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2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report (PSYC)

DEPT.: Psychology
SUBMITTED BY: Kaja Englund & David
Holliway

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report FALL

PROGRAM QUALITY – TRANSFERABILITY:

1. Discuss how your department determines that the courses offered are still viable and relevant?

2. Does course curriculum satisfy DTA requirements? How do you know? What needs to change?

3. Please construct a table to show all courses offered by your department and how they transfer to CWU, EWU, and WSU. Identify any courses that do not transfer or transfer as general electives.

BBCC CWU EWU WSU
Psych 100 (Introductory Psychology) PSY 101 INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY Psych 100 General Psychology Psych 105 Introductory Psychology
Psych 200 Lifespan Psychology PSY 314 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND
THE LEANER		 Psyc 201 Lifespan Development Human Development 101 Human Development Across the Lifespan

 

4. If some of your courses are not transferring to universities as you expected, what information and/or assistance do your need to help you resolve these transfer issues?

ADVISING RESOURCES:

5. Please review your department catalog and website information. Is the information current and accurate? What changes need to be made or would you like to make to better assist students? Submit catalog changes with this report. If you need to make changes to the bigbend.edu website, you will need to submit a work order in the Kace system (where BBT and Advising Map work orders are submitted) in the Communications area to arrange for website changes.

6. Has your department developed advising resources/maps to assist students majoring in your discipline or in a related field? Please describe these advising resources/maps. Have you considered developing transfer resources (such as four-year advising maps) for students intending to transfer to CWU, EWU, or WSU and major in your discipline or in a related field? How could BBCC assist you in developing these resources?

SCHEDULING:

Please review your course offerings and enrollments over the last three years as well as the FTE information for your department.

7. Discuss how the scheduling for your courses has been evaluated. Describe how scheduling has been altered or maintained to meet the needs of other programs or populations of students.

8. Has this program considered providing other options for offering the program content; such as, online, hybrid, nights, competency-based, weekends, etc? Discuss.

  1. If yes, what is being considered and why?
    Yes, We offer all modalities, Online, hybrid, at different campuses, and early mornings (for workforce students).
  2. If no, is this something that should be considered and why/why not?

9. Discuss future plans for annual scheduling based on this audit review. Please share how annual scheduling will need to change to meet future student needs as well as any department needs you have identified with respect to instruction. 

TRANSFER PARTNERSHIPS:

10. Provide information about how this department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific partnerships/relationships with one or more of our three transfer institutions (WSU, CWU, EWU). List and identify the partners/transfer institutions, describe the relationships that have been established, and what is planned for the future to establish better connections with our transfer institutions.

CAREER GUIDANCE:

11. How does your department provide career counseling with information on employment trends, wages, and opportunities to assist students plan their education? What resources do you need to assist you in providing career counseling information to your students and advisees?

 

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report WINTER

PROGRAM QUALITY – INSTRUCTION:

1. Select all methods that are used by your department to integrate the academic knowledge and skills of your students and ensure that they are taught with the same coherence and rigor as all other students. Please provide short descriptions of each selection.
☒Contextualized Instruction
We discuss how curriculum applies and fits in with students lives and day to day interactions to make that “real world” connection.
☐Team-Teaching
☐Math-First Initiatives
☒College-Level Core Curriculum
Based on the APA standards, our curriculum is founded on this.
☒College-Wide Student Learning
Outcomes. Assessing institutional and program outcomes.
☐STEM Initiatives
☒Tutoring
It is recommended to students regularly. Such as TRIO and library/writing center tutoring services.
☒Flipped Classrooms
A little of both techniques are used – sometimes students are expected to come to class and listen to lectures and complete homework/tests at home, and
other times assignments and tests are given in class and lectures are to be viewed at home. We understand that students all have different learning styles, so we have become comfortable with both techniques.
☐Just in Time Support Instruction/Accelerated Learning
☒Active Learning/Student Engagement Techniques
Discussion based class sessions, mini social experiment activities, group activities to go over summaries, video exercises, classical conditioning activity.
☐Project Based Learning
☐Industry Standardized Tests/Exams
☐I-BEST Programs
☐Other (Please describe.) 

PROGRAM QUALITY – STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT DATA:

Please use the student achievement data provided to discuss and review how successful students are within your classes. Please use the Course Success Rates tab in the About BBCC Tableau workbook and the Course Letter Grades Tableau workbook to gather the data for the courses in your department. These workbooks can be found on the Institutional Research & Planning page in the Portal.

2. Are there certain classes with student success rates below 75%? Within your courses, what achievement gaps do you observe within underrepresented groups taking your courses? Which of these gaps are you focusing your efforts on and what are your next steps? How does this student achievement data intersect with your assessment efforts?

No classes have a student success rate below 75%. Between 2013 and 2014, the overall success rates for underrepresented groups were below 75%. The percentage of unsuccessful underrepresented groups was higher overall between 2012 and 2022, however, the withdrawal average percentage was the same. Specifically, regarding Hispanic individuals, 2013-2014 school year, the overall success rate was 70%. From 2012-2014 the unsuccessful percentage rate for Hispanics was higher. Between 2019-2020 Hispanics' overall success rate dropped from 96% to 67%.

We are focusing our efforts on enrollment numbers and consistent grading between psychology courses. The student achievement data intersects with our assessment efforts by doing our best to promote student learning and success in our psychology courses as well as addressing any issues or challenges we notice in the classroom.

A primary achievement gap we have been recently noticing is students’ English language competence and their ability to be successful in our psychology courses. We are not fully aware or certain how students are assessed and/or being placed in introductory English courses. At times, it appears that students would benefit from an entry level English course to better their language skills prior to enrolling in Psyc& 100.

3. Please describe what you are doing as a department to increase student success, especially within courses that exhibit low success rates or that indicate achievement gaps exist for some student groups? How are you closing the loop to see if your efforts have made improvement or not? What further steps do you plan to pursue?

It is difficult identify the achievement gaps that exist for student groups. Regarding this, it is challenging to distinguish why students are not as successful. But since 2012, the psychology program has held an average success rate of over 75%. Further steps we plan to develop include being aware of and attempting to keep track of how our recent and current students’ success or lack of affect our overall success rate statistics.

4. Are there additional insights you have observed when looking at student grade data within courses? Please highlight one or more of these observations.

When students are given a chance to expand on their level of thinking, this opens the door to opportunities of improved overall success rates. Such as when students are able to go from minimally recalling information or demonstrating a basic understanding of content, they can mature into applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating this information that leads to a better grade. 

PROGRAM QUALITY – ASSESSMENT PLAN:


5. Please review your department’s 7-Year Plan and Course Crosswalk for accuracy and completion. Does the course crosswalk accurately reflect the courses offered by your department? Are all courses offered being assessed once within a seven-year span and are all program outcomes included within your department’s courses assessed at least once during the plan. Update your plan to include seven years moving forward from this year. Submit your updated plan along with the Winter Quarter Program Audit Report.

Yes, all psychology classes are assessed once within a seven-year span.

LAB FEES:


6. Does your department maintain a lab fee account?

  1. If yes, please answer the remaining questions regarding lab budgets.
  2. If no, please skip the remaining questions regarding lab budgets.

No.

7. Is the lab account balance adequate to cover consumable expenses?

  1. If no, have fees been reviewed? Why/why not? What is needed to ensure consumables are covered. Discuss. (Should this discussion be used to request a fee increase?)
  2. If yes, do fees need to be reduced? Discuss.

8. Is the lab account balance adequate for purchasing needed equipment/technology updates?

  1. If no, do fees need to be increased to help support these? What is needed and what will it cost? How much do the fees need to increase? Discuss. (Should this discussion be used to request a fee increase?)
  2. If yes, what will be purchased and when? 

TECHNOLOGY:

9. Does your department have the technology available that is needed within courses to prepare students for transfer? Discuss.

Our department specifically does not have the technology available that is needed within courses, however, BBCC has the available technology for students to use on campus or check out to bring home such as a laptop.

10. Review your current equipment/technology inventory. Are there equipment/technology purchases that you think that you may need within the next three years. Please discuss equipment/technology where replacement/update is needed or where technology/equipment i obsolete. Have you planned for these purchases within your lab fee account, if you have one? How do you plan to budget for these purchases?

Schoolwide, not just program wide, we need faster internet and some maintenance specifically in 1601 regarding the recording abilities. Kaja would like an in depth labeled model of the brain. Kaja has included the brain model in the social sciences budget. We would also appreciate a tutorial or training on how to use the promethean boards.

INTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS:

11. Provide information about how your department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific internal partnerships/relationships. Briefly describe the partnerships you have been working to develop and what the outcome(s) of those partnerships has been. What are you considering or planning to do in the future?

Our department has been involved with the criminal justice department as well – bouncing off material between one another and interacting on a regular basis. Without our department we emphasize our program through having an internal partnership with history, sociology, and anthropology as well as we recommend one another’s courses. Regarding considerations for the future, we have briefly discussed developing a stronger focus on integrated social sciences at BBCC. 

 

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report SPRING

PROGRAM QUALITY – ASSESSMENT:

We are required by our accrediting body, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), to document our assessment of student learning activities. Specifically, we are expected to assess student learning in our programs, to design and implement changes in our teaching intended to improve student learning, and to use further assessment of student learning to measure the impact of those changes on student learning.

Please review the assessment work you did over each of the past three years and then respond to these questions.

1. Based on your prior assessments, what were the issues (problems) that you were trying to address in an effort to improve student learning?

We have addressed issues of improving thorough student engagement with online assignments. With this, we have also been able to look at these issues and changes influencing students' engagement and grades. Additionally, we have further clarified issues of students’ abilities in providing and integrating resources when addressing content.

2. What changes did you make in your instruction and/or program to address the problems identified in the question above?

Kaja – Changed discussion post assignment requirements.
David – Increased clarification on the expectations for the end of the course assessment. This allowed for students to provide and integrate multiple resources while addressing content in their end of the quarter assessment.

3. After implementing your changes, what impact did the changes have on student learning? How do you know/What did the data tell you?

Kaja – Discussion post comments became more thorough and genuine.
David – Students showed they were able to integrate different forms of evidence/resources/material to their learning. Students were able to communicate as well as solve problems by gathering, interpreting, combining, and applying information from multiple sources to a familiar summary assignment.

4. What are the implications for your academic program or department? (What are your next steps now?/What will you do to close the loop?)

Our plans moving forward include continuing to make sure the assessed problems/issues are applicable to future courses.

PROGRAM QUALITY – OUTCOMES:

5. Did your department invest in technology or equipment used to improve content delivery or student performance? If so, please describe the purchase and the impact it has had on content and/or student performance.

Our department did not invest in any technology or equipment this year. A brain model(s) will be ordered to be used in class sessions which we anticipate will have a positive impact on content/student learning and performance.

6. Please provide examples of any innovative projects, initiatives, or state-of-the-art equipment undertaken in the last year. Please describe and include links to any social media posts and/or press/media coverage, if applicable.

Our department has not provided any of this in the last year.

7. What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to program quality and/or program improvement this year?

The most noteworthy development with respect to program quality and improvement has been the high demand for these courses. Hiring an extra 1/3rd professor (Kaja E.) to administer to this has aided to this.

8. What were the most significant challenges (e.g. funding, enrollment, performance, staff retention or turnover, equity, etc.) encountered in the last year? How could BBCC assist in addressing these challenges?

Funding an additional full-time psychology instructor would be a huge benefit to our department. Especially as enrollment rates are high and there is a high demand for psychology courses.

FACULTY/STAFF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

9. Please provide brief descriptions and dates of professional development in which you and members of your department have participated in the last year.

David attended an anthropology conference in Seattle, WA in November 2022. In addition, we consider our division meetings professional development in which David and I as well as the rest of our division discuss mutual content, intertwined topics and curriculum, and scheduling.

10. What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to faculty/staff retention and professional development this year?

The hiring of an additional full-time psychology professor.

11. Select the methods employed to provide professional development opportunities for faculty/staff. Provide a brief description of each selection. 

☐New Instructor Conference/Boot Camp - Kaja attended a new instructor orientation prior to Week 0.
☐Deans Academy
☐Return-to-Industry
☐Faculty Peer Mentoring - Kaja has been peer mentored by Mercedes Gonzalez.
☐Professional Development Days -Week 0.
☐Distance Learning Training - David participated in the RTC (Renton Technical College) Winter Quarter E-Learning seminar/course.
☐Technology and E-Learning Tools - Week 0.
☐Data and Assessment Workshops - Week 0 and In-Services. David is also on the assessment committee and discusses data and assessment.
☐Subject Matter Conferences - David attended the anthropology conference which was indirectly/directly related to psychology.
☐Other

K-12 COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS:

12. Does your department provide opportunity for College in the High School or CTE Dual Credit with area high schools?

  1. If yes, list the classes and the schools. PSYC& 100 in Mattawa (Wahluke HS). Kaja is planning on being a College in the High School mentor with Othello HS and Moses Lake HS. We also have two dual credit agreements (PSYC& 200) with Othello HS and Westside High School, Wenatchee.
  2. If yes, could these offerings be expanded? How?
    Yes, if we hired an additional FT psychology faculty member.
  3. If no, is this an area that can be developed? How?

13. Provide information about how your department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific external partnerships/relationships with K-12 schools and the communities in our service district. What K-12 partners are you working with and what communities are you working in? What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to high school partnerships? What are you considering or planning to do in the future?

PSYC& 200 is being provided as a dual enrollment program with Othello HS and Westside High School, Wenatchee. Starting Spring 2023 Kaja is signing on as a CiHS mentor with Othello HS and Moses Lake HS.

14. Please describe any outreach events you have participated in as a department. What plans do you have in the future to participate in outreach events with our service district communities?

Kaja is planning to continue with CiHS and David is planning to continue with the dual enrollment with PSYC& 200.

PROGRAM AUDIT SUMMARY/REFLECTION:

15. What are some key things you have learned about your program/department as you completed the program audit?

Overall, we are confident in what we are offering. We regularly have extensive waitlists for psychology courses. Students overall have at least a 75% and higher success rate. Students voice that they enjoy our psychology courses and find that they are remarkably interesting and personally valuable to their own lives.

16. What are the primary actions you have taken over the past three years to improve student outcomes in your program/department? Why were you focusing on these things? How do you know you are making progress?

We hired an additional psychology faculty member. Our courses and syllabi have aligned to create a standard for what we are trying to achieve in our classes and at the institutional level. We are connecting our psychology content and courses to the APA Student Learning Outcomes Common Core.

17. What goals do you want to accomplish over the next three years to improve your program/department?

In the next three years, we hope to create a safe “psych stem center” in the 1600 building. This will be considered an area where students can sit and be present, work on material for any of their courses, take a deep breath, destress, have a snack and visit with fellow students, have calming bird music playing, etc. We would love to hang psychology posters with topics on mental health awareness, mindfulness, stress awareness, healthy coping skills, etc. We also want to try to have more psychology-related community outreach with professionals in the field. We want to have psychology professionals come in to class as guest speakers where students can ask questions and hear about their experience. Similarly, having psychology professors from universities coming in to be guest speakers would be great as well.

We would love to advertise our social science programs/classes, relative job opportunities, posters, and helpful information for students right as they walk into the 1600 building. This way students can take time to read about different social science classes that are being offered, see transfer opportunities for programs/careers at the university level, etc.