Archived Assessment Report
| Program | Biotechnology AS Degree |
| Assessment Reporter | [email protected] |
| Theme | Practicing Community |
| Review Year | 2024-2025 - Final Report |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Focus Area |
|---|---|
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | Do students demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills? |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | Do students demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes? |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population or Courses Assessed | Hypothetical Analysis/Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | Professional Laboratory Notebook | BIOL 2720 | At least 70% of students will achieve a passing grade on their final laboratory notebook assessment. |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | Questions will be embedded in exams, laboratory practical, final exam | BIOL 2720 | A minimum of 70% of students will achieve passing scores on questions related to safety. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Summary of Results | Reflection on Focus Area | Intepretation of Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | 100% of Biotechnology students achieved a passing grade on their final laboratory notebook assessment. | These results support the focus area in that these students demonstrate proficiency in communicating science through their laboratory notebook and conducting themselves professionally in a lab setting. | These results demonstrate that biotechnology students demonstrate competency in professional conduct and communication skills in a lab setting. |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | 93% of biotechnology students achieved passing scores on part of the laboratory final related to safety. One student disposed of their finished product in the wrong container. | These results support the idea that biotechnology students are competent in maintaining safety in a laboratory setting. | 14 out of 15 students demonstrated competency in maintaining safety in the lab. This is perhaps not surprising as this summer semester was the third semester in the program and all students have had three semesters to learn how to move safely through the lab. |
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | |
|---|---|
| Describe the change that was implemented. | It would be more meaningful to assess multiple times in one year to see changes over time rather than to just assess at the end of the program. |
| Type of Change | |
| Change in Assessment Approach or Tools? | A change in the assessment approach only. Assess at the end of Fall 2024 in BIOL 2710. Then assess again at the end of Summer 2024 in BIOL 2720. |
| What data motivated the change? | All biotechnology students overall seem to demonstrate competency by the end of the program. It would be beneficial to check in on their competency at the end of the first semester of the program. Then, that could be compared to their competency at the end of the program. |
| Hypothesis about the effect the change will have? | This might make our assessment more meaningful in that we can see how student competency changes through the course of the biotechnology degree. Our outcomes are already good, it might be good to see if the outcomes are equally good at the end of the first semester. |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | |
|---|---|
| Describe the change that was implemented. | It woul be more meaningful to assess multiple times in one year to see changes over time rather than to just assess at the end of the program. |
| Type of Change | |
| Change in Assessment Approach or Tools? | A change in the assessment approach only. Assess at the end of Fall 2024 in BIOL 2710. Then assess again at the end of Summer 2024 in BIOL 2720. |
| What data motivated the change? | All biotechnology students overall seem to demonstrate competency by the end of the program. It would be beneficial to check in on their competency at the end of the first semester of the program. Then, that could be compared to their competency at the end of the program. |
| Hypothesis about the effect the change will have? | This might make our assessment more meaningful in that we can see how student competency changes through the course of the biotechnology degree. Our outcomes are already good, it might be good to see if the outcomes are equally good at the end of the first semester. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population of Courses Assessed |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | Professional Laboratory Notebook | BIOL 2710, BIOL 2720 |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | Questions will be embedded in exams, laboratory practical, final exam | BIOL 2710, BIOL 2720 |
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Communication: Demonstrate professional conduct and interpersonal communication skills in interactions with laboratory personnel, staff, and other members of the scientific community. | In Fall 2024, 7 students received an A, 1 student received a B, 3 students received a C, and 1 student received a D on their final laboratory notebook assignment. The average score on this final assignment was an 84%. In Summer 2025, 10 of 13 students received an A on their final laboratory notebook assignment. The 3 remaining students received Bs. The average score on this final assignment was a 96%. | I think this could be done again in future years to confirm the trend. I would also change the assessment language to be more specific and not just say "passing" because virtually every biotech student achieves a passing score. It's more informative to look at the average grade and the spread of grades on an assessment. | |
| 3. Safety: Demonstrate an understanding of basic laboratory safety and the handling and disposal of radioactive, biological, and chemical wastes. | 100% of biotechnology students achieved passing scores on part of the laboratory final related to safety. | This could be assessed again in future years to confirm the trend. |
Describe any change in student achievement observed as part of this assessment process, and what led to those changes.
I did see an increase in mastery of the lab notebook (Practicing Community) in our change that we implemented to assess their notebooks at the end of the fall semester (essentially at the beginning of the program) and at the end of the summer semester (very end of the program). They showed a clear increase in their average grade. Setting our initial measure of a simple 70% passing is just not precise enough to capture the change, it must be sliced finer than that, measuring an average grade for each time of assessment.
Describe long-term changes in the program(s) that the assessment process led to, and what motivated those changes?
No. The biotechnology students at CNM receive a lot of hands-on guidance and direct supervision in everything they do in the lab. These students are being trained at a high level and are being kindly corrected at every misstep. Their high grades reflect the intense training they receive. These students must master every skill and molecular technique or their experiments will fail. This is a strong motivator and so, whenever they are measured, nearly all if not all students show clear competence.
What did you learn about the teaching and learning of "Practicing Community" in your programs?
I learned that this is a hard thing to measure! It's difficult to measure and grade professional conduct in the lab setting, how students interact with peers and other professionals present in the lab. Our way to target the lab notebook was an ok way to measure this. Keeping a laboratory notebook is a standard practice in labs and this notebook should clearly communicate to any other scientist how their experiments were carried out in such a way that another scientist could repeat the experiment using only the notebook as their protocol
Describe any external factors affecting the program or affecting assessment of the program.
Biotechnology students are a competent group of students. They must come into the program having completed Intro Biology lecture and lab and Chemistry I lecture and lab so they come in prepared to succeed. Student who cannot carry out successful experiments always drop out of the program so by the end, every student passes, and most students pass with an A or a B. No matter how we assess these students, we will always find them to be mastering the material summarized in the student learning outcomes.