WASC 2005-04-13 - Revision history

Murray at 15:57, 21 April 2006

2006-04-21T15:57:36Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:57, 21 April 2006
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	Present: Marianne, Niles, Csilla, Josephine, Andrea, Brad, Jean, Richard		Present: Marianne, Niles, Csilla, Josephine, Andrea, Brad, Jean, Richard

Murray at 23:21, 13 April 2006

2006-04-13T23:21:05Z

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-Andrea, Josephine,
+Present: Marianne, Niles, Csilla, Josephine, Andrea, Brad, Jean, Richard
-Areas that we can improve Caltech undergraduate education
+Goals:
 * Quality of teaching
@@ Line 30: / Line 63: @@
 * Content of the core
 ** Might be a very tricky one

Murray at 23:01, 13 April 2006

2006-04-13T23:01:18Z

New page

Andrea, Josephine,

Areas that we can improve Caltech undergraduate education

* 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

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