Campus Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes

What are the student learning outcomes in your unit? 

For CIS Majors, the curriculum is designed to accomplish two major goals for students who graduate and go on to work somewhere in the computer field:

• Students should be prepared for entry-level positions.
• Students should be prepared for positions beyond the entry-level.
• Provide students with a basis for preparation of Certification exams.

To prepare students for these goals, the following sub goals are identified:

• Students will think critically, analytically, and quantitatively.
• Students will gather, synthesize, process, disseminate, and create systems based on data gathered.
• Students learning will be based on broad hands-on practical experiences, particularly in computer networking systems.

The CIS Department continues its rebuilding plans, with the hire of a second Assistant Professor to be a part of the Informatics curriculum. The Informatics curriculum is in the early stages of implementation and began offering  courses in the fall of 2008.

 Which outcome did you assess this academic year?

Assessment and Program Integrity

• All CIS students must complete a Capstone Courses / Final or Sr. Projects (D446 / C390 or Y398 Internship)
• CIS is implementing a pilot program to assess entry level students in CSCI-A106.
• Students in the Joint Degree (CIS / FA) complete CSCI-C390 and FINA-S497.
• Informatics has a different sequence for its capstone courses.
• CIS will now meet with its Advisory Board once a year (due to lack of funding provided by COAS and the campus.
• CIS curriculum strives to meet the needs of other units.

CIS uses oral/written tests, labs, independent projects, service learning/internships, alumni surveys, etc., as measures for student learning outcomes. The Chart below shows our timetable and responsible parties for assessment. The assessment outcomes are consistent with the campus’ General Education and overall Student Learning Outcomes.

How did you assess their skills before, during and / or at the end of the semester / academic year?

Please summarize the data you have collected this semester / academic year.

Teacher-course evaluations (demonstrating teaching excellence on the part of both tenure track and lecturer positions for both semesters) are the main source for our faculty assessment; research publications are only required for full-time tenure track faculty. Only Dr. Dorin is in this category at present; he is preparing a revision of a textbook for a major computer publisher. Input from advisory board limited, since there are very limited resources from COAS for hosting dinner meetings.

Please describe any programmatic changes you have made or are planning to make based on the data you have collected.

We are pilot testing an assessment tool for the CSCI-A106 Introduction to Computing course. This tool (called SAM) is provided for a small additional fee with student textbooks and provides the department with precise measurement of student skill level after completing different modules of the course.

The CIS Department is in need of modifying its curriculum to meet the needs of students based on current trends in the industry. With new faculty members who are not totally familiar with our curriculum, this will be a slow, but hopefully, deliberate process.