GENERAL EDUCATION CLUSTER PROGRAM
FOCUS GROUP REPORT
2001-2002
Report Prepared by
Michael J. Strait, Director
Assessment & Testing
October, 2002
Executive Summary
For students, the most positive aspect of the Cluster Program was the opportunities it created to make friends and develop a social network during the first year of college. The most negative aspect of the experience, from the students’ point of view, was the inflexibility of class scheduling.
The most positive aspect of the Cluster Program for faculty was the stimulation of exchanging ideas and working collaboratively with colleagues from other departments. The most negative aspect of the experience, represented most concretely in ballooning class sizes, was the lack of institutional supports and controls deemed necessary for the Cluster Program to more consistently achieve and sustain its potential educational effectiveness.
The Cluster Program Objectives (Communications, Problem Solving, Information Competence, Connected Learning, and Awareness of Diversity) were not generally recognized by students as objectives of the cluster program, and were not generally assessed as objectives by faculty in their Cluster courses.
These were the most general findings of a number of small focus groups convened by the Office of Assessment & Testing during the Winter Quarter of 2002, to collect information on the experiences of students and faculty with the General Education Cluster Program at CSUH. The focus groups were conceived as one component of an ongoing program evaluation and assessment of student learning outcomes of the University’s general education program. Although focus groups were conceived as a component of the proposed assessment plan for the General Education Cluster Program from its inception in 1998, this was the first time that focus groups have actually been conducted.
Other findings from student focus groups included:
· Students reported having mostly good instructors, but experience with instructors varied enormously, from instructors who were very enthusiastic and made every effort to fuse all courses together, to instructors who seemed very unorganized, cut classes short and made few demands on students.
· Students reported mostly good experiences with discipline courses in the Clusters, but their experience with integration or linkages among discipline courses in the cluster and between discipline courses and support courses varied considerably.
· Some students said the level of effort and the content covered in their Cluster discipline courses was not that different from high school: for some that was positive because it served as review and eased the stress of acclimating to college life; for others it was reported as a letdown which lulled them into complacency until encountering more difficult upper division major courses
· No students complained that their Cluster discipline courses were too difficult.
· Some students—both current freshmen and current juniors and seniors looking back—found the support courses (General Studies and Library, in particular) useless repetition of things learned in high school, while others found them to be very helpful.
· Whether or not students found the support courses personally useful, most felt strongly that the General Studies and Library courses required too much work for only one unit of credit.
· Students recognized the benefit of being able to get all their lower division general education requirements out of the way in the first two years.
· Students did not feel adequately informed when choosing a Cluster as freshmen.
Other findings from the faculty group concerning student learning include:
· Faculty observed that students did increase their social networking and developed friendships in the Cluster as the freshman year progressed.
· Faculty that have taught sophomores before and after the beginning of the Cluster Program observed that skills of sophomores have improved with the Cluster Program.
· Some faculty felt that many first-time freshmen lack knowledge of, or do not observe, basic decorum in the classroom, but other faculty spoke as if they learned to tolerate, or even enjoy, the more energetic or even boisterous manner of the freshmen compared to juniors, seniors, and graduate students.
· Faculty don’t hear second year professors complain about the same thing first year professors complain about, and take this as evidence that students change.
· Faculty observed that many students do not have the reading and writing skills they need to be successful at the college level; that they offer help and spend considerable time helping the few who ask, but that most do not take advantage of the offer.
· Some faculty acknowledged that they do not know how to deal with unmotivated students, or with students who need, but do not seek, additional help.
· The concern was expressed that by locking students into the clusters we were not giving students the choices they should get as college students, particularly with the sophomore Clusters.
· It was observed that first-time freshmen come in with misconceptions about what it means to be a college student and what college is about with respect to freedom to choose courses; that this is something they learn over time and that it doesn’t seem to help to tell them.
Other positive benefits for faculty of the Cluster Program included:
· Learned to be better prepared for classes.
· Gained new knowledge from faculty colleagues in the Cluster.
· Enjoyed opportunity to teach and interact with non-majors.
· Enjoyed opportunity to teach in one’s area of expertise in contrast to teaching what is needed within the departmental major.
· Enjoyed opportunity to see new students develop as learners and get excited about learning.
Most negative comments of faculty centered on the lack of institutional supports and controls deemed necessary for the Cluster Program to more consistently achieve and sustain its potential educational effectiveness.
· Faculty found it was difficult to connect with other faculty in their Cluster to coordinate and integrate courses, and expressed a need for more program support for collaboration.
· The concern was expressed that by electing to have many Cluster courses taught by lecturers and inexperienced graduate students, the University was undermining an original goal of the Cluster Program: to have first-year students experience faculty not just in, but beyond, the classroom as part of the campus learning community.
· It was suggested that the problems of teaching first-year students may warrant a dedicated General Education faculty, possibly by rotating responsibility among regular faculty; that at the very least, we haven’t experimented enough with who should teach in the Cluster Program.
· It was also observed however, with respect to experimentation, that we have perhaps experimented enough with different course structures in the Cluster Program; that we know some things work better than others and that it was time to acknowledge that some structures haven’t worked.
· It was observed that, in several ways, appropriate institutional support for the Cluster Program was lacking; that departments frequently made decisions about Cluster participation and Cluster class size to solve problems of resource allocation within the department unrelated to Cluster needs.
This report details the results of a series of small focus groups convened by the Office of Assessment & Testing during the Winter Quarter of 2002, to collect information on the experiences of students and faculty with the General Education Cluster Program at CSUH.
The focus groups were conceived as one component of an ongoing program evaluation and assessment of student learning outcomes of the University’s general education program. Although focus groups were part of the original assessment plan for the General Education Cluster Program, this was the first time that focus groups have actually been conducted. The Office of Assessment & Testing and the General Education Office are committed to using focus groups on an annual basis as a method of qualitative assessment, evaluation, and improvement.
The student focus groups included random samples from the pool of currently enrolled CSUH students from the entering classes of 1998 and 1999, and random samples of current freshmen by Cluster. Current sophomores were not interviewed due to lack of time and personnel, but will be interviewed in 2002-2003, as will currently enrolled CSUH students from the entering class of 2000.
The faculty focus groups included tenure-stream faculty from the Humanities Clusters and Social Science Clusters, and lecturers from the Science Clusters, currently teaching discipline courses in a freshmen or sophomore cluster. Attempts to form focus groups including tenure-stream faculty from the Science Clusters, and lecturers from the Humanities and Social Science Clusters, were unsuccessful. Every effort will be made to form focus groups of tenure-stream faculty and lecturers from all three cluster divisions in 2002-2003. If sufficient time and resources are available, focus groups of faculty who have not participated in the Cluster program will also be conducted.
Plans to do focus groups in 2001-2002 with faculty teaching in linked courses (English, Library, Speech, and General Studies) were dropped due to lack of time and personnel. If sufficient time and resources are available, focus groups with faculty teaching in linked courses will also be conducted in 2002-2003.
Focus groups were conducted in February and March of 2002, by Michael Strait, Director of the Office of Assessment & Testing, Sue Opp, Professor of Biological Sciences, and Linda Beebe, Program Coordinator of the General Education Program. Each group was started with a standard introduction and followed a standard protocol fully described in Appendix A.
In brief, students and faculty alike were asked first to talk about their most positive experiences with the Cluster Program, then to talk about their most negative experiences. If a very particular experience was described, the speaker was asked to say what this was an example of; if a broad generalization was made, the speaker was asked to give an example. Participants were then asked to comment specifically on experiences with in the Cluster Program relevant to the following five Cluster Program Objectives: Communication skills, Problem Solving, Information Competency, Connected Learning, and Awareness of Diversity. Each focus group lasted from 30 minutes to an hour, and was recorded to eliminate the need for extensive notetaking. Participants were assured that everything they said would remain completely confidential and anonymous in any publication of results.
Results
Entering Classes of 1998 and 1999
The entering class of 1998 was the first to experience the new General Education Cluster program. Current students from the 1998 and 1999 entering classes making normal progress toward their degree are now seniors and juniors, respectively. Student focus group participants from the entering classes of 1998 and 1999 represented student experience with the following Freshmen Clusters in those years:
Humanities
Asian Thought
Great Works of Artistic & Religious Inspiration
Language, Culture & Literature
Social Sciences
Individual & Society
Science, Technology & Society
Viewing Diversity
Sciences
Healthier Living
How Things Work
These students also experienced an equally broad distribution of Sophomore Humanities, Social Science, and Science Clusters.
While this broad representation of experience with respect to Clusters partially validates the success of the sampling process, these students were not fully representative of their entering classes: the pool from which these students were randomly selected was limited to active CSUH students who had completed the general education requirements. In other words, these are the reflections of students who have succeeded academically and are progressing, in the traditional way, toward completion of their undergraduate degree. They may not represent the experience of students from their entering classes who have not succeeded academically, or who are not currently active CSUH students for whatever reasons.
From the perspective of these current juniors and seniors, the most positive aspect of the Cluster Program was the opportunities it provided to make friends and develop a social network during the first year of college. Interestingly, for most students, this social network was replaced by a new circle of friends in subsequent years, but even those who said they no longer associate with any of their freshmen cluster classmates emphasized the value of having that first-year social network made possible by the Cluster Program. Some students said that they were still, as juniors or seniors, close friends with some students they met in their freshmen Cluster classes. And some students looked back nostalgically on the social aspect of their Cluster experience, saying that now, as juniors and seniors, they hardly knew anyone at all.
While this social networking aspect of the Cluster experience was positive for most students, there were some students who judged it negatively, saying either that is was helpful at first, but they got tired of seeing the same people in virtually every class for the whole year; or that they didn’t develop friendships in their Cluster and thus felt deprived by the Cluster structure from having opportunities to meet other students that a less structured system may have afforded.
Another thing about the Cluster Program that juniors and seniors noted as positive was getting all their lower division general education requirements done during the first two years. But even this was not a universal opinion. Some students expressed a wish that they could have mixed their lower division general education classes and classes for their major a little more to balance out the more demanding major requirements with what they experienced as much less demanding lower division courses.
The modular structure of the Cluster program, with groups of courses that met general education requirements and were offered as a package, was appreciated as a structure intended to help students be less confused about what to take as new freshmen.
Some students recalled their General Studies courses as a “fun experience,” with a very enthusiastic instructor who made an effort to fuse all courses together. They remembered positive experiences like putting together a newspaper, and taking field trips. However, for some students, a field trip experience was the only positive thing they could remember about their General Studies class, and not all field trips were remembered positively.
The most negative aspect of the experience, from the students’ point of view, was the inflexibility of class scheduling, which limited opportunities to take non-cluster courses and to make schedule adjustments in response to changing work requirements and other personal commitments. These perspectives were the most commonly expressed, but not universal. Some students experienced the salient social aspect of the Cluster program—having many classes the first year with basically the same 90 or so students—as preventing them from seeking and forming relationships with students outside their Cluster. Some students experienced the fixed schedule of the Cluster program as a benefit, making it easier to plan the rest of their lives accordingly.