Thursday, September 15th, 10:30 a.m. in the English department conference room (Minard 320).

Met at 10:30 a.m. Present: Betsy, Cindy, Jo, Deona, Ineke, Judy, Kevin.

1. Discuss basics—writing a problem and assessing learning. We discussed several ideas for problems, particularly problems Deona is beginning to work on about intellectual property, copyright, and plagiarism. I (Betsy) have an article that may be of interest and will photocopy and place it in mailboxes. We talked about Louise’s class on attrition/retention issues and Cindy and Kevin’s class on blogging. Cindy asked if the whole class must be problem-based, or if we can just incorporate one or two day problems and active learning strategies. We agreed that we should probably work on at least one problem and its assessment for the first semester. We then began discussing some assessment techniques: regular minute papers, pre/post tests, survey of student engagement, etc. We discussed some active learning strategies Ineke might use in her large Western History lecture and talked about think, pair, share; online group discussion boards; small group presentations tying current event to history.
2. Getting IRB exemption so we can collect, combine, and present our data. We discussed how to go about applying for an IRB exemption, the reasons it may be necessary in order to compile data to present to our funding agency. I agreed to e-mail the group with the IRB site address: http://www.ndsu.edu/research/compliance/irb/irbforms.shtml
3. Set up informal peer review. We discussed possible groups for informal peer review: a) Deona, Louise, Judy; b) Ineke, Tom; c) Kevin, Cindy; d) Betsy, Jo.
4. Possibilities for e-mail discussion (for questions/comments). We talked about taking up some unresolved questions/brainstorming problems via e-mail. Let’s see if this happens.
5. Adjourned about 11:50 a.m. (Submitted by Betsy—I think Deona has better notes on the early discussion.)

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