Standards, Courses & Curricula (SCC) Subcommittee

June 21, 2006 Meeting Notes

Committee Chair: Sean Gallagher.

Agenda for the second meeting - June 21 , 2006 9:30-11:30 at the Capital Center

9:30 - 9:35 Introductions, opening remarks
  Review of OPAS SCC Mission and SCC Subcommittee task
  Review & Approval of Minutes
  Oregon State Technology Report by the Education Research Center
  State Board of Education Update Article

 

 Review: What does an engineering curriculum look like? – Gallagher
    1. Embedded
    2. Stand-alone
    3. Integrated
    4. Relationship to Science & Math

 

 STRUT Report (Students Recycling Used Technology)
 

Inquiry Based Science Report - Ken
 

Action Item: Outcomes

Identify as a group the expected outcomes for this committee

  1. What would I like to see as a participating member?
  2. Timeline
  3. Education levels on which to focus
  Action Item: Assign tasks

 

 

Future Meetings

  1. Virtual
    1. Phone, Web, etc,,,
  2. Face-to-face
  Other business
- 11:30 Scheduling of next meeting and adjournment

 

Notes posted June 29, 2006 - download the pdf

OPAS Standards, Courses, and Curricula (SCC)
Capital Center
June 21, 2006 9:30 – 11:30

Attending:  Ron Jantzi (Chemeketa CC); Ken Cone (OUS); Brad Naas (Alder Creek MS, ITEA); Sean Gallagher (Hermiston HS); Jo Oshiro (OUS;) Bruce Schafer (OUS); Walt Mayberry (retired industry exec); Rane Stempson (Microsoft); Susan Boyanovsky (CCWD)

Summary:

Welcome & Introductions:

Relevant highlights from these brief bios:

  • There has been a tremendous decline in technology literacy last 5 years Clackamas area.
  • Many students come to Chemeketa Community College who are “so underprepared to do much of anything.”
  • Standalone programs are easy targets when budgets get tight.

 

Review of OPAS Mission, SCC Subcommittee Task:

  • OPAS Vision for the year 2020:  All Oregonians have the opportunity to explore, choose, and successfully pursue engineering or applied science as their field of study and career, thereby helping Oregon’s industries contribute to state economic needs, and innovate and prosper in the global economy.  Adopted June 2006.

 

  • SCC Mission as Defined at the OPAS Summit 2005:  Improving standards and aligning courses to standards.  Identifying gaps in curricula and course content to fill them.  Continuous improvement to curriculum to assure the highest quality courses.
  • SCC Strategic Recommendations as Defined at the OPAS Summit 2005: 

 

  • Develop standard outcomes and pre-requisite knowledge and skills for core 100-200 level engineering science;
  • Develop assessments based on standard outcomes and rubrics.

OPAS subcommittees plug into a family of committees; while we are tackling this mission and breaking it down into tasks, remember that some can be passed on to other committees, may already be covered by other committees or other organizations.  The committee might also seek grants.

Our target audience is K-14.  Our goals, in order of priority, are to increase the number of

  1. 4 year degrees
  2. 2 year degrees.

A rich and wide discussion ensued.  The outcome is summarized here;  see the Discussion Points following for greater detail and ensuing research.

Focus Areas/ Action Items:

  • Evaluate Massachusetts Standards – Ken
  • Evaluate Oregon Math & Science Standards – Ken & Jeremy
  • Evaluate ITEA Standards
  • Use wiki to communicate ideas – in configuration by Ken & Jo, 6/29/06
  • Evaluate 4 yr Engineering program admissions requirements
    • See summary document - http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/SCC/Eng_Admit_Req.pdf.
    • Do our potential recommendations align with these requirements?
  • Recommend application of theory in core academic areas
  • EPIC – Awareness of goals
    • SB 342 B
    • Bruce and Jo will draft a list of questions to guide a conversation with Principal Investigator David Conley, so that his current progress can inform all interested OPAS Committees.
  • Jo will give the OPAS Marketing Committee a heads-up on today’s discussion of these needs:
    • Increased communication to K12 teachers, counselors, students and parents on reasonable (not minimal) standards for college preparedness.
    • Channel of communication to local school boards
      • Textbook adoption
      • Graduation requirements

Goal/Target:
To provide recommendations to ODE, the State Boards of Education, and other influential entities to maximize student access to and success in engineering coursework.

Next Meeting:  Tuesday July 25, 2006 1:00 – 3:00

Discussion Points:

Brainstorm: What do we want to see as outcomes?

  • Consideration of ITEA Standards
  • Increase the number of (4 year) degrees
  • Increase the number of two year degrees
  • Improve technology literacy amongst all students
  • Influence state standards
  • Increase communication to K-12 schools to prepare students for post-secondary engineering requirements
  • Tools &/or information for counselors to be able to counsel students for course choice and career options
  • Active role to allow students to apply math and science skills
  • Influence entire state somehow
  • Make a recommendation on Academic Enhancement, Technical Enhancement, & Redesign strategies
  • The best way to influence curriculum statewide is through state standards
    • Dollars
    • Engineering Standards
    •  Teacher Training
  • Bridge industry and education
  • Increased academic rigor starting in 6th grade
  • Infuse theory in academic courses with application
  • How can we reach all Oregonians and effect change in the core academic courses?
  • Provide passionate advocates to influence state level – funding, standards, policy
  • Class size effects quality of education because of
    • Contact time
    • Chaos level
  • Strategy to provide information to school boards on graduation requirements, importance of challenging coursework
  • Recommend textbook adoptions to ODE that might influence engineering curriculum
  • Consider making a recommendation to State Board of Education on third year science requirement and graduation requirements (We have since learned that textbooks are adopted at the District level.)
  • Integrate technology education into math and science curriculum
  • Teacher training & preparation, including pre-service

 

Related Work/ Resources:

  • This document spells out allowable uses of Perkins Funding: http://www.ode.state.or.us/opportunities/grants/perkins/perkinsataglance.pdf
  • SB 342-B: The Development of General Education Outcomes.
    • Staff Measure Summary of the legislation: http://opas.ous.edu///Materials/12.2%20SB%20342B.pdf
    • Go to this web site to learn about this work and to comment.  As you can see, there will an opportunity for additional feedback and edits from other voices, which might very well include engineering and computer science faculty …   http://www.ous.edu/aca/forums.html
  • Summary of Update on the State Assessment and Content Panel for Science (SACPS) given by Bill Becker to this committee on 5/24/06: http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/OPASS/SACPS-SummaryMay2006.pdf
  • “The Information Edge: Using Data to Accelerate Achievement” - Report on the state of technology in education in the state of Oregon (mostly as integration of office technology – computers, word processing, spreadsheets – and electronic testing), part of a national report: http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2004/10/15/tc-archive.html
  • Bloom’s taxonomy: (Taxonomy of Educational Objectives) a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for students. http://www.answers.com/Bloom's%20Taxonomy
  • Engineered Communities – this meeting of Community College educators was revived, in part inspired by the OPAS Summit 2005, in March 2006 to discuss course outcomes and alignment.   Jo is attempting to get a summary of activities from the organizers.
  • UO Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) Grant (funded by ETIC at $99,530) - http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/ACSW/UO_EPIC.pdf.  Bruce and Jo will be developing a list of questions for PI David Conley, to structure an update on grant work for various OPAS committees
  • Oregon Math Standards: http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=20. Jeremy Tucker of the OPAS staff is summarizing these.
  • Oregon Science Standards: http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=22. Jeremy Tucker of the OPAS staff is summarizing these.
  • ITEA Standards
    • Executive Summary - http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/OPASS/Execsum_ITEA_Stds.pdf
    • Technology for all Americans: A Rationale and Structure for the Study of Technology – http://www.iteaconnect.org/TAA/PDFs/Taa_RandS.pdf
    • Standards (258 page pdf) -http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/OPASS/ITEA_Standards.pdf
    • Technical Curriculum Checklist -http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/OPASS/Tech_Curriculum_Checklist.pdf
  • AAAS Project 2061,A long-term AAAS initiative to advance literacy in Science, Mathematics, and Technology- http://www.project2061.org/
  • Entrance requirements for Incoming Freshman at a variety of Oregon and highly respected colleges and universities with Engineering Programs have been summarized in a separate document available at http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/SCC/Eng_Admit_Req.pdf.
  • Massachusetts State Standards - http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/ (Ken)
  • New Jersey State Standards - http://www.state.nj.us/njded/aps/cccs/
  • Maryland State Standards - http://www.mdk12.org/mspp/index.html
  • New York State Standards - http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/
  • Workforce 2005 - http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=238 - The Workforce 2005 Task Force was created by SB 364 for the purpose of examining career and professional technical education as a unified system of education, workforce and economic development. The task force shall report its findings and recommendations to the Seventy-fourth Legislative Assembly.
  • ODE research showing PTE students have a higher graduation rate: From Megan Helzerman at Clackamas ESD: 
  • Duncan Wyse White Paper for OSBE discussing possible changes in graduation requirements:  http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/SCC/Duncan_WhitePaper2.pdf
  • High School Graduation requirements
  • Paper – “Understanding by Design”
  • England – work on design – while I have found some very interesting websites on Co-curricular and academic education, I have not yet found anything that looks particularly germane to the design of new curricul, standards, and pedagogical methods.  Any and all leads appreciated – Jo.
  • Students Recycling Used Technology – Strut - http://www.oregonstrut.org/
  • AP Pre-Engineering Class – not available on the College Board AP website; may be under development in concert with ITEA; Brad Naas has a brochure for AP “Engineering Design” which he will get to Jo.
  • A summary of the Career Pathways work is available at http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/CreatingPathwaysMap.pdf.  This link is on the OPAS Career Pathways subcommittee webpage.

Discussion Points:

Ron: The Career Pathways movement aims to help students understand what they need to succeed those first few years in college – math, science, writing.

Sean: Ron you are saying we need increased communication to the K12 world: teachers, counselors, and especially students and parents don’t understand.  SCC can provide guidance to marketing group to provide that communication.

Rane: Counselors dealing with behavioral issues don’t have time for career pathways stuff.

Brad: Brochures will miss the boat.  We need to take an active role in making them apply math, science, computers – that’s technology education.  District at MS cut all the computer class.  Must influence entire state.  Look at New Jersey, Maryland, New York.  Most of the engineering students now coming from the east coast.

Bruce:  Top down public policy or bottom up grass roots intervention.  Massachusetts has good standards, but is having trouble getting local schools to implement them.  Trying many different pilot studies to figure out to implement.

Sean:  We must influence state standards

Rane: Business partnerships discussed on Workforce 2005 in which guest teachers come on a recurring basis.

Susan:  Anything we can do to teach teachers what engineers and CS do is good.

Brad:  “Academic rigor” a dangerous phrase.  Watch out because to some that means just more math taught the same way pushed harder.  While if you pull in the applied, the relevance, you get more kids to get it.  We can teach math in a technology class.  We can teach science in a technology class.

Bruce: for most kids we are teaching math and science wrong.

Sean:  Roll the application and theory into one.

Brad/Rane:  “Applied math” is a dangerous label.

Ron:  We are seeing kids who succeed in math in CC (finally, after years) and get through Calculus are the ones who eventually graduate in engineering.

Bruce: Can we integrate engineering into math and science curriculum, becoming part of a nationwide movement?.  Is it possible to teach to the same outcomes, just teach in a different way?  Can we find someone who has done that in some other state?  Inquiry based science:  Separate from our effort, there’s a national movement away from teaching science as a bunch of facts.  Is there leverage for us in the inquiry movement?

Walt: separation of science and engineering is not appropriate at MS level, there’s a lot of fuzziness.

Susan – Need more math and science faculty actively engaged in this conversation.  Need to define pre-engineering are we talking about HS seniors or college juniors?

Current debate:  should minimum HS graduation requirements be the same as college entrance requirements?  Watch out for unintended consequences – for instance, if CS fulfills math requirements, some kids may take CS rather than pre-calculus, and we’d rather they take pre-calc.

Susan:  Local school boards have tremendous influence in what graduation requirements are and what gets funded.  OPAS needs a strategy to provide information to school boards.

Bruce: Legislature and ODE can set minimum graduation requirements.  Local school boards decide how to interpret that.  We have direct contacts with 3 or 4 members of the Board of Education. When it comes to textbooks, it depends on what’s available.  Oregon doesn’t get to influence what goes in to textbooks – that’s California and Texas.  We might choose to look at what textbooks are available and make recommendations.

Oregon is experiencing a Brain Drain because of tax structure – teachers, administrators, families.

Respectfully submitted by Jo Oshiro, 6/29/06

For questions or information regarding this webpage, please email Jo Oshiro or call (503) 725.2910.