Evaluation Subcommittee Meeting Minutes
February 13, 2002
Present: Rarey, Kellner, Duerson, Archer, Ritz, Allen, Karle, Rooks, Romrell, Hatch
Absent: Dr. Watson
Dr. Rarey stated that he has informed the Course Directors to use same guidelines as last year and requested your comments to give better feedback to directors.
Student membership: Dr.Rarey asked the committee to consider having two first-year students to rotate through this subcommittee. Ten first-year students have an interest in being on this committee.
Jeremy Archer and Dr. Rarey have picked out three who were interested, #10, #6 or 7 (Robin or Tighe). Jeremy will meet with the second two to get a feel for who should be on them.
Dr. Hatch suggested that the committee begin with 2 and then bring in a third student can the following year. Dr.Kellner stated the purposes of having a student on the committee: input from the student, a representative from the class to be conscious of their purpose and not bring their own personal experiences into the meeting. He stated that the committee needs someone who is not intimidated by faculty and to look for those students who have experienced aspects of curriculum that this committee has dealt with. Dr. Kellner's suggestion was to have one student a year, keeping in mind that someone who say is a 3rd year would be on the committee in the 4th year to give feedback to the committee of their clerkship experience. Dr. Rarey suggested inviting Molrine Tracey to the next meeting.
Jeremy Archer offered to help identify a student early in 1st year to stay for 4 years. Jeremy indicated that he will find a 4th year student.
Dr. Rarey proposed that we have on the committee a group of students who go through all four years to look at objectives and evaluations link up, for example, if a small group who were trained and had gone through every course, they could act independent as a group and provide feedback by giving then parameters to evaluate. This group would then see the course objectives from a different perspective, which then gives more accountability to the director.
Bill Allen inquired as to what the difference would be between that student group and those that debriefed? Dr. Rooks answered by stating that the difference is that a debriefing is a dialogue between students and the course director. The focus of a group might be to give their opinion of their learning experience, methodologies, and if they worked or not, as well as establish criteria, time distribution, teaching modalities, fairness of an exam, etc. Dr. Rarey thought that the students chosen could help the evaluation subcommittee find the redundancies in the courses. Dr. Romrell asked that one be careful in defining what this group of students is going to be doing so that this doesn't become a burden for them. Dr. Rarey indicated that we set another meeting to discuss this further. Dr. Kellner suggested students develop a checklist like they do in the debriefings with "what do we want to know." Bill Allen suggested we steer clear of choosing students who might have an axe to grind (or students who might have a negative impact) but get a balance of opinions. Bill suggested to give students a history of a given course so that they would be able to offer some constructive comments. If the history of a course if given to students at the beginning, that would help them in their evaluation of the course and at the debriefings. Bill Allen suggested asking students, "How has your mind changed as a result of this course?"
Jeremy suggested a double approach: how much did you learn without memorizing in this course? The information gathered has been useful for some but nothing is really done with the data that is gathered.
Bill: part of memorization is because they learned to succeed that way. Dr.Kellner remarked, the exam drives the learning process, and that information is only useful if it leads to action (a statement from Dr. Barron).
Dr. Rooks remarked that it's a value-laden question (memorization). Dr. Romrell says it's memorization without understanding. Dr. Rooks says the question should be, "what happened in that course that caused you to memorize?" Dr. Romrell stated that sometimes it's time constraints.
Dr. Rarey stated that the next meeting will be a discussion on PBEs.
Meeting adjourned at 12:54 pm.
