WASC 2005-04-13

WASC Home

Present: Marianne, Niles, Csilla, Josephine, Andrea, Brad, Jean, Richard

Goals:

• Talk about things we would like to see improved at Caltech
• Decide what to put forward for WASC proposal

Round Robin Discussion

Very hard to change the core Zero in on a small number of things and do them really well Worried about results from the Princeton Review Why do students feel this way Can we figure out more to do about it Culture of going to classes can be obnoxious Try to figure out why students aren't coming to class Sometimes homework sets are due; causes problems with classes Issue of the core could be tricky Underuniting of courses Focus on the classroom experience; do students ask a lot of questions, is it a valuable learning experience

Evenness of teaching quality Teacher training Incentives (salary, etc) Grade inflation? Gathering information for evaluation Identify real problem areas Salary incentives are probably not a great tool; rewards people who are doing well How do we incentivize good teaching/"punish" bad teaching How do we fit faculty to things they do well Student health

Possible Report Topics (RMM)

Here is a first cut at collecting together topics (done in real-time, so not necessarily well thought out):

• Quality of teaching
  • Feedback to faculty, including course evaluation (eg, how many hours do you spend)
  • Tools for faculty (best practices, new technology)
  • Orientation and mentoring for new teachers
  • Focus on what students learn?
  • Rewarding good teaching (incentives)

• Student workload issues
  • Underuniting
  • Homework, labs, exams, etc
  • Some classes are overunited
  • Possible things related to student health

• Overall undergraduate experience
  • Try to evaluate the quality of Caltech education (above just teaching)
  • Collect data about best practices in different divisions/options
  • Classroom experience (across the variety of courses that students teach)
  • Might touch on tools (eg, MATLAB), breadth of the core
  • Look into student health? Compare to other universities
  • Perhaps link to research and honor system topics

• Course attendance, classroom experience and *learning*
  • Can we find out why students aren't coming to class
  • Focus on what students learn?

• Content of the core
  • Might be a very tricky one