2. Is there a preferred Internet browser for the ACE course certification approval system?
Information Services (IS) recommends Mozilla Firefox for both PC and Mac; however, the system has been tested on Internet Explorer (PC) and Safari (Mac) without problems.
3. Is the ACE course certification approval system different from the CREQ system currently used to present courses to the University Curriculum Committee for action?
To avoid confusing faculty, the old CREQ system has been modified to accommodate ACE requests in a single system. Faculty can now go to one site, which has been renamed with a simpler (we hope) title: courseapproval.unl.edu. Once there, you can follow prompts that will enable you to enter your request.
4. What is the approval process?
A chart clarifying the approval paths for this process can be found at: http://ace.unl.edu/ApprovalPaths_ACECourses.pdf. Please note that the graphics are simplified and the process is built to accommodate the curriculum approval process of each undergraduate college.
5. What are the deadlines for submitting courses to be certified for ACE?
The deadlines for submission are as follows:
June 2. Submit existing courses for ACE certification that do not need approval from the University Curriculum Committee (UCC), which does not meet during the summer. The UCC needs to approve courses put forward for ACE certification that are new courses, or for existing courses that have changes in title, credit hour, description and/or prerequisites.
Aug. 15, Sept. 15 and Oct. 15.These are deadlines for submitting ACE courses for consideration. These include new courses, existing courses that need UCC action as well as existing courses that do not need UCC approval. (Faculty can submit courses needing UCC approval before Aug. 15; however, UCC action will not be taken until mid-September.)
The ACE team encourages submission of ACE courses at the earliest possible date. The goal for certifying the first set of courses is the end of the first semester 2008-09, for inclusion in the Undergraduate Bulletin and New Student Enrollment materials, which have early 2009 deadlines.
6. What is the job of the Interim ACE committee (IACE)?
The IACE committee will follow the guidelines created and approved by the now-dissolved General Education Advisory Committee in its deliberations to certify ACE courses. The job of the IACE committee is to ensure that students have the opportunity to attain the outcome in the course and that faculty members have a plan to assess and improve their courses over time. The IACE committee’s job is not to approve course content; that is the domain of the department and college.
7. The ACE program calls for unanimous agreement of all eight colleges – through their IACE members – for a course to be certified. What happens if there’s a problem with my course?
If an effort to keep surprises from happening at the end of the ACE certification submission process several steps have been taken. First, if anyone along the process anticipates a problem, call it to the attention of the Course Facilitator or IACE member. These groups meet regularly and can discuss and, we hope, resolve issues before the end of the process.
The approval process is set up with feedback loops at several points along the way should there be a problem identified at the department, college or University Curriculum Committee level. At any of these points the person proposing the course will be notified so the he or she can revise and resubmit the course if necessary.
In its review of requests for ACE certification, the ACE committee will use such criteria as:
Does the course clearly address the Learning Outcome(s) identified? Does the course provide students with opportunities to develop the knowledge/skills necessary for successful achievement of the Learning Outcome(s)?
Does the course provide students with opportunities to demonstrate achievement of the Learning Outcome(s)?
Does the course reinforce at least one of the following as appropriate for the discipline and as identified by the department offering the course: Writing, Oral Communication, Visual Literacy, Historical Perspectives, Mathematics and Statistics, Critical Thinking, Teamwork, Problem Solving, Ethics, Civics, Social Responsibility, Global Awareness, or Human Diversity?
Have the hosting department/unit and the instructor(s) agreed to follow through with their responsibilities as outlined in the ACE Course Certification Request Form?
9. In accordance with the ACE program passed by the university faculty, the online ACE course submission form requires that faculty describe opportunities for students to learn the identified learning outcome and the student work that provides evidence that students work toward achieving the outcome. How long should those text boxes be?
The length can vary. The Interim ACE committee needs sufficient information to be able to understand what the learning opportunities are and how the work listed will help students demonstrate the outcome. Some amount of specificity is required. Simply saying that students will take quizzes and listen to lectures, for example, does not address work in relation to the specific outcome. Exemplars will soon be available on http://ace.unl.edu.
10. The ACE program requires that faculty collect samples of student work. How much work needs to be collected for assessment purposes?
ACE: 4 Governance & Assessment (See Section VII) indicates that instructors for each ACE course should provide their department/unit with a reasonable sampling (at least three) of students' products from graded assignments identified as assessing students' achievement of the appropriate ACE learning outcome. Instructors should also provide their departments with their own assessment of those products.
The periodic recertification of ACE courses (See ACE: 4 Section VIII) requires that over time the department provide evidence that ACE courses have given students the opportunity to demonstrate achievement of the learning outcome(s) and that the department/unit has used that assessment evidence to improve courses. At the institutional level, assessment evidence will be used to determine whether the ACE program meets institutional objectives. It will NOT assess the effectiveness of individual instructors or courses.
11. If I have questions about submitting courses whom should I contact?
The dean of each undergraduate college has an appointed faculty member to act as its ACE Course Facilitator. If you have questions about ACE, contact the faculty for your area:
Architecture
Betsy Gabb, bgabb1@unl.edu, 472-9245, 232 ARCH CC 9107
Arts & Sciences
Dan Leger, dleger1@unl.edu, 472-3145, 19B BURN 0308 (Social Sciences)
John Osterman, josterman1@unl.edu, 472-5129, 305B MANT CC 0118 (Sciences)
Ann Tschetter, atschetter2@unl.edu, 472-3517, 1028 OLDH CC 0327 (Humanities)
Business Administration
Donna Dudney, ddudney1@unl.edu, 472-5695, 214 CBA CC 0405
Education & Human Sciences
Ali Moeller, amoeller2@unl.edu, 472-2024, 115 HENZ CC 0355
Engineering
Michael Riley, mriley1@unl.edu, 472-3495, 175 NH CC 0518
Fine & Performing Arts
Tony Bushard, abushard2@unl.edu, 472-2976, 302 WMB 0100
Journalism & Mass Communications
Trudy Burge, gburge2@unl.edu, 472-7077, 316 ANDN CC 0484
12. The ACE process asks me to identify skills that will be reinforced by the course being submitted. What does this mean?
In accordance with the university-wide approved ACE program, faculty proposing ACE courses are asked to name skills that will be reinforced by the course. The General Education Advisory Committee set this requirement because it wanted to underscore the idea that general education is a developmental process. Students do not, for example, master the Student Learning Outcome 1 about writing with one course. They need to practice and develop their skills throughout their academic career. In lieu of creating a complicated process, the GEAC committee requested that faculty simply identify those skills to be reinforced when they submit courses for ACE certification. Oversight that this occurs is entrusted to the department proposing the course.
13. Will courses transfer from community colleges and other four-year institutions?
Yes, students will be able to transfer credit from other institutions that will satisfy ACE outcomes. However, the issue is complicated and guidelines for how this will happen are still being developed. They will be added to the web site by the end of the spring 2008 semester.
14. The ACE document states that credit bearing courses or equivalent co-curricular experiences can be certified for satisfying ACE outcomes. How are co-curricular experiences being defined?
This topic is under discussion by the Interim ACE committee. Guidelines for defining equivalent co-curricular experiences will be developed and added to the web site by the end of the spring semester 2008.
15. How much of a course needs to be devoted to an outcome to be considered as sufficient for achieving that outcome?
For Student Learning Outcomes 1-3, which focus on developing intellectual and practical skills, the Guidelines ask if the main purpose of the course is to teach the skill. In other words, if a faculty member proposes a course for SLO 1, teaching writing must be the main purpose of the course. If that is not the case, the course in question might be better suited to achieving a different outcome. For Student Learning Outcomes 4-10, the Interim ACE committee will verify that students have an opportunity to work toward achieving the outcome, as indicated by the questions on the Guidelines for those specific SLOs. As courses vary so widely across the campus, stipulating that a certain percentage of the course be devoted to the outcome would be difficult to prescribe and impossible to measure.
16. What are the responsibilities of the unit chair/head regarding ACE?
The ACE document (#4, Section 3, B and Section VII, B) charges the department chair or head (or unit head in the case of colleges without chairs or heads) with the following responsibilities for ACE certified courses.
"A signature from the unit chair/head affirming that the Unit will:
See that the syllabus for each ACE-certified course clearly indicates the ACE
Outcome(s) for which the course is certified, the opportunities the course will give students to acquire the knowledge or skills necessary to achieve the Learning Outcome(s), and the graded assignments the instructor(s) will use to assess the students' achievement of the Outcome(s).
Collect and assess in coordination with the ACE assessment cycle a reasonable sample of students' products and provide reflections on students' achievement of the Learning Outcomes for its respective ACE-certified courses.
Review and aggregate samples and summary assessments across course sections and semesters.
Draft a summary assessment across courses/sections that addresses:
General trends in the kinds of assignments used to assess student
achievement of the appropriate ACE Learning Outcome(s).
General trends in students' achievement of the ACE Learning Outcomes.
The kinds of modifications that might improve student achievement.
Provide the results of these aggregated assessments, along with samples of student work, to the college's dean's office or the college committee responsible for program assessment."
17. How will the unit chair/head sign this on the electronic form?
The online course approval system is programmed to recognize the unit chair/head's Blackboard login and password required to access the system. A list of responsibilities is included on the page where the chairs and heads approve the curricular action. When chairs or heads click the "approve" button for the proposal, they are submitting their electronic signature.
18. The ACE document states: "The unit chair/head is responsible for making sure the syllabus includes the outcome, opportunities the students have to acquire outcome and information about the work that will be used to assess the outcomes." What is the chair/head's responsibility for courses that have multiple sections of the same course with different syllabi? Must faculty submit all syllabi for ACE certification or is a sample syllabus sufficient?
The ACE course submission process only requires that one sample syllabus be submitted. However, the unit chair/head is responsible for making sure that all syllabi for ACE-certified courses include the required ACE information. It is the also department/unit's responsibility to make sure that any instructors teaching an ACE-designated course in the future include, teach and assess the outcomes for which the course was certified.
19. One requirement asks that faculty and the department keeps and assesses a reasonable sample of students' work. How is "reasonable sample" defined?
The ACE program gives the departments/units the responsibility to determine how the learning outcome(s) need to be assessed. It is expected that this decision will be guided by both content (i.e. appropriate methods for assessing learning in the content area) and context (i.e. assessment methods that are practical for the context) of the course. Differences in content and context across ACE courses make prescribing a reasonable sample of students' work difficult, if not impossible. What a reasonable sample might be for a large introductory biology class, for example, will not be a reasonable sample for a 400-level English class. The General Education Advisory Committee that created the ACE documents entrusted departments with the power to determine what works for them and the integrity to make good faith efforts to collect that work and reflect upon how students are achieving the outcome(s) for which the course receives ACE-certification. To assist in decisions about "reasonable sample" the following considerations are provided.
Does the sample provide appropriate representation of:
the number of students enrolled in the course?
the type of students enrolled in the course (i.e. class level, college enrolled, major)?
how students in the course performed on graded ACE assignments?
If a department/unit offers multiple sections of an ACE course, the department/unit can determine whether assessment evidence should be collected from all or a sample of those course sections and what sampling method is reasonable. For this decision, the following considerations are provided.
Does the sample from course sections provide an appropriate representation of:
the type of instructors (i.e. graduate students, adjuncts, lecturers, faculty) assigned to course section?
the type of pedagogy used across course sections?
the type of students enrolled across course sections?
The representatives of each of the undergraduate colleges on the Interim ACE committee and the Course Facilitators are acutely aware of the need to minimize the burden on faculty and department/unit chairs and heads, while at the same time make assessment efforts meaningful. In the fall semester 2008 faculty and department will be offered assistance in making these decisions as well as making assessment part of the ACE program manageable. As the program builds, we will also provide more guidance about how the reflections about the assessments should be reported.
20. Why am I receiving e-mails from "Course Approval"?
You may start noticing e-mails in your in-box from "Course Approval". This new e-mail notification tool can assist with the expedition of all course requests (not just ACE proposals) through the course approval system. Here are some things to know about it:
The course approval system is automatically searched every two days for all items that are awaiting a decision. This search results in an e-mail that goes to anyone who has one or more items that require a "decision".
"A decision" as it relates to ACE might mean approving, voting on, or resubmitting an ACE course proposal depending upon the role(s) you are a part of and where the course is on its path to certification.
You will NOT receive an e-mail if, when the system is searched, you have no items awaiting a decision.
Some individuals may have multiple roles in the system (i.e. submitter, department or program chair, IACE voter, etc.). The system will not inform you under which role the action needs to happen, only that you have pending requests in need of your attention.
When you receive an e-mail, log in to http://courseapproval.unl.edu and look for any items that have a drop-down decision box. The list of options in that box differs depending upon under which of your roles the decision must be made.
