decided to explore some important trends and issues that are impacting student learning, particularly in our online courses. Many of our faculty members have noticed that students seem to perform better in online courses than in face-to-face settings. This has led us to suspect that students might be utilizing AI-driven resources to support their learning, which could be helping them perform better on assessments. Given this, we’re dedicating this cycle to researching how AI tools are influencing student outcomes and understanding how these technologies might be shaping the way students engage with course content. With hopes of identifying more authentic assessments that students won't need to use AI to complete. In addition to this, faculty will also be taking time to reflect on what the state’s general education essential skill of communication means in the context of economics. We’re thinking through how communication plays a role in our discipline and how our students can best demonstrate their ability to communicate economic ideas and analysis, whether in written or spoken form, and with diverse audiences. This is an important conversation for us, and it’s something we’ll be exploring further to ensure that we are fostering the right skills in our students. Through these efforts, we hope to deepen our understanding of how our students are learning in an evolving landscape, and we’re committed to using these insights to continue improving our curriculum and assessment practices. | n/a | n/a |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | See 3.c | n/a | n/a |
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | |
|---|---|
| Describe the change that was implemented. | Continued department discussions on influence of AI |
| Type of Change |
|
| Change in Assessment Approach or Tools? | TBD |
| What data motivated the change? | Online test scores vs face-to-face test scores |
| Hypothesis about the effect the change will have? | TBD |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | |
|---|---|
| Describe the change that was implemented. | See 3.c |
| Type of Change |
|
| Change in Assessment Approach or Tools? | TBD |
| What data motivated the change? | See 3.c |
| Hypothesis about the effect the change will have? | TBD |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population of Courses Assessed |
|---|---|---|
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | TBD | TBD |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | TBD | TBD |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Summary of Second Round Results | Intepretation of Results, Pre- and Post-Change | Follow up questions, possible next steps |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3c. Personal and Social Responsibility: Ethical Reasoning | At the March 28, 2025 assessment meeting the faculty identified the following: I. General Education Essential Skill of Communication The Econ faculty felt that this essential skill is demonstrated in the context of economics in the following two ways. 1. by using math and/or graphs to communicate economic concepts; 2. by using writing and/or verbal discussion to communicate economic concepts. II. How AI tools are impacting student outcomes and engagement The Econ faculty felt that some questions/problems might be more vulnerable to AI than others. The Econ faculty decided to collect a sample of questions/problems that are more vulnerable and a sample that is less vulnerable to AI influence. It was also noted that making questions/problems more personal seems to minimize AI involvement. | NA | |
| 3e. Personal and Social Responsibility: Civic discourse, civic knowledge and engagement – local and global | See 3c. | NA |
Describe any change in student achievement observed as part of this assessment process, and what led to those changes.
How AI tools are impacting student outcomes and engagement:
Given that the student's retention of a course's curriculum deteriorates fairly rapidly over time, it is likely that the student will end up using AI to refresh their knowledge in the future. Why not allow them to use AI during the class to fulfill this function, as they would use their textbook or their lecture notes? This would apply to work/assignments that are open book/open notes.
Describe long-term changes in the program(s) that the assessment process led to, and what motivated those changes?
How AI tools are impacting student outcomes and engagement:
Given that the student's retention of a course's curriculum deteriorates fairly rapidly over time, it is likely that the student will end up using AI to refresh their knowledge in the future. Why not allow them to use AI during the class to fulfill this function, as they would use their textbook or their lecture notes? This would apply to work/assignments that are open book/open notes.
What did you learn about the teaching and learning of "Practicing Community" in your programs?
Our methods of communication seem satisfactory to us.
Describe any external factors affecting the program or affecting assessment of the program.
There are not many external factors that affect the ECON area; however, one factor is the variation in instructional materials and approaches. Because this is an individual course rather than a program, faculty members, while consistently meeting the required course outcomes, use different teaching methods and a range of textbooks or OER materials. Although our faculty are highly qualified and well vetted, we sometimes worry that these differences could create small gaps in what students experience, even though this concern likely reflects individual accounting, detail-oriented mindsets. Additionally, some of the state-mandated learning outcomes do not always align neatly with the content or goals of Economics, which can create challenges when assessing the course against those broader requirements.