Curriculum
Overview
Instructors follow a curriculum to teach AAA 090 as outlined in a master syllabus using common assignments/quizzes and a course shell as a complement to classroom instruction. The department goal for the curriculum is to have the course content, activities and assignments/quizzes aligned to stated learning outcomes and SENSE 6 Design Principles to connect students to Aims Community College in their first semester. On an annual basis in spring, the curriculum is reviewed by the AAA Leadership Team and changes made based on instructor feedback, student comments from the course evaluation/post assessment results and suggestions from the AAA Assessment Team. Our intention in the future is to utilize the results of assessment of student learning projects to guide discussions surrounding improvements to instruction and drive changes to the common curriculum.
Process
The curriculum for AAA 109 (which changed to AAA 090) was developed by Shannon McCasland, Marti Demarest and Phyllis Gosch in 2009-2010. Changes or additions afterwards were made based on ideas from instructors (vision board, growth mindset), needs of the college (financial literacy, civility) and/or projects (AQIP Career Awareness). Responding to a new focus on assessment of student learning by the college, the AAA instruction team started discussion on "backwards design" during an April 2013 faculty meeting by brainstorming what we would like students to know, do and understand from completing AAA 090 (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Based on this list and taking into consideration the CCCS Competencies for AAA 090, unit learning objectives were developed as guidelines for content to be taught Spring/Summer 2013. Questions for the AAA 090 Pre/Post Assessment were written directly from the unit learning objectives for an indirect measure of student reported learning. Over the course of Fall 2015, the AAA 090 Assessment Committee worked on revising these unit learning objectives into new student learning outcomes (SLO's) to set the stage for assessment projects that can measure student learning more directly. For each SLO, current assignments/activities that could measure student learning were outlined identifying multiple gaps in terms of assessments that are absent and existing assignments that are not tied to a SLO. The annual curriculum review process during Spring 2016 will include discussion regarding the findings from the AAA Assessment Committee to align the course content, activities and assessments more closely to SLO's.