Quality Enhancement Plan
As part of the reaffirmation process, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) requires that each member institution develop a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).
What is a QEP?
The QEP is a plan to improve student learning or the environment that supports student learning. It is a five-year action plan that an institution develops using broad-based involvement of its constituents: students, faculty, staff, administrators and local community.
The QEP describes how the institution's constituents will come together throughout the QEP process to create and direct the plan. This collaboration is an integral part of a successful QEP.
What is TCCD's QEP?
PowerOn: Critical Thinking is our comprehensive plan to develop and improve critical thinking skills in students taking key Core Curriculum courses. Read the full version of our QEPListen or the abridged version in PowerOn: Talking Points (PDF)Listen.
Faculty members will create intensive learning experiences by increasing the use of critical thinking in the classroom. Discipline-specific faculty learning communities (FLCs) serve as the driver for developing curriculum where critical thinking is explicit and pervasive
The broad-based efforts of this plan align with our mission and goals of emphasizing student learning, as established during the planning process of the District that revisited the mission and developed the strategic plan, Vision 2015.
Our operational definition of critical thinking is an active, explicit process involving:
- The effective use of knowledge or techniques,
- A deliberate examination of the elements of information,
- The logical formulation of sound judgments and
- The purposeful synthesis of information.
From this definition, we identified four student learning outcomes:
The overall objectives of PowerOn: Critical Thinking are to:
- Enhance students' ability to use critical thinking skills
- Provide a foundation and focus of sustainable development that empowers faculty members to strengthen students' critical thinking skills
- Employ effective assessment measures to fortify the plan.
Student learning outcomes will be assessed using direct and indirect measures.
Direct methods include the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, given to targeted sections of Introduction to Sociology, and course-level assessment of student artifacts using faculty-created rubrics.
Indirect methods of assessment include select questions from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement and the TCCD graduate survey. Other locally-created surveys of students, faculty members, staff and administration will be given at specific times throughout the plan.
District Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Accreditation and Planning
Updated September 06, 2019