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CH Program Learning Objectives
Course Learning Outcomes:
CH 201
CH 202
CH 203
Resources and Procedures for Conducting Outcomes Assessment in CH Classes
This page is intended to guide CH faculty willing to help with our continuing assessment effort.
The first step is to incorporate specific and concrete objectives into the planning of your CH course, and then to devise ways to measure or evaluate how well you have achieved those objectives in the course of the term. You do not have to attempt a longitudinal evaluation of your students (pre- and post-tests, and the like) to contribute to our picture of how well we are meeting our program goals. The "snapshot" you take of student mastery of some of the outcomes on which you focus can certainly guide your preparation of subsequent CH courses. The data you provide will as well be aggregated with results from other courses so that we can better understand our place in achieving the objectives of the Core Curriculum, which is the proper long-term venue for longitudinal studies.
It is important to remember that, in the Core Curriculum, a signal task of the Core Humanities program is the development or enhancement of what has come to be called "critical thinking." Washington State University, through its Critical Thinking Project has neatly identified seven standards in a rubric that, in the words of the coordinators, "works mainly by demystifying the expectations that faculty have for students."
If you are uncertain about how to proceed from general goals to measured results, here is a process that may work for you:
- Look at the Student Learning Outcomes devised for the CH course you are teaching in the links to the left. (It is a good idea to put some version of these outcomes in your syllabus so that your students know what we expect them to take seriously.) Even if you state the full range of outcomes from this website, you do not have to find a way to assess all of them; you can select a few, say three or four, that will be your focus for the purpose of formal assessment during the term.
- Then devise some Performance Indicators that you feel would signal successful accomplishment of these Outcomes, with, say, a four-level scale to evaluate student performance in each Indicator category (the common three-level scale too easily biases judgment toward the middle or neutral evaluation). On some (not necessarily all) of your writing assignments and exams, work out explicitly what part of the paper assignment or exam reflects each outcome area, beyond the "answers" or "information" on which they will be graded. (For instance, several questions based on information provided only in the lectures might signal how well students are taking notes.)
- Then analyze and tabulate student performance data according to the indicators you have devised for the particular assignments chosen. In most cases, the outcome you are assessing will suggest the kind of assignment or activity (paper, exam, presentation, review, etc.) which best reflects the indicators you will measure. In all cases, be pretty explicit with the students about what they are being judged on, and what your expectations of success are. These indicators and evaluation scales that make up your Assessment Method can be useful things to work out with your teaching team, especially if you have experienced discussion leaders working with you. A concrete example of this process for CH 201 might usefully reshaped to work in your course.
