Assessment of Breadth and Depth General Education
Background
The General Education Committee is responsible for coordinating and supervising the review of the department's general education offerings. [As of 1998, these include 1030, 1710, 2030, 2040, 3020, 3030, 3040, and 3070, which are categorized as breadth or depth classes. Communication-intensive-designated classes will be reviewed by the Writing Committee.] The faculty involved in teaching these classes has the major responsibility for the design, integrity, implementation, and assessment of them, keeping in mind the Citizen Scholar goals outlined in University Studies documents. In evaluating their effectiveness, faculty will gather evidence to see if these goals are being accomplished. From what they discover, the courses will be revised to improve learning and teaching. In addition to finding out what needs work, they will also find out what works well.
Assessment of On-Campus Courses
Assessment of General Education courses is complicated by the fact that there is no body of graduating students to survey about their program experience and that teaching assignments are intentionally passed among a large number of instructors. Meeting in December of 2002, the faculty currently teaching General Education courses addressed these issues and developed the following methods to mentor and monitor the successful teaching of General Education courses.
1. Before the beginning of each semester the Chair of the Breadth and Depth Committee for General Education will distribute to all General Education instructors a copy of the University’s Citizen Scholar objectives and the Department’s objectives for breadth and depth courses. She will also inform/remind instructors of expectations for assessment (see below).
2. Following standards for authentic assessment methods, instructors will design assessment tools for their courses that make assessment an integral component of the course. Current instructors suggested the following two models; we are open to additional ideas from instructors as they come into the courses.
Survey as an assignment for the students’ daily reading journal at the end of the semester, asking the following questions: (from Charlene Hirschi)
* What have I learned in this course?
* What more would I have liked to have learned?
* What have I learned that will be useful to me in my future college classes and in my life?
Final exam asking students to evaluate their learning in the course (from Jan Roush).
At the beginning of the course, students submitted to an online discussion room their own evaluation of what they already knew about the course’s subject matter (Native American Literature). The final exam asked them to review that post as well as the online discussions of course readings, and then consider several questions about the “genre” of Native American literature. The question required students to reflect on their new understandings as a result of the course.
Breadth and Depth course instructors are invited to adapt one of these assessment tools to their own course or to develop another of their own. Instructors are responsible for summarizing the data they gather in a form that the Chair can use to write up the annual assessment report.
3. Two meetings of General Education instructors will be held each semester to discuss the courses. The first one, early in the semester, will compare readings, assignments and syllabi to open a dialogue among the semester’s. We hope to encourage instructors to talk informally with each other throughout the semester about problems and successes. The second, during the last couple of weeks of the semester, will be devoted to sharing successful ideas and methods. Though many of the instructors will not soon teach another General Education course, we believe that instructors will be able to adapt what they learn to a variety of teaching situations. The next semester’s instructors, if known, will be invited to the second meeting as an opportunity to become familiar with the course’s objectives and methods.
4. We encourage instructors to visit each other’s courses throughout the semester, again with the aim of learning teaching techniques from each other.
5. The Committee Chair will continue to visit General Education classes at least once a semester and write a review of the class for the instructor if she/he wishes.
Concurrent Enrollment
The Committee Chair will send copies of the University objectives for Breadth courses and the English Department’s objectives for 1030 to all concurrent enrollment instructors.
All teachers of concurrent English 1030 will be observed at least once a semester by an English department representative, who will write a report to submit to Continuing Education and to the Committee Chair.
The Committee Chair and Breadth course instructors will continue to provide professional development through the annual department-sponsored spring workshop.
University Studies (General Education) Goals for Breadth Humanities Courses
English 1030 is offered by the English Department as a University Studies Breadth course in the Humanities. As such, it should meet the objectives outlined in the “Citizen Scholar” philosophy statement for Humanities published in the Schedule of Classes bulletin. These are the following:
Overall Goals:
* Provide a broad and balanced perspective of the discipline.
* Explore how people achieve human self-understanding through the mediums of language, oral tradition, literature, philosophy, ethics, or other endeavors of self-explanation.
* Explore how people have come to understand themselves and to explain their actions.
* Create knowledge and promote self-understanding by comparing cultures, beliefs and historical periods.
* Understand origins and history of humanistic methods.
Learning Goals:
* Enhance well-reasoned critical thought.
* Evaluate alternative perspectives, thoughts and approaches to the humanities.
* Integrate insights across the humanities.
Skills:
* Understand and evaluate original sources.
* Complete a variety of writing assignments.
* Participate in collaborative activities.
* Further develop information literacy skills, including both electronic and traditional resources.
* Participate in discussions.
English 1030 and University Studies Breadth in the Humanities Goals
The English department has developed goals specific to English 1030 within these larger concepts. The main goal of English 1030 is to have students read a wide variety of literature to expand their understanding of how literature reflects the human condition. For this reason, the 1030 syllabus will include fiction, poetry, and drama; the authors will be chosen from British, American and World literary history; and at least one quarter of the texts will be written before the twentieth century. Students will learn the following:
* To analyze different genres of literature (fiction, poetry, drama).
* To compare and contrast the literary styles of different authors.
* To compare and contrast the thematic concerns of different authors.
* To compare and contrast texts from different historical periods.
* To use textual evidence to support critical ideas.
The English department expects students to experience in the following kinds of work:
* Write analytical essays that emphasize the logical development, organization, and support of ideas (at least 5-10 pages of formal writing for the semester).
* Participate in classroom discussion to develop students’ communication skills.
* Participate in classroom activities in which ideas and arguments are developed in collaboration.
* Perform library research projects in which basic skills are practiced.
* Take periodic tests as well as a cumulative final exam that assess student progress and learning at the end of the course.
In these courses, students will pursue a particular topic within the field of literary studies; the overarching goal of this course is depth understanding. Unlike 1030, these courses focus more narrowly upon a specific genre, or set of authors, or period of literary history. These courses set the following, more advanced goals for students, who will learn:
* To analyze the relationship between the formal structure and the thematic concerns of a text.
* To develop and support critical arguments about literary texts.
* To conduct basic research in support of those arguments.
Students may expect to perform each of the following kinds of work:
* Critical essays which emphasize the logical development, organization, and support of arguments (a total of 10-15 pages of formal writing).
* Library research in support of those arguments.
* Classroom discussion, which helps to develop students’ communication skills.
* Classroom activities in which ideas and arguments are developed in collaboration.
* Periodic tests and a cumulative final exam with assesses student learning at the end of the course.
Annual Written Report
We will communicate our findings through the appropriate channels to the department head, department curriculum committee, and the College Undergraduate Council, the General Education Subcommittee of EPC.
The department head will receive recommendations and use the findings to feed into program planning and to make decisions about resource allocations both in the department and in requests to the college.