January 29, 2002, 2002 Minutes


Members present: Trudy Banta, Karen Black, Victor Borden, Sharon Hamilton, Sara Heiliger, Susan Kahn, Steve MacLaughlin

Members absent: None

Demonstration of new portfolio site and entry for self-study

Susan showed the iPort site located at: http://www.iport.iupui.edu/.

The following suggestions were made:

  • Steve is going to link the videos on the front page and create an icon to indicate to users that the photos link to videos
  • Vic suggested washing out the gold on the navigation bar
  • Trudy suggested eliminating gold from the page and using black, white, and red
  • Karen suggested adding a search function to the site. Steve responded that if there is a search function and reviewers cannot find something, they may assume we have no information on that topic
  • Vic added that an index might work better or that we might create different types of searches to enable reviewers to search the self-study only, the whole portfolio, or all of IUPUI
  • In the self-study section, the navigation bar will serve as the table of contents, beginning with the mission at the top.
  • Susan added that there will be a table of contents at the beginning of each major section, so it will be easy to jump from subsection to subsection.
  • A Navigation Guide was suggested to help reviewers understand the structure of the portfolio/self-study.
  • Trudy suggested using lots of pictures of the city throughout the portfolio

Karen explained that reviewers typically divide up by topics or sections of the self-study they are responsible for. This is another reason why a search function might be helpful.

Steve will make a mock-up of some sample pages and submit them to the group.

Since NCA requires that minutes of relevant committees be available to the visiting need, we will need to request meeting minutes from the Civic Engagement Task Force and the Future Group. The minutes can then be linked to the self-study.

Trudy suggested that we begin now to ask for videos/photographs and examples of student work for the portfolio. For example, the School of Engineering has some capstone projects that could be featured.

Status of self-study plan (incorporating Future Group"s comments), review team, Civic Engagement special emphasis

The self-study plan has been revised, in accord with the Future Group"s comments. Their main concern was we incorporate language explaining why research, scholarship, and creative activity are not among the special emphases.

Susan also made some wording changes to the goals and objectives and to the civic engagement section of the plan. The civic engagement changes will need to approved by Bob Bringle"s group.

Discussion of Workshop

Sharon Hamilton is putting together a workshop, scheduled for April 12th, to engage faculty in beginning to describe levels of competence in the PULs. She hopes to have about 100 participants divided into 10 teams. She will solicit volunteers from PRAC and at the upcoming Moore Symposium. University Library is the most likely venue for this event.

Susan suggested that Sharon bring sign-up sheets to the next PRAC meeting. Trudy suggested including associate faculty in the group.

Sara will check to see whether other events are taking place on that date.

Milestones draft

Karen shared the teaching and learning milestones document and asked for additions or revisions from the group. There will be two separate milestones documents, one for teaching and learning and one for civic engagement.

Susan suggested that a short narrative go along with this document.

Sara will add links to the document where appropriate and will look into whether we have existing descriptions of the items it includes.

Committee members briefly discussed the focus of the teaching and learning self-study: are we assessing our assessment efforts or are we assessing teaching and learning?

Trudy answered that the focus is on assessing teaching and learning, using information derived from assessment efforts.

Discussion of draft team agenda

Karen passed out a draft team agenda, and logistics for NCA visit and explained that the focus of the visit will be on the special emphases. We will need to decide on the key people for the review team to meet with for each of the special emphases self-studies.

We do not know yet whether the team will split up for meetings or whether team members will go to Columbus.