March 23, 2012

        1.   The March 9th minutes were approved.

2.   Honors – The Committee engaged in a discussion focused on how to best move ahead with the creation  of  “topics”  courses  in  the  four  Inquiry  areas.    Four  such  topics  courses  have  been designated to receive Core credit in the new Honors Program, provided they are constructed in a manner that ultimately meets IGEOC’s standards.

Dr. Withers, who has just been named Director of Honors, agreed to create a short document (one page approximately) that would summarize at least three of the most viable options that were surfaced.  This will be circulated to IGEOC prior to the next meeting and, provided enough voting members are present, IGEOC will attempt to select the option they consider most workable and continue to work with Dr. Withers as needed.

3.   Holistic versus Analytic Rubrics – Leah Simpson, from the Office of Assessment, led a discussion on holistic versus analytic rubrics.  She pointed out that analytic was the best way to provide feedback to individual Areas, but that norming was much more difficult for an analytic rubric as compared to a holistic rubric.

Ms. Simpson went on to recommend a hybrid model, citing its use at other major universities, in which both an overall score is given to an artifact (holistic) as well as individual scores to particular subcategories as defined by the rubric (analytic).    Norming would then take place on the holistic piece, which would be much more manageable.   There were not enough IGEOC members present to vote on this but Rayens was asked to circulate a proposal to adopt this hybrid method and attempt to get a full IGEOC vote by way of email.

       4.   Meeting adjourned at 11:40