Program Assessment

GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAM ASSESSMENT Fall 2014—Spring 2016

OVERVIEW

EKU revised the General Education Program for Fall 2012 (GE-2012). Courses in the program are approved for four years only, and must be reapproved by the General Education Committee to remain in the program. Every course in the Program is assessed for student learning every two years, and this report includes data from the second assessment cycle fall 2014--spring 2016. Results of previous assessments can be viewed on the GE website http://gened.eku.edu/.

STATUS OF GE ASSESSMENT AT EKU

Since 2006 the Associate Dean, University Programs, has served as GE Assessment Coordinator, and has reviewed data and provided feedback to each department regarding their assessment instrument, data summary, and use of data. This year (2016) EKU is transitioning oversight of the GE assessment process to the Academic Planning and Assessment Committee (APAC), with leadership from Institutional Effectiveness. This year APAC and the Associate Dean collaborated on monitoring collection of data reports, reviewing data and narratives regarding how data were used to improve student learning, and providing feedback to faculty. Next year APAC will assume this responsibility, and will have a representative on the University GE Committee to provide guidance on assessment issues throughout the year.

Significant progress has been made over the past ten years of assessment of EKU’s GE courses. All courses now have valid assessment instruments that have been adopted by faculty, and processes have been established for collecting and analyzing assessment data within departments. Use of data has moved from a focus on instrument refinement to a focus on improving student learning. A greater number of faculty value assessment of student learning in general, and in GE courses in particular, and are actively seeking guidance on how to improve the process and outcomes in their courses.

Significant challenges still remain. As evidenced by the assessment data presented below, most students are achieving the GE competencies. While this is positive, a pattern of consistently good scores contributes little to faculty understanding of student needs, and makes it difficult for faculty to use GE data in a meaningful manner in order to improve student learning within their specific courses. Consistently high scores also requires us to question the rigor of the assessment instruments and/or scoring processes. Contributing to this problem may be the University GE Committee’s definition of “achieving” the GE competencies as including the “developing” level on the scoring rubrics. (See Operational Definition section below). There are good arguments for and against the current definition. Thus, over the next two years APAC and the University GE Committee will reconsider the operational definition of “achieve,” and discuss best practices approaches to the other challenges, with the goal of continual improvement of both the GE assessment process and the usefulness of data to faculty.

DESCRIPTION OF DATA IN THIS REPORT

There were 151 unique courses in EKU’s GE Program during this assessment cycle. Sixteen courses were not assessed because they were not offered during the assessment period (AST 130, ENG 363, ENG 364,

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 1 of 84 ENG 367, FCC 222, FCC 226, FLS 102, GER 202, MAT 234H, POL 100, POL 301, POL 356, POL 373, REL 320, REL 340, and REL 345).

Four courses were not assessed in this cycle due to faculty error (ENG 360, ENG 362, ENG 365, and SPA 105). Faculty in those departments have taken responsibility to ensure assessments are done during the next cycle (fall 2016-spring 2018).

Represented in the data tables and narratives below are 131/135 (97%) courses that were due for assessment.

Reports on how data have been used are included in Appendix B. The data in this report are summarized in the University’s strategic-planning database (TracDat).

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC PLAN

There is no longer a KPI for General Education in the University Strategic Plan. However, we continue to use the criterion established by the University General Education Committee in 2006:

 85% of students who complete general education courses will achieve the competencies for that course.

The competencies for a course are identified on the GE Element-specific, course-level scoring rubrics used to evaluate students’ responses on the assessment instrument. Competencies on each rubric are based on the GE goals addressed by each Element.

Operational Definition of “achieve.” In 2006 the University GE Committee decided that the “developing” level of accomplishment may be evidence of meeting the learning competencies. The rationale was that in a single general education course significant learning can occur even if students have not yet reached competence. Furthermore, students in GE courses vary greatly with regard to student status and major, and faculty must balance their performance expectations with the varying levels of knowledge that students bring to a GE course. Thus, “achieve” was defined liberally to include the “developing” level of accomplishment, a decision that the GE Committee will revisit in the next year.

In the current data report “achieve” is defined as the percent of students who were evaluated as “accomplished,” “competent,” or “developing.”

DATA SUMMARY Data were analyzed by calculating the percent of students who were evaluated as “accomplished,” “competent,” and “developing” for each competency, by GE Element (See Appendix A). Summary data by GE Element, collapsed across all competencies, are reported in Table 1.

Use of Data Information about how outcomes were used for faculty to improve student learning can be viewed in Appendix B.

Interpretation of Data

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 2 of 84 The percent of students who achieved the general education goals ranged from 79.3%– 93.1%. The criterion of 85% of students achieving the competencies was met in 6 of the 8 areas.

Mathematics is an area of notable weakness for students. Students demonstrate fairly good use of terminology, notation, and math operations, but are weaker on interpreting the meaning of solutions within the context of the problem, and integrating information across the course. This feedback was given to faculty in the Mathematics Department who were encouraged to discuss the outcomes data on Assurance of Learning Day in September 2016. Although faculty see outcome data for their specific course(s) they may not have considered data in the aggregate across all courses, and discussed whether overall curriculum changes are needed in mathematics courses. Assurance of Learning Day provides the opportunity for these conversations.

Another area of weakness is students’ ability to apply natural science concepts to make reasonable and valid conclusions, and use of presentation aids when making oral presentations. This information was shared with faculty in the relevant departments, again with the encouragement to discuss the data on Assurance of Learning Day.

Table 1. Students’ Achievement of General Education Competencies by Element

% Achieving GE Competencies GE Elements Aggregated Across all Rubric Criteria 1 a/b (Written Communication) 93.1%

1 c (Oral Communication) 93.0%

2 (Mathematics) 79.3%

3 a/b (Arts & Humanities) 90.6%

4 (Natural Sciences) 82.0%

5 a (Historical Perspectives) 89.9%

5 b (Social & Behavioral Science) 86.0% 6 (Diversity of Perspectives & 92.0% Experiences)

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 3 of 84 Appendix A Students’ Achievement of General Education Competencies by Element

% GE COMPENTENCIES n Achieved Element GE Competency 1 a/b: Written Communication 3 courses Audience/Tone 77 89.% Organization: Integration 80 93.0% Organization: Cohesion 74 86.1% Sentence Structure/Syntax 81 94.2% Word Choice/Vocabulary 86 100% Surface Features 81 94.2% Information Literacy 72 94.7% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 93.1%

1 c: Oral Communication 3 courses Structure 108 98.2% Content 95 86.4% Context 105 95.5% Audience Awareness 105 96.3% Oral Delivery 110 100% Nonverbal Delivery 106 96.4% Presentation Aids 26 57.8% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 93.0%

2: Mathematics 8 courses Comprehension 141 75.8% Use of Terminology/Notation 161 86.6% Execution: 141 75.8% Strategies for Problem Solving Use of Math/Logical Operations 160 84.2% Interpretation: Meaning of Solutions 146 78.5% Integration 131 74.4% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 79.3%

Continued….

GE COMPENTENCY n % General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 4 of 84 Achieved Element GE Competency 3 a/b: Arts & Humanities 30 courses Comprehension 609 92.7% Clarity of Expression 489 92.4% Formal/Structural Analysis 409 93.2% Contextual Analysis 310 88.6% Theoretical Application 473 87.6% Methods 359 84.5% Integration 536 91.6% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 90.6%

4: Natural Science 22 courses Methods 1985 87.1% Major Concepts 1821 79.7% Application: 1770 77.3% Reasonable & Valid Conclusions Application: 1840 80.0% Issues of Personal/Public Import Integration 1840 80.0% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 82.0%

5 a: Historical Perspectives 6 courses Comprehension 330 86.8% Application / Analyses / Interpretation 335 89.3% Methods / Interpretation 342 89.8% Integration 356 93.4% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 89.9%

Continued….

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 5 of 84 % GE COMPENTENCY n Achieved Element GE Competency 5 b: Social and Behavioral Science 20 courses Comprehension 1536 89.8% Application / Analysis 1481 87.2% Methods 1322 84.2% Integration 1303 82.4% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 86.0%

6: Diversity of Perspectives and Experiences 39 courses Perspectives 1184 92.1% Methods 1140 92.0% Integration 1172 90.1% Clarity of Expression 1058 93.3% Comprehension 1215 93.3% Significance 1217 93.0% Total Across all Competencies & Courses 92.0%

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 6 of 84 APPENDIX B

USE OF DATA From Assessment of General Education Courses Fall 2014 – Spring 2016

Below are unedited narratives from faculty regarding how GE assessment data were used to improve student learning.

ELEMENT 1 A: WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

ENG 102

First-Year Writing Coordinator Jill Parrott led a small-group discussion on Assurance of Learning Day on September 25, 2015, with instructors in the program to discuss ways to continue to improve our students’ facility with written communication. We all agreed that a continued relationship with the Noel Studio staff that encourages faculty to use the facilities for workshops, materials, and individual student consultations is in our best interest. We also felt that continuing to build resources and professional development for using the programmatic grading rubric will encourage best practices and increased student understanding of how those elements relate to these for assessment (ex: information literacy, coherence). A few instructors involved also felt that increased openness with the students about the elements with which the program (and they) are assessed for General Education might help them understand what the university values in their work, and the group agreed that as the revised General Education rubric takes the old one’s place that we should share it with students and instructors.

The data for 2015 confirms that our continued need for improvement in Organization: Integration and Organization: Cohesion, which were both identified in 2012 and 2013. While the vast majority of the students were scored at 2 or better levels in those two elements (93.75 and 85% respectively), the percentage of students receiving a 3 or 4 in those areas has decreased from 2013 to 2015. As identified in the 2013 report, these are perhaps the most difficult elements of students learning to write at the college-level and are certainly being improved during the year with our program. In 2013, the program rubric was identified as a way to improve these writing skills; this rubric has only become required in Spring of 2015, so we expect the 2017 report to show improvements in those and similar areas. The best and most practical tactic that we plan to put in place for the next round of assessment is to create a standard document for instructors that would provide a more controlled outline for what the assignments collected for assessment should do/be as several of the assignments collected for assessment were—by nature—ill-fitted for the assessment process. A clearer idea of what’s expected for that assignment can help our data be more meaningful and appropriate. Overall, improvement in Information Literacy and continued success with Control of Written Language and Surface Features show that the program is meeting its goals of having a majority of students receive 2s or better in all seven rubric elements. We will continue to work on improving student facility with Integration and Cohesion.

ENG 105

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 7 of 84 Moving forward, English 105 can benefit from the same tactics we have planned for the English 101/102 sequence, which were outlined in the program report for Spring 2013. Namely, these strategies include the addition of a required program-wide grading rubric that should be applied to all high-stakes graded student work and a continued strong relationship with the library and the Noel Studio. Our experiences show these relationships increase student facility with the key areas of concern (integration and cohesion). In addition, as few sections of 105 are offered (usually 2 in each Fall semester), only a few faculty members participate in this accelerated program offering. We can take advantage of this small pool of instructors by more consciously bringing these instructors together to discuss 105 to ensure consistency and increased success across these sections as part of the First-Year Writing Program.

Results of this assessment show that few students fall into the Beginning level in any category we assess, which is encouraging. Most students are either Developing or Competent across categories with a few reaching Accomplished status in Control of Written Language and Surface Features. One category the program has been watching for the past two years, Information Literacy, shows that a majority of students (67%) are Competent in this area. Disappointingly, a majority of students showed themselves to be still Developing rather than Competent in the other two elements of concern, Organization: Integration (50% Developing) and Organization: Cohesion (67% Developing). However, comparing these numbers to the numbers from the mainstream First-Year Writing population (in English 101 and English 102) shows that English 105 provides comparable instruction and achievement of the Student Learning Outcomes in one semester rather than two for those students who are prepared for a more intense instructional experience. As with the assessment of 101 and 102, most 105 students fall into the Developing and Competent categories at similar percentages; for example, the Spring 2013 assessment showed 38.6% of 102 students being Competent in Organization: Integration and this Fall 2014 shows 33%, which is statistically similar given the sample sizes. Other elements of note include recognition of Audience/Tone showing improvement at 83% Competent and 50% or greater being Competent or Accomplished with Control of Written Language and Surface Features.

ELEMENT 1 C: ORAL COMMUNICATION

CMS 100

Structure. The distribution of scores for Structure appears reasonable. The majority of students were still developing this skill, and most students struggle with structuring an oral presentation. The fact that 52 speeches were in the “developing” category, but 76 were “competent” in this category seems reasonable. As developing is defined by the General Education assessment guidelines, “student performance does not fully meet expectations for that criterion, but is not totally ‘off base’ either.” So most, of the students were either competent or developing in this area. The distribution for Content also appears reasonable, as the most students were in the “competent” category, but strongly followed by a good number of students in the “beginning” category. As public speaking is a life-long, important skill, CMS faculty are fully aware that no student should leave a CMS 100 or CMS 210 class fully developed or “accomplished” in public speaking. Yet, we are confident that we are giving the students the skills they need to be lifelong learners and confident public speakers. Context. The number of students who were either competent in this area far outshone the data from 2013, so the CMS faculty believe that we are doing a great job in teaching our students meet the expectation of

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 8 of 84 the presentation goals (informative, persuasive, etc.) We believe these numbers reflect the fact that we are teaching our students to create a message that is effective and suitable to the speaking occasion. Also, these numbers reflect the constant progress we faculty members strive to achieve in teaching our students the very important lifelong goal of meeting the presentation goals for the speaking occasion. The distribution of scores for Audience Awareness also appears reasonable. While 49 students’ speeches were still developing in this area, 73 of the total speeches were competent. The number of speeches that were beginning was negligible. Many students have learned by the end of the class to develop rapport and make the connection with the audience. Some of them are occasionally doing so in their speeches. Oral Delivery. The category of assessment that most illustrates the value of an ORAL communication class in a General Education program is the “oral delivery” category. The majority of speeches assessed (127) were in the competent area. This area of assessment shows that CMS faculty are effectively preparing all EKU students who enroll in their classes to deliver a speech, during class, and they are instilling important lifelong oral communication skills in their students for when the semester ends. One item that the CMS faculty focused their efforts on improving in the oral communication classes for this round of assessment was citing sources orally in the speeches. During assessment, we noticed a vast improvement in the ability of students to cite their sources during their presentations. Nonverbal Delivery. The number of speeches (99) that were assessed at developing in this category was an eye-opener for CMS faculty. What this data showed the faculty was that students still are not making the desired progress in using nonverbal delivery cues to support the language in their speech. Their nonverbal cues are often distracting. The faculty does not think that this number is incorrect. Rather, the CMS faculty has discussed ways to work with students to make them more comfortable in front of an audience, and to improve their nonverbal delivery in speeches. The theme from this year’s assessment echoes the 2013 assessment data regarding nonverbal delivery. Teaching students to communicate nonverbally in an effective manner in front of an audience will once again be a topic of conversation and training for the fall 2015 CMS faculty retreat.

Use of Presentation aids. While the number of students in the “beginning” category in all the other areas assessed was negligible, the number of students (56) in the “beginning” category for this area was surprising. What CMS faculty discovered when they evaluated speeches for assessment was that several students were not even using visual aids or presentation software for their assignments. It is impossible to assess “use of presentation aids” if faculty members do not require use of visual aids. Another issue is that the assessment is for both CMS 100 and CMS 210. While CMS 210 always requires use of presentation aids in the class assignments, CMS 100 does not. One of the outcomes for CMS 100 or CMS 210 is learning to incorporate presentation aids into speaking assignments. The Basic Course Director (Dr. Fairchild) will meet with all CMS Basic Course faculty in August 2015, reminding them that for the academic year, that faculty need to require and enforce the fact that students must use presentation aids when delivering speeches. Also, Dr. Fairchild is going to change the wording of the CMS 100 syllabus to state that CMS 100 students also are required to use presentation aids in their speeches. The next round of assessment of this category will be much smoother if both CMS classes have students who are required to use presentation aids in their speeches.

EES 250

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 9 of 84 EES 250: Basic Social Intelligence is a skills-based course. One assignment that we implement in this class to evaluate how well students are able to apply the skills and knowledge they learn in this class is the Job Application video assignment. All students in the class are required to upload their job application video clips to a designated discussion board forum in the Blackboard course site. Dr. Huang randomly selected 10-12% of the students’ assignments (video files) from the six course sections offered in Fall 2014 for this report based on the GE assessment guideline. Overall, 31 video clips were randomly selected. She also downloaded all the randomly selected students’ video clips from the respective Blackboard course site. The GE assessment committee at Social Intelligence & Leadership Institute, which consisted of instructors and facilitators of the course sections, met on May 4 to evaluate the video clips according to the EKU General Education Oral Communication Rubric. Please note that the committee that conducted the Spring 2014 GE assessment decided to remove the Presentation Aids criteria from the rubric because it was not applicable to the job application video assignment. This decision was indicated in our Spring 2014 GE assessment report.

The Social Intelligence & Leadership Institute conducted its first GE assessment in Spring 2014. Immediately after the assessment, the Institute implemented new instructions for the job application video assignment. The Job Application video assignment instructions offer suggestions that will assist students in completing this assignment. For example, the instructions suggest that students identify job posts and suggest that students write a script for the presentation. In addition, every semester the instructors of EES 250 identify exemplary student-developed video clips in the course sections and provide students with those video clips as examples in our Blackboard course sites. This Fall 2014 GE assessment data shows that the majority of the sampled students in EES 250 achieved the level of Accomplished in all six criterion: (a) 74% (30% in Spring 2014) in criteria 1 Structure, (b) 77% (30% in Spring 2014) in criteria 2 Content, (c) 74% (21% in Spring 2014) in criteria 3 Context, (d) 42% (27% in Spring 2014) in criteria 4 Audience Awareness, (e) 52% (6% in Spring 2014) in criteria 5 Oral Delivery, and (f) 45% (18% in Spring 2014) in criteria 6 Nonverbal Delivery. When comparing the Fall 2014 data with the Spring 2014 data, the committee observed a considerable improvement in students’ performance in this assignment in Fall 2014 over Spring 2014. The committee agreed that the instructions that we implemented after our Spring 2014 GE assessment have resulted in a satisfactory improvement in students’ performance in the Job Application video assignment. While the EES 250 GE committee members are pleased to see the improvement in students’ performance in this assignment, we also noticed that a small segment of the students did not do well in criteria 4 Audience Awareness, criteria 5 Oral Delivery, and criteria 6 Nonverbal Delivery. These are the criterion on which students performed at the developing level. Although the percent of the students who performed at the developing level was low (approximately 10-15%) the committee members believe that we can help students improve in these areas. At the same time, we understand few cases of low- level of performance might be a result of the fact that students were recording their video clips without an audience. Most of them recorded their videos by themselves either via their laptops, with embedded webcams or smartphones, rather than having someone help them with the recording. We also noticed that some of the students were trying to remember their scripts, and some of them appeared to be nervous. One addition of technology that may be helpful for students to improve their audience awareness is to use Screencast-O-Matic, which is a free online screen recording platform. Screencast-O-Matic allows its users to record their PowerPoint presentations. Having the ability to review their PowerPoint presentations, may provide students with beneficial visual aids/cues for this assignment. Some of our students have used Screencast-OMatic to record their job application video clips, and they have exhibited excellent performance in expressing their qualifications, showing how

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 10 of 84 passionate they are about the job, making eye contact, maintaining good posture, and creating rapport with the audience. Dr. Huang has obtained permission from those students to share their video clips with EES 250’s students. In addition, Mikah Pritchard, an Instructional Designer with e- Campus Learning, has created a Screencast-O-Matic tutorial tailored to the assignment for Dr. Huang’s EES 250 e-Campus course section in Spring B 2016. The effectiveness of this instructional strategy will be assessed at the end of the Spring 2016 B term. In the future, the Social Intelligence & Leadership Institute plans to share the tutorial and the example video clips with students in all of the EES 250 courses.

ELEMENT 2: MATHEMATICS

MAT 105

The data were initially shared with the department’s chair and Gen Ed course coordinators via email on October 22, 2015. The results were shared with the Math Service Committee in December 2015 both in a committee meeting and via email.

Three categories had fairly low scores: Comprehension, Execution, and Integration. Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. Low scores in these areas may suggest that some students struggle to identify appropriate approaches to problems and have difficulty putting ideas together, although it is worth noting that a decent proportion of students did particularly well in Integration. The variability in Integration may reflect the variability that instructors commonly see in the math backgrounds of MAT 105 students. Students with solid high school math backgrounds should be encouraged to take a non-terminal mathematics or statistics course. We established a more specific common core for all sections of MAT 105, effective Fall 2015, to ensure that specific topics and concepts are thoroughly covered. This new common core includes a few more sections of algebraic applications to strengthen algebraic skills. We also eliminated a few sections from the previous common core in hopes that by doing less we might do it better. Also, we have implemented a common required calculator for all sections of MAT 105, the TI-30XIIS. With all students using the same calculator, instructors can teach the class as a whole how to use the calculator during class. A MAT 105 workgroup was established to discuss MAT 105 in the Spring 2016 semester. The workgroup met multiple times and selected a new textbook, determined which sections are to be covered, and established stricter exam and grading policies. These changes should provide more consistency in MAT 105, starting in Fall 2016. Furthermore, the workgroup has recommended that the department have a larger discussion regarding MAT 105 and General Education mathematics. A suggestion has been made to have a department-wide discussion on Assurance of Learning Day in Fall 2016, possibly with the use of a campus facilitator.

MAT 106

The data were initially shared with the department’s chair and Gen Ed course coordinators via email on October 22, 2015. The results were shared with the Math Service Committee at a committee meeting in December 2015.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 11 of 84 The data seem to indicate that students are performing well in this class, and no major changes need to be made in MAT 106. Scores for Comprehension and Execution were a little low, but not drastically so, and this is a fairly small sample. (Note that, although integration is a goal in many of our classes, in MAT 106, the goal is to expose students to many applications of mathematics that they probably have not previously seen. These units do not build on each other, so there is little opportunity for integration. Hence, Integration was not assessed.) We are currently looking at our entry level general education classes in general, which will lead to more uniformity of instruction in MAT 106. One area in which there may be room for improvement is that of assessment paper collection. There are few sections of MAT 106, so it is critical for whoever is teaching this course during the semester in which the department plans to collect data to be sure to include assessment problems on the final exam and submit copies of papers in a timely fashion.

MAT 114 (MAT 107)

Scores were fairly low in all categories: Comprehension, Terminology and Notation, Execution, Mathematical/Logical Operations, Interpretation, and Integration. Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. When we examined the overall scores, a pattern emerged when comparing the scores to the previous assessment (Fall 2012). The percentage of students scoring at the upper end (a score of 3 or 4) was slightly higher in the fall of 2014 than in the fall of 2012. Additionally, the percentage of students scoring at the lower end (a score of 1) was also slightly higher in the fall of 2014 than in the fall of 2012. It is possible that the students’ backgrounds are more variable than they were in 2012. We may also need to emphasize the need for consistency across course sections. The MAT 107 course that was assessed in the fall of 2014 has recently been revised. Using surveys of the departments whose majors were required to take this course, we have created two courses: a traditional college algebra course (MAT 114), similar to MAT 107, and a more applied course (MAT 112). We believe that these changes will address student needs more effectively, which will be reflected in future assessments of these two courses. We will need to collect and examine assessment data for these two courses before making further changes.

MAT 120 (MAT 108)

Scores were fairly low in Comprehension, Execution, Interpretation, and Integration. Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. For MAT 108 (MAT 120 starting Fall 2015), it is clear that students who enter with a weak understanding of the prerequisite material do not do well. This is similar to student experience in multiple MAT courses. In addition, we feel that in

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 12 of 84 this course as well as other courses, the students need more information about effective learning habits. The Math Service Committee is working on developing modules on note-taking, getting and using feedback, and other helpful topics. These will be offered in a special topics course, and we will try to identify students in MAT 120 at the beginning of the semester who could benefit from this additional assistance. The data from MAT 120 and other courses are being used to prioritize which modules should be developed first.

MAT 122 (MAT 109)

The data were initially shared with the department’s chair and Gen Ed course coordinators via email on October 22, 2015. The course coordinator for MAT 122 shared a summary of the results with the Spring 2015 MAT 109 instructors via email on October 29, 2015.

The faculty are generally satisfied with the results, although the department would like to see the majority of scores in the 3-4 range for all categories (with few 4’s). No category had more than 25% of the papers scored as 1’s, but we would prefer to see fewer 1’s. (Note that one sampled paper had no scores other than 1.) Two categories had fairly low scores: Comprehension and Execution. The scores for Comprehension were low because a student could only score a 3 if they answered two different problems completely correctly (and a 4 was impossible). This was probably the hardest benchmark to reach based on the rubric (since there was no room for partial credit or mostly correct answers). Scores for Execution of appropriate strategies for solving problems were also relatively low, but it is almost impossible for a student to score a 4 in this category, and earning a 3 essentially requires making no errors in strategy selection for any problem. Instructors may need to find ways to emphasize appropriate selection of problem-solving approaches. In a recent semester, mathematics faculty discussed the possibility of changing the text for MAT 122; they may want to revisit this issue. Scores were quite varied in Integration. This might suggest that occasional group work on problems that involve integration of concepts could be beneficial to students as the students with strong skills could provide guidance to the students who are struggling to master the ideas. The course coordinator worked together with the Spring 2015 MAT 109 instructors to come up with the assessment problems. The course coordinator also shared a detailed rubric modeled on the type of rubric used by ETS for scoring Advanced Placement exams with them. This is a clear improvement over the assessment process from 2013 in terms of collaboration and consistency.

MAT 211

The data were initially shared with the department’s chair and Gen Ed course coordinators via email on October 22, 2015. The data were shared with the department’s calculus instructors via email on April 30, 2016.

The distribution of scores is more variable than in the previous assessment. The students in this course have either had other college mathematics courses or a strong high school background (some including calculus).Three categories had fairly low scores: Comprehension, Execution, and Integration. The scores for Interpretation were a little low. Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. Low scores in these areas may suggest that some students struggle to identify appropriate approaches to problems and have difficulty putting ideas together, although it is

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 13 of 84 worth noting that 30% of students scored 4’s in Integration. The variability in Integration may reflect the variability that instructors commonly see in the math backgrounds of MAT 211 students. Students with strong math backgrounds should be encouraged to take MAT 234. We would like to see the scores in the areas of Comprehension, Execution, Interpretation, and Integration improve. The distribution of scores may be an anomaly, but a flag has been raised and the instructors assigned to this course need to be aware of the situation. One possible strategy is to give more frequent student feedback and encourage faculty to stress the importance of class attendance in a course such as calculus. The current textbook for this course has an online homework system associated with it, and instructors should be encouraged to consider adopting it to monitor student engagement as well as student progress and comprehension of the daily material. MAT 261 was recently eliminated; it covered essentially the same material as MAT 211, but MAT 261 emphasized science applications and MAT 211 emphasized business applications. Now all students who need such a course will take MAT 211, which will enhance the efficiency of the department. We will need to collect at least one round of assessment scores under the new conditions to see whether student performance will change.

MAT 234 (MAT 124)

Four categories had fairly low scores: Comprehension, Execution, Interpretation, and Integration. Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. Low scores in these areas may suggest that some students struggle to identify appropriate approaches to problems and have difficulty putting ideas together. Faculty will encourage students to sign up for MAT 217, MathExcel Lab for Calculus I. The extra support should enhance students’ ability to select appropriate problem-solving strategies, and the active learning should deepen students’ understanding in a way that will help them to interpret information and integrate ideas. Furthermore, with the aid of the data and its statistical summary, faculty can isolate and see key structural points to strengthen in the course. These points, now made visible, can enable faculty to focus on sharpening both the delivery of the material and its daily practice. Consideration of the data might provide insight into the vertical structure of the departmental calculus sequence. In this manner, the data will help us to improve “in- sequence" learning for those taking multiple calculus courses, and it will also help us to improve outcomes for our department in a service capacity.

MAT 261

Note that MAT 261 has been eliminated. The scores here should be considered in conjunction with the scores for MAT 211. The students in this course have either had other college mathematics courses or a strong high school background (some including calculus).Three categories had fairly low scores: Comprehension, Execution, and Integration. The scores for Interpretation were a little low.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 14 of 84 Comprehension and Execution scores may tend to run low because it is nearly impossible for students to earn 4’s in these categories, and scores of 3 require fairly error-free answers. Low scores in these areas may suggest that some students struggle to identify appropriate approaches to problems and have difficulty putting ideas together, although it is worth noting that 20% of students scored 4’s in Integration. The variability in Integration may reflect the variability that instructors commonly see in the math backgrounds of MAT 261 students. Students with strong math backgrounds should be encouraged to take MAT 234. We would like to see the scores in the areas of Comprehension, Execution, Interpretation, and Integration improve in MAT 211, which is the course that students who would have taken MAT 261 in the past will take in the future. The distribution of scores may be an anomaly, but a flag has been raised and the instructors assigned to this course need to be aware of the situation. One possible strategy is to give more frequent student feedback and encourage faculty to stress the importance of class attendance in a course such as calculus. The current textbook for this course has an online homework system associated with it, and instructors should be encouraged to consider adopting it to monitor student engagement as well as student progress and comprehension of the daily material.

ELEMENT 3 A/B: ARTS & HUMANITIES

AFA 201

The data was shared and discussed at the monthly AFA faculty meeting (29 April 2016).

How will the results from the Spring 2015 assessment be used? • AFA 201 will continue to assess every student at the end of each semester to identify any issues and to ensure we are hitting our student learning objectives; • More emphasis will be placed on the developing students’ metacognitive skills to see if their ratings on the Comprehension criteria can be improved; • More emphasis will be placed on showing relationships between the major concepts of the course and prompting the students to reflect and analyze the information presented in class. Hopefully, this will lead to better scores on the Contextual Analysis and Integration across Course criteria; • This assessment essay has not been changed in a few years (since 2011) thus we will also adopt a new assessment question that is technology-based and have varied comprehension questions (essay, multiple choice); • We will use several video-prompted discussion and reflection exercises throughout the semester to give students practice in critical reflection and in-depth comprehension writing exercises; and • We will encourage faculty to collaborate and share best teaching practices with each other.

ART 200

Data collected between fall 2006-spring 2010, indicated that students enrolled ART 200 were primarily assessed as Competent, Developing, or Beginning in all criteria categories. The majority assessed as Developing or Beginning. English 101 is a prerequisite for the course, but English 102 is not, and as such it did not seem unreasonable that students were Developing or Beginning in Clarity of Expression, Formal/Structural Analysis, Theoretical Application, and Integration Across Course. The

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 15 of 84 Art and Design Gen Ed committee theorized that the students assessed, being young in their careers, lacked the writing skills necessary to communicate their comprehension and analysis of the course content. Course instructors communicated that students did communicate their comprehension and analysis on regular tests. Despite the potential deficit of poor writing skills, the Gen Ed committee hoped students could be assessed as Competent in the future. To help assure this change, the committee recommended, but did not mandate, that all instructors include an oral presentation component as well as a written essay component into their course schedule. Professor Gay Sweely, who regularly teaches ART 200 and who is a long-standing member of the Art and Design Gen Ed committee, created the syllabus that was approved by the University Gen Ed committee. This syllabus was distributed to all part-time faculty who teach ART 200 and it outlines an oral presentation and a written essay component as part of classroom evaluation. The committee also recommended that instructors remind students of the advantages of the EKU Writing Center. The committee theorized that if students were provided opportunities to verbally express their comprehension and analysis of course content (via an oral presentation) it would help them better organize their thoughts for eventual writing. The committee also theorized that were students provided opportunities to express their comprehension and analysis of course content via a written assignment is would provide for more writing practice. In short, the committee hoped that our recommendations would help create more active learners who could better articulate themselves and demonstrate their knowledge during assessment. Data collected between fall 2010 and Spring 2011 indicated that students enrolled in ART 200 continued to assess primarily as Competent, Developing, or Beginning in all criteria categories, with the majority assessed as Developing or Beginning. The Gen Ed committee believed that the course content for ART 200 was sound and theorized that our previous recommendations failed to strengthen assessment scores in large part because there has historically been a great deal of turn- over in the faculty and instructors who teach ART 200 and the committee may not have communicated our Gen Ed goals to these new faculty as thoroughly as needed. The committee continued to theorize that immature writing skills accounted for assessment scores at the lower end of the spectrum, and likewise continued to support oral presentations and writing assignments within the curriculum as a means of improving students’ ability to express their comprehension and analysis of course content. In response, the committee more thoroughly communicated our Gen Ed goals to new or part-time faculty teaching ART 200. We Mandated, rather than simply recommended, both an oral presentation and a written essay component as evaluation methods in all sections of ART 200. Data collected between Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 indicated that students enrolled in ART 200 assessed at all levels (Accomplished, Competent, Developing, Beginning) in all criteria categories, with the majority assessed as Competent, Developing, and Beginning. Students assessed higher in Clarity of Expression and Theoretical Application than in the past, and there were as many students assessed as Competent as either Developing or Beginning in all criteria levels. Of particular note, this was the first assessment period where students were assessed at the accomplished level. The committee theorized that the additional oral presentation and written essay opportunities within the ART 200 course content did indeed help students better achieve EKU’s General Education goals. We emphasized the importance of both evaluation methods (oral presentations and written essays) when speaking with the individuals instructing ART 200 during the 2014/2015 assessment period. Data collected this assessment period, Fall 2014-Spring 2015, indicates that students enrolled in Art 200 and Art 200 ITV are universally assessing as Competent in the Comprehension criteria category. This is a significant jump over the previous assessment period (Fall 2012-Spring 2013) where students assessed as equally divided in the Comprehension criteria category between Competent, Developing, and Beginning. Data also indicates that fewer students are assessing as Beginning in all seven criteria categories

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 16 of 84 (Comprehension, Clarity of Expression, Formal/Structural Analysis, Contextual Analysis, Theoretical Application, Methods, and Integration). In fact, the only categories that registered any students assessing as Beginning are Contextual Analysis and Theoretical Application. In Clarity of Expression, Methods, Formal/Structural Analysis, and Integration, students assessed higher than in previous assessment periods with more students assessing as Competent rather than Developing. While data indicates a rise in Competent in many criteria, it also indicates a slight dip in Accomplished in many criteria. While we would prefer to have maintained the Accomplished levels from the last assessment period, we do feel that overall our students assessed in a tighter range this period and that this consistency is indicative of consistent teaching in the classroom.

We continue to feel that oral presentation and written essay opportunities within the ART 200 course content has helped students better achieve EKU’s General Education goals. We plan to emphasize the importance of both evaluation methods (oral presentations and written essays) when speaking with the individuals who will be instructing ART 200 during the upcoming assessment period, in hopes of continuing our forward momentum.

BEM 350

The results of the exam differ significantly from the previous year’s assessment. In Spring 2015, students performed better on the multiple choice instrument measuring comprehension than they did in Fall 2013. This is likely due to the fact that the exam is usually administered early in the semester. In Spring 2015, it was administered at the end. This would have allowed students more exposure to the material covered in class, which may have boosted their basic comprehension scores. Additionally, three different adjunct instructors have taught BEM 350 and 351 over the past three years. The variation in instructors and their instructional methods may account for the wide variation in assessment exam scores measuring comprehension. / / As in previous assessments, most students demonstrated competence in the other categories in Spring 2015 (Contextual Analysis, Clarity of Expression, Integration Across Course). This could be due to the fact that the critical review paper is usually assigned late in the semester, after students have received considerable instruction through lectures and film screenings, as well as opportunities to hone their critical thinking and writing skills through homework essays.

The improved performance late in the semester indicates that students are making progress in these objectives as the semester progresses. However, the variance in scores on comprehension may be the result of inconsistencies in instruction – a possible result of the employment of different part-time faculty to teach these courses (three different instructors over the past three years). Thus, our first recommendation is that the College of Business and Technology and/or the University provide the resources necessary to staff these classes with a full-time instructor who will be both accessible to students outside of the classroom through office hours and other laboratory experiences, and invested in the institution and its students in general. / / Second, as scores in contextual analysis need improvement, the BEM faculty suggest that BEM 350 and 351 instructors provide more in-class content on the greater historical context of the selected films. This could be achieved by screening historical documentaries in the classroom, or requiring students to complete homework exercises from supplemental historical resources. Additionally, students need to reflect on their own place in the history of the filmic medium by engaging in exercises that examine their viewing habits in comparison to those of their parents or grandparents. / / These strategies may encourage students

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 17 of 84 to engage more reflexively with the course content while situating it within a comprehensive historical context. Additionally, these efforts will provide students with more opportunities to examine the complexity of films as historical documents and cultural texts.

BEM 351

The results of the exam differ significantly from the previous year’s assessment. In Spring 2015, students performed better on the multiple choice instrument measuring comprehension than they did in Fall 2013. This is likely due to the fact that the exam is usually administered early in the semester. In Spring 2015, it was administered at the end. This would have allowed students more exposure to the material covered in class, which may have boosted their basic comprehension scores. Additionally, three different adjunct instructors have taught BEM 350 and 351 over the past three years. The variation in instructors and their instructional methods may account for the wide variation in assessment exam scores measuring comprehension. As in previous assessments, most students demonstrated competence in the other categories in Spring 2015 (Contextual Analysis, Clarity of Expression, Integration Across Course). This could be due to the fact that the critical review paper is usually assigned late in the semester, after students have received considerable instruction through lectures and film screenings, as well as opportunities to hone their critical thinking and writing skills through homework essays.

The improved performance late in the semester indicates that students are making progress in these objectives as the semester progresses. However, the variance in scores on comprehension may be the result of inconsistencies in instruction – a possible result of the employment of different part-time faculty to teach these courses (three different instructors over the past three years). Thus, our first recommendation is that the College of Business and Technology and/or the University provide the resources necessary to staff these classes with a full-time instructor who will be both accessible to students outside of the classroom through office hours and other laboratory experiences, and invested in the institution and its students in general. / / Second, as scores in contextual analysis need improvement, the BEM faculty suggest that BEM 350 and 351 instructors provide more in-class content on the greater historical context of the selected films. This could be achieved by screening historical documentaries in the classroom, or requiring students to complete homework exercises from supplemental historical resources. Additionally, students need to reflect on their own place in the history of the filmic medium by engaging in exercises that examine their viewing habits in comparison to those of their parents or grandparents. / / These strategies may encourage students to engage more reflexively with the course content while situating it within a comprehensive historical context. Additionally, these efforts will provide students with more opportunities to examine the complexity of films as historical documents and cultural texts.

ENG 208W

The above results were presented at Assurance of Learning Day 2015, where a small group of instructors discussed categories in which students did not succeed as we hoped and discussed needed changes to their courses and assessments. These results are also available through the department's Blackboard site.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 18 of 84 Given these results, the assessment team recommends the Department of English and Theatre attend to the following: In Written Communication, Organization-Cohesion should be emphasized. Students are showing increasing proficiency in organizing their thoughts in ENG 102 and continuing to target that skill, perhaps especially in W sections of 208 course is needed. In Arts and Humanities, the department should continue to emphasize Formal/Structural Analysis. The assessment team discussed the need for a balance in a course such as Literate and the Environment between attention to textual details and synthesis. Attention is also needed in using proper integration of textual evidence. We also recommend the following:- Encourage all 200-level instructors to think more explicitly about the Student Learning Outcomes expectations and assessment practices and ensure greater familiarity with the General Education rubrics used to measure student success in these courses by translating established General Education Student Learning Outcomes and Rubrics (Arts and Humanities and Written Communication) into a usable 200 level, English-specific rubric that instructors can comfortably use with students. This tailored rubric will include student-friendly language and will likely borrow the form of the successful ENG 101/102/105 rubric instructors in the department are now using. - Create a document for the department that specifies how to apply this new rubric to our 200 level courses---send out to all instructors for review and input, revise the document and rubric as needed, and send out to instructors by the end of spring semester 2016 for implementation in fall 2016. - Offer a 200-level assessment forum at the end of spring semester 2015 and a session at Assurance of Learning Day 2016 to empower instructors to manage this new rubric for their courses - Generate more dialogue between 200 level instructors to address overarching concerns in terms of student performance and corresponding course design: / o The assessment team recognized that student writing was basic in terms of competence, and that little analysis was occurring. Many students in W sections were not doing meaningful, discipline-specific thinking and writing. We discussed the expectations for student writing, questioning how much literary analysis we should realistically expect from non-majors and from students who had not had a literature class since high school. Should writing in these courses be more reader response, summary, analysis or argument? We recognized that the Student Learning Outcomes, as written, do not specify and that the courses might benefit from clarification of SLOs. It would be beneficial to develop a storehouse of mentor texts to shape the writing students do. These texts may be professional or successful student creations. They need to be widely available and keyed to criteria that can shape instructors’ strategies and students’ learning. Increase opportunities for students across courses to submit similar work by encouraging even non-W courses to include and submit an essay for the Gen ED assessment. Encourage instructors to submit student work for assignments other than final exam, promoting process approach valued in W courses and English courses generally. Ask across the department: how much explicit writing instruction is happening in W courses? Determine the right balance between literature content coverage and student written communication and promote opportunities for all instructors to modify syllabi accordingly. Assign course instructors responsibility of serving as “first readers” of student work, using new rubric and supplying assessment coordinator/committee with scores to build on for future General Education reports. This will increase instructor familiarity with rubric and criteria priorities, and follow the practice of other General Education courses within the department.

ENG 210 or 210W and ENG 211 or 211W

Faculty members Anne Gossage, Brent Shannon, Keven McQueen, Bill Mullen, Charlotte Rich, and Gill Hunter met to assess final essays from General Education Literature courses from Spring 2015 and

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 19 of 84 shared their findings during Assurance of Learning Day. Their report is also available through the department's Blackboard site. The assessment coordinator is using this information to work with faculty who teach these courses to develop standard assignment parameters and a grading rubric.

This information was shared with faculty during the 2015 Assurance of Learning Day and through the department's Blackboard site.

Given these results, the assessment team recommends the Department of English and Theatre attend to the following: In Arts and Humanities, the department should continue to emphasize Contextual Analysis. The assessment team discussed the need for a balance in a course like Enjoying Literature between “appreciation” and attention to context and textual details. Attention is also needed in Integration across Course. Part of the problem here may be one of interpretation: the 200 level courses are taught by numerous instructors and can take, especially ENG 210, a variety of approaches. We need to clarify the intent of the SLO related to Integration across Course: what concepts should students be integrating across the course? What is the best way to assess this? The group recommended the following to help improve student learning: - Encourage all 200-level instructors to think more explicitly about the Student Learning Outcomes expectations and assessment practices and ensure greater familiarity with the General Education rubrics used to measure student success in these courses by translating established General Education Student Learning Outcomes and Rubrics (Arts and Humanities and Written Communication) into a usable 200 level, English-specific rubric that instructors can comfortably use with students. This tailored rubric will include student-friendly language and will likely borrow the form of the successful ENG 101/102/105 rubric instructors in the department are now using.- Create a document for the department that specifies how to apply this new rubric to our 200 level courses---send out to all instructors for review and input, revise the document and rubric as needed, and send out to instructors by the end of spring semester 2016 for implementation in fall 2016. - Offer a 200-level assessment forum at the end of spring semester 2016 and a session at Assurance of Learning Day 2016 to empower instructors to manage this new rubric for their courses- Generate more dialogue between 200 level instructors to address overarching concerns in terms of student performance and corresponding course design: The assessment team recognized that student writing was basic in terms of competence, and that little analysis was occurring. Many students in W sections were not doing meaningful, discipline-specific thinking and writing. We discussed the expectations for student writing, questioning how much literary analysis we should realistically expect from non-majors and from students who had not had a literature class since high school. Should writing in these courses be more reader response, summary, analysis or argument? We recognized that the Student Learning Outcomes, as written, do not specify and that the courses might benefit from clarification of SLO’s. It would be beneficial to develop a storehouse of mentor texts to shape the writing students do. These texts may be professional or successful student creations. They need to be widely available and keyed to criteria that can shape instructors’ strategies and students’ learning. Increase opportunities for students across courses to submit similar work by encouraging even non-W courses to include and submit an essay for the Gen ED assessment. Encourage instructors to submit student work for assignments other than final exam, promoting process approach valued in W courses and English courses generally. Ask across the department: how much explicit writing instruction is happening in W courses? Determine the right balance between literature content coverage and student written communication and promote opportunities for all instructors to modify syllabi accordingly.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 20 of 84 Students are largely competent in the most important criterion of a General Education Literature course, comprehension of the readings and the significant concepts within and about those readings. This shows some improvement over the last assessment of 200-level courses, where a higher percentage of students were in the Developing (35%) and Beginning (2.5%) range. More students as a percentage fell, however, into the Developing and Beginning range in the other Humanities criteria relative to the previous 2013 assessment, though we’re encouraged by the fact that most landed in Developing, with just a single student producing all the scores in the Beginning column. Changes in enrollment patterns and how we assess are, we think, responsible for these results. The last assessment looked at all of the department’s 200-level offerings en bloc, rather than separating out the three literature classes we offer in 3B: ENG 210 (Enjoying Literature), ENG 211 (Early World Literature), and ENG 212 (Later World Literature), as we do now. Students tend to struggle more in English 211, focusing as it does on very early and very difficult texts from around the world. It’s no surprise, then, that looking at just 211 students would reveal more difficulties in criteria such as Contextual Analysis and Theoretical Application. There are also differences in the sort of student who enrolls in Ms. Siahkoohi’s course, the Writing Intensive section of ENG 211, and Dr. Rahimzadeh’s course, which is not Writing Intensive. Dr. Rahimzadeh enrolls more students from the Education program, many of whom take the course as part of their program of study and many of whom wish to teach English in the future, while Dr. Siahkoohi enrolls more students who have less interest in literary studies and who simply wish to fulfill the General Education and/or Writing Intensive requirement. Students in the latter category tend to be weaker writers and have less interest in course readings. In the department’s last assessment (2013) of all three of its 200-level courses, taken together,, the assessment team recommended that instructors pay special attention to analysis; in other words, in future semesters instructors should strive for a better “balance between ‘appreciation’ and attention to textual details.” We think that we’ve moved forward in that area given the higher scores students received in Comprehension. Clearly, however, more work should be done in this course to improve writing. We’d like to see more students rise to the Competent range here. Perhaps more rhetorical work can be done in both the W and non-W sections of this course. As noted in the last assessment, there is room in this course to focus more precisely on how to develop arguments about works of literature and how to use texts in support of those arguments. The assessment coordinator is also piloting a work group in Fall 2016 to standardize the student experience on the assignment front, which should help improve student learning.

ENG 212 or 212W

Two instructors who often teach this course scored the essays and shared the results with the department during AoL Day. This report is also available through Blackboard.

Typical assignments for 212W ask students to incorporate a minimum of two literary works for the class in forming a thesis that spans the thesis. In the future students will be encouraged to choose works which do not already have an apparent commonality such as the subject matter or the time period of production. Given the small sample evaluated, the particular essays evaluated, and our mutual knowledge of the students' performance in writing, we believe that future students should be guided to include an original perspective as the controlling idea for World Literature essays, expressing these complex ideas without losing the present level of textual clarity the students have already attained. The evaluated writing offered a good mix of critical methods, high-level critical thinking, and effective presentation in writing, but no single piece presented all those skills in balance.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 21 of 84 The 212W students in spring 2015 exhibited clear, competent prose appropriate to the course level, and they evince a familiarity with the textual analysis methods of comparative literature. Students were strong in presenting a single line of thought with variant examples, and they return continually to those subjects to reinforce the controlling idea. In the future, more import could be given to teaching depth of analytical ability, adding another level of critical acumen to the review of the course. These improvements ought to be made with respect to the students' clarity of expression in writing, which is already extant and meets course expectations.

ENG 335 or 335W

This data was discussed during the department's Assurance of Learning Day 2015. Even though Tom Butler is the primary instructor for this course, this information will be shared with the entire department through Blackboard and during this year's AoL Day.

For all criteria, the bulk of students are “competent” or "developing." Most students scored in the middle range, and no one was deemed to have “beginning” skills in any category. Students in ENG 335 have previously taken ENG 101 and ENG 102 (or their equivalents), courses that emphasize written arguments on non-literary issues, and have, in most cases, taken no other English courses. A handful of students, namely, those pursuing an English degree, have taken ENG 301: Advanced Composition before ENG 335. Based on these results and my experience teaching the course, students need more help in making connections between literary works and in then expressing their ideas in an argumentative essay. As I noted in my previous assessment in 2013, I proposed working more closely with Leslie Valley in the Noel Studio. This year, I scheduled a Studio thesis workshop class earlier in the writing process. Students benefited from this class, as it helped them better understand the demands of writing argumentatively about literature. For both sections, I offered written feedback on students’ drafts. I was disappointed that more students did not substantively revise their drafts before handing in their final essays. In the future, I need to spend more class time explaining my expectations for revision. Students improve their writing most when they rewrite their work. Also, in the revision process, students become more explicitly aware of the connections they are making between works. Therefore, revision is an effective strategy to develop students’ scores in “integration across Course.” In my previous assessment, I found that “a more deliberate writing process should allow the students to effectively practice literary (formal/structural) analysis as they integrate literary concepts from across the course, goals essential to the course’s General Education objectives.” Again, that is my overall suggestion for student success in ENG 335. I am even more aware of the needs of my students, and I intend to spend more class time teaching strategies for writing argumentatively about literature. In doing so, my goal will be to give students the tools to clearly express their comprehension of the material in strong, effective writing.

HUM 124

The Humanities section meets regularly to discuss curricular matters, including Gen Ed reports. The section report is as follows. Data continue to show that the lectures, assignments and feedback given in this course are effective to ensure learning in the target areas. Explicit directions in the question (which the HUM section revised for this purpose in 2011) upon using material from different units or from different genres as a way of achieving integration is working, although some students do fail to stretch far enough in their comparisons (and thus are judged as still ‘developing’). The level of

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 22 of 84 comprehension and consistently high quality of expression testifies to the value of regular written assignments, both informal (interpretive homework questions) and formal (journal and essay assignments). In this connection, it is very significant, and not surprising that by the end of the course virtually no students are left behind at the ‘beginning level.’

The Humanities faculty plans in this coordinated course offering to continue with the same basic structure and approach and the same kind and level of engagement with students, which combines lectures on elements of the formal appreciation of the arts and literature, and on historical context, with criticism of primary readings done by the students in a variety of written assignments and exams. The general agreement of the faculty is that the developmental structure of the course, along with the reinforcement of the comparative approach to the humanities, which engages in continuing reflection upon newer material as it is introduces in relation to older, previously studied material, enables students to make clear progress in all areas over the course of the term. This is something that students often note as part of their discussion in the final essay used for assessment. Revision submitted 5/4: The data aid student improvement precisely by emphasizing the fact that the structure and design of the course are already working very well. As such, the changes that were made stem from the confirmation of the utility of the pedagogy of primary source readings, regular lectures with interactive discussion, informal interpretive homework assignments, and more formal written assignments such as essays and journals. This involves the use of thematically structure of units in the course according to Innocence and Experience, Conformity and Rebellion, Love and Hate, and the Presence of Death, taken from the main textbook (Literature: The Human Experience), supplemented with other primary sources chosen by each instructor. This design moves students through several cycles of learning that involves all of the artistic media (poetry, narratives, non-fiction essays, drama, plus visual art, music, and often film as well) that enables a progressive apprehension of the nature of the various art forms as well as a progressive development of abilities to interpret and discuss in oral and written communication. The improvements that are made in this course from term to term are very incremental at this point, since the Humanities faculty has very intentionally and deliberately honed this course according to Gen Ed assessment repeatedly over the past 6 years to accomplish the purpose. The main way in which we ensure that the goals continue to be met is for instructors to work to motivate students stay on task in their development through the course.

HUM 226

The Humanities section meets regularly to discuss curricular matters, including Gen Ed reports. The section report is as follows. The evidence demonstrates that the materials and methods used in this course are accomplishing all relevant objectives fairly well. The distribution of scores is as would be expected at the 200 level in a general education course. The fact that a majority of the students reach a satisfactory level of achievement (accomplished or competent) in their comprehension, their written expression, and understanding of formal and contextual elements, clearly indicates that the course is organized and presented in a manner conducive to student development and learning. This course builds upon the elements of HUM 124 by likewise using a combination lectures on the formal appreciation of the arts and literature and on significant themes and historical context, although with greater and more sustained immersion in primary readings and with more criticism and interpretation done by the students in a variety of written assignments (both formal and informal) and exams. The structure of the course provides ample opportunity for constructive feedback and individual attention to student learning. In this connection, it is very significant that here, as with HUM 124, by the end of

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 23 of 84 the course virtually no students are left behind at the ‘beginning level’ in any respect. The one area in which students performed less well than in the rest was that of ‘theoretical application,’ but even here virtually all students were able to work with concepts as applied to interpretation of artistic and literary objects in a developing or competent way.

The Humanities faculty plans to continue with the same basic structure and approach and the same kind and level of engagement with students. Revision submitted 5/4: As with HUM 124, the data aid student improvement precisely by emphasizing the fact that the structure and design of the course are already working very well. As such, the changes that were made stem from the confirmation of the utility of the pedagogy of dividing the course into coherent units, each of which involves exploration of a focused area of the ancient and classical world across a variety of artistic modes of expression, including literature, drama, art, architecture and historical material. The teaching method of using primary source readings, regular lectures with interactive discussion, informal interpretive homework assignments, plus more formal written assignments such as essays and journals is working. Specific texts are left up to instructors, but all courses adopt the same overall design and structure, based on the evidence that this is already working very well to present students with a comparative yet integrated exploration of ancient cultures. Moreover, because the course moves students through several ancient cultures with a consistent thematic focus on the ways in which these cultures sought to identify and articulate meaning (in the “Search for Meaning” of the course title), a definite measure of coherence is achieved, and an integrated understanding of the human quest for meaning in life emerges. In each unit of the course, the learning process is repeated, thus enabling a progressive apprehension of the nature of the various art forms as well as a progressive development of the students’ abilities to interpret and discuss primary source materials in both oral and written communication. The improvements that are made in this course from term to term are incremental at this point, since as with HUM 124 the Humanities faculty has very intentionally and deliberately honed this course according to Gen Ed assessment repeatedly over the past 6 years to accomplish the purpose. The main way in which we ensure that the goals continue to be met is for instructors to work to motivate students stay on task in their development through the course.

HUM 228

The results of the assessment, which for logistical reasons owing to staffing changes had to be done only in the recent semester, have been shared and discussed by the permanent HUM faculty, which agrees with the broad outlines of the assessment done by the instructor. In general, the course is clearly achieving the general education goals, in keeping with previous offerings, something that is largely the result of several continuous years of focused discussion about the nature and intent of the course among the section faculty. There are no areas of alarming or major concern. The methods area is the only one in which no students achieved the highest level of accomplishment. This is perhaps not surprising, in that the subject matter of postmodernism presents a challenge to the very notion of method itself. Students appear to be understanding the point of postmodern cultural expressions, in that their comprehension and contextual analysis scores are very good. Integration across the course scores were acceptable, as were clarity of expression scores, both of which arguably could be improved marginally, but again, as hinted above, the very subject matter of postmodernism militates somewhat against these things, in that postmodernism emphasizes fragmentation and the breakdown of communicative structures as phenomena in the post-1945 world.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 24 of 84 In this course in particular, the Humanities section embraces the challenge of teaching methods, integration and communication, precisely since the material of the course seems so definitely to work against these things. Indeed, given this tension between course content and pedagogy, we believe that the course is already quite successful, and the scores of the students are satisfactory and indicate successful achievement of Gen Ed goals. At the same time, in order better to enable students to understand and implement the methods and approaches of postmodernism in this course, we agree that beyond comprehension and analysis, a somewhat more method-driven midterm assignment (or set of assignments) in future offerings will likely improve the slightly lower scores in that area before students hit the end of the semester. Theory, in the sense of conceptual analysis of texts and artworks, is prevalent and prominent in the course, but engaging students in more regular and concrete use of theory should synthesize both theoretical application and method-use. This will also likely improve the students' engagement with the material from the experiential standpoint and help them with their final 'creative projects.' Finally, we always aim to help students improve their understanding of formal elements of art, literature, music, etc. Accordingly, we shall not assume that students have acquired high levels of ability in this area prior to this class, and will incorporate greater focus on formal and structural elements of postmodern expression in their homework journals and through modeling formal analyses in class, especially in first 4 weeks.

HUM 300 or 300W

The results of the assessment, which for logistical reasons owing to staffing changes had to be done only in the recent semester, have been shared and discussed by the permanent HUM faculty, which agrees with the broad outlines of the assessment done by the instructor.

In general, the course is clearly achieving the general education goals, in keeping with previous offerings, something that is largely the result of several continuous years of focused discussion about the nature and intent of the course among the section faculty. There are no areas of alarming or major concern.

The methods area is the only one in which no students achieved the highest level of accomplishment. This is perhaps not surprising, in that the subject matter of postmodernism presents a challenge to the very notion of method itself.

Students appear to be understanding the point of postmodern cultural expressions, in that their comprehension and contextual analysis scores are very good.

Integration across the course scores were acceptable, as were clarity of expression scores, both of which arguably could be improved marginally, but again, as hinted above, the very subject matter of postmodernism militates somewhat against these things, in that postmodernism emphasizes fragmentation and the breakdown of communicative structures as phenomena in the post-1945 world.

In this course in particular, the Humanities section embraces the challenge of teaching methods, integration and communication, precisely since the material of the course seems so definitely to work against these things. Indeed, given this tension between course content and pedagogy, we believe

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 25 of 84 that the course is already quite successful, and the scores of the students are satisfactory and indicate successful achievement of Gen Ed goals.

At the same time, in order better to enable students to understand and implement the methods and approaches of postmodernism in this course, we agree that beyond comprehension and analysis, a somewhat more method-driven midterm assignment (or set of assignments) in future offerings will likely improve the slightly lower scores in that area before students hit the end of the semester. Theory, in the sense of conceptual analysis of texts and artworks, is prevalent and prominent in the course, but engaging students in more regular and concrete use of theory should synthesize both theoretical application and method-use. This will also likely improve the students' engagement with the material from the experiential standpoint and help them with their final 'creative projects.'

Finally, we always aim to help students improve their understanding of formal elements of art, literature, music, etc. Accordingly, we shall not assume that students have acquired high levels of ability in this area prior to this class, and will incorporate greater focus on formal and structural elements of postmodern expression in their homework journals and through modeling formal analyses in class, especially in first 4 weeks.

MUH 171 All data is shared with all faculty teaching MUH 171, our largest General Education offering. With approximately 700-800 students enrolled each semester, this course has developed an e-text with the course that is free when purchasing a hard copy text. Within the online materials, students are assessed daily on knowledge of music and especially the five elements of music. Study plans are created and a clear outline that fit the individual. The MUH 171 experience prepares the student to attend live concerts and write effective reviews. Data from this assessment period is below: MUH 171, Music Appreciation, is a general education course for non-music majors. Overall, we are very pleased with the outcome of this assessment. The majority of students were accomplished or competent for all categories that were evaluated. We believe this is due to the way the course is taught, the guidelines printed in the syllabus, and a sample concert review made available to the students prior to this written assignment. For those students who were in the developing or beginning categories, it is quite possible that they are freshmen who haven’t completed English 101 or 102, so haven’t learned to express their ideas clearly in a written manner. Additionally, many students at that age are still learning how to analyze, think critically, and integrate knowledge. However, the instructors will continue to stress items of importance that will benefit the students in thinking critically, analyzing information and integrating knowledge gained from this course.

This data shows that the syllabus guidelines, sample concert review, and the way this course is taught are helpful and should be continued. Items of importance that will benefit the students in critical thinking, analysis, integration, and theoretical application will be emphasized through the music that is studied and its contextual history. Revision submitted 5/1: Goal 1: To identify components of music • You will discriminate among different elements of music when presented with an audio sample. The data suggests that students have an accomplished to competent level of understanding in discriminating between elements of music. This SLO is assessed not only within the day-to-day work, exams, pre and post-tests, but within concert reviews. Credit is given to students who discuss all elements of music such as timbre, texture, rhythm, pitch, melody, and harmony. The first assignment due in MUH 171 covers the elements of music which are the backbone to all music and musical styles

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 26 of 84 throughout history. The committee feels some students stray away from these aspects and discuss items such as lighting, audience appeal, etc. Therefore additional attention will be provided in making sure concert reviews must include these elements and continue providing excellent papers who properly identify these structures of music. Goal 2: To provide current and professionally accepted instruction in the historical aspect of music as it relates to the cultural, social, political, and economic trends and values that contributed significantly to its development. • You will explore and identify other important elements of society found in each of the six historical periods The committee finds that students do a very good job identifying other important elements of society within their papers. More attention needs to be given on the historical aspects of the concert that is being reviewed. • You will evaluate major composers’ historical and cultural significance Within the concert review it is important that students discuss relevant historical aspects of the music being performed and/or the composer, period of music, etc being reviewed. Most of the papers include these aspects and the committee is pleased with this progress. • You will discern the purposes of pieces of music within a culture One concern of the committee is that sometimes students spend too much time discussing music within a culture and not balancing other SLO’s within their paper. We will continue to provide good writing examples in class. / Goal 3: To identify various styles and genres of music and leading composers, works, and trends associated with the historical timeline and development of music. You will detect common attributes in works of the same era and evaluate differences between works of different eras Most of the students attend concerts that have varied pieces of music that sometimes cover several periods of music. Students appear to do better in their concert reviews if they concentrate on one aspect of the concert or similar genres performed. Explaining that it is OK to discuss portions of the concert being reviewed is fine rather than briefly discussing each piece performed especially when some concerts have 10 or more selections. In MUH 171, all sections receive an approved list of live events that will aid their concert review. We do not feel that every performance is appropriate. Since many students procrastinate and then need to struggle getting the appropriate amount of concert reviews in the committee has also identified pre-recorded live events that students can evaluate.

MUH 271

Also, student comprehension of the material does not necessarily translate into being able to apply that knowledge, as indicated by the somewhat lower integration scores.

Much more time needs to be spent on developing an appropriate essay. Seems that students getting to the accomplished area is difficult in discussion of jazz history. Too many students scored in the developing area. Students lack the ability to clearly express their ideas. Attention will be provided in class plus all students receiving an accomplished paper example will hopefully address these issues. Other assessments in class through exams and class participation are excellent, but somehow this understanding doesn't get addressed well in their papers. The School of Music will continue to experiment with additional ways to assess goals and objectives in MUH 271. Revision submitted 5/2 / Student Learning Outcomes: Outcome 1 - To use critical listening skills to identify key performers, composers, and pieces in the history of jazz. • Students will identify significant jazz pieces by title, genre/style period, and performer or composer (whichever is relevant), when presented with an audio sample of a work. Students within MUH 271 are presented with several musical examples in written form and audio. Students are assessed in their ability to identify works through blind audio tests. These aspects of genre/style are required to be discussed and covered in their written papers

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 27 of 84 used for General ed assessment. The committee feels it is difficult to get a non-musician who take this course to have great success. Dr. Nelson has done an excellent job of organizing the material and providing access to audion examples. Students who take this course get a Spotify account in which all examples are available. This was a suggestion from last review of outcomes and believe it has aided the students to be more successful. / Outcome 2. To identify various musical elements of the key genres/styles in the history of jazz, including Ragtime, Blues, Swing, Bebop and its derivatives, Avant Garde and Free Jazz, Fusion, and contemporary styles. • Students will distinguish common attributes in works of the same genre and discriminate between works of differing genres. Students have developed well within this area. Continued access to Spotify and listening examples is applauded. • Upon hearing a new piece, students will recognize the era in which the work was performed and make informed predictions about who the performer or composer of the piece might be. Students take this to the next level and discuss these aspects within exams. The writing and identification of a particular jazz era aids in the assessment paper of this course. • Students will differentiate between major styles, performance practices, and structural elements in jazz. In a writing context, they will do so in clearly formulated and grammatically accurate sentences. This SLO is achieved through their paper. Though the writing is at a lower level than some of the other General Education courses found in music, quality is inconsistent from semester to semester. The teacher of this course is a musicologist and expectations are found to be too high especially of students not as familiar with Jazz styles and history. We are addressing these concerns without deleting the rigor of the paper. By far covering this SLO in the paper is the best means of assessment. / Outcome 3. To analyze the musical and the social/historic processes by which jazz came to be and has continued to develop. • Students will appraise the implications of a performance practice based on improvisation in addition to (or in place of) reading music notation. This is probably the most fun part of the class. Most students listen to music but not much prior experience to seeing the notation of what they are listening to. Since students enjoy this exploratory aspect of the course the expected results are very high. • Students will evaluate the importance of many of the leading figures in jazz history, knowing essential biographical information about them, associating them with significant recordings and performances, and being able to discuss their contribution to the development of jazz. Again this SLO is assessed within the class exams but more over in their paper. References of the SLO’s found in biographical information, recordings, performances, and sharing their experience are all well received. It is important to the course for this SLO not to be altered since it covers most aspects of Jazz History. • Students will compare the social context of the 20th century to the development of the jazz idiom. This SLO is covered throughout the class in reading, discussion, exams, and if possible covered in their papers. New jazz music, groups, sounds, styles, and development of jazz found today is very interesting to study, discuss, and include in their assessment. Some of the papers go into enough detail especially when selecting a composer of jazz from the 20th century that show significant knowledge of the jazz history. Critical thinking and critical listen skills are both utilized since much of the jazz found in the 20th century borrow from other periods, style, and form. The committee feels this SLO can be more developed and included with the critical thinking skills associated with blind listening skills.

MUH 272

MUH 272, Music Literature, is a general education course for non-music majors, and a pre-requisite course for MUH 371 and MUH 372, Music History, which is required for music majors. Overall, we are pleased with the outcome of this assessment. In the categories of Comprehension and Clarity of Expression, the majority of students were competent in the comprehension of subject matter

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 28 of 84 regarding significant artistic concepts. However, half of the students were competent in clarity of expression, while the other half were in the developing category. This is most likely due to the fact that most of the students who take this class are sophomores who have little experience in writing about music or musical concepts. Therefore, an in-class discussion about the use of appropriate musical terminology and the opportunity for students to read, review, discuss, and analyze articles or papers written about musical compositions may be helpful in further developing students’ clarity of expression. In the categories of Formal/Structural Analysis, Theoretical Application, and Integration, the majority of the students were competent with several in the accomplished category. This is due to the formal analysis, study and discussion of music literature and its place in history that is part of this course.

This data shows that the formal analysis, study, and discussion of music and its place in history should be continued. To help students in the area of Clarity of Expression, information regarding how to write about music in a scholarly manner will be emphasized. Revision added 5/1: Student Learning Outcomes: 1. Students will demonstrate comprehension of major musical works by composer and title identification when presented with an audio sample of a work. Students in this course are made up of music majors and non-music majors. The understanding of music, composers, listening, styles, and genres is much more developed than any other General Education course in music. Students do extremely well in this class and the committee notes that interactions of the music majors in discussions aid the non-majors tremendously. The SLO is assessed through daily work, exams, and essays. 2. Students will analyze stylistic features in works of the same era and recognize differences between works of differing eras. They will do so in clearly formulated and grammatically accurate sentences. Papers required in this course address this SLO. From assessment of quantitative results, it is clear that students do very well in understanding the material and have a better success in writing. Generally, sophomores take this course who may have a stronger background in paper writing. Analysis of musical scores and listening is a large portion of the content taught in this course. Through study, students can examine music scores and can easily identify musical periods (era’s). 3. Students will identify the major genres and forms in classical music and be able to locate particular musical works in relation to these genres and forms. Students in MUH 272 develop quickly in this area. Most can read music and discussions can be more developed than found in MUH 171. Identification of forms found throughout the classical literature are highly stressed. Students do very well with this. 4. Upon hearing a new piece, students will apply critical thinking to evaluate the work, identify when it was composed and make an educated guess about the works’ composer. Critical thinking through score study and listening is well-developed in this course. Again, the prior knowledge before taking this course aids in the assessment. Though many students don’t have a lot of experience with music history, music periods with a little time can easily be identified. Discussion of instrumentation, style, staging, form, and sound (timbre) all are utilized in determining or guessing the composer and time period. The committee is pleased with this area. / 5. Students will demonstrate an understanding of how to identify major works by important composers through skills in listening and methods of analysis. As students develop in music, this skill is most important. Music majors MUST have these skills to continue their study in music history. The non-major usually struggles here and we recommend more attention be given to those students. Listening examples are made available to students and can access them anywhere. 6. Students will integrate relevant information about the composer’s compositional and stylistic innovations, basic facts about their lives, and their general historical significance. The paper addresses the integrations of all elements of music and this SLO. It’s the ultimate assessment means to show understanding of all aspects of the course. Students are

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 29 of 84 required to do real-life research and study a particular piece of music to a level most have not experienced before. As a whole the committee is very satisfied with this assessment method and feel the paper does a great job assessing the most important elements of this course.

MUH 273

MUH 273, Popular Music, is a general education course for non-music and music majors. Students from other disciplines are required to take this course as part of their degree program. Having this type of mixture in the course is excellent. Discussions are meaningful and integration of several musical concepts, genres, styles, and time periods can be discussed with more understanding. Overall, we are very pleased with the outcome of this assessment. The majority of students were accomplished or competent for all categories that were evaluated. We believe this is due to the way the course is taught, the guidelines printed in the syllabus, and a sample concert review made available to the students prior to this written assignment. Plus students have several choices of paper topics to choose from. Students also have improved since last assessment due to better music listening and availability of music listening. Students are encouraged to share popular music they enjoy with their peers. The dialogue and confidence this brings has greatly improved the paper assignments used for assessment. This course is taught by two faculty members and data is shared.

Student Learning Outcomes: 1. Students will demonstrate comprehension of major musical works by composer and title identification when presented with an audio sample of a work. Students in this course are made up of music majors and non-music majors. The understanding of music, composers, listening, styles, and genres is much more developed than any other General Education course in music. Students do extremely well in this class and the committee notes that interactions of the music majors in discussions aid the non-majors tremendously. The SLO is assessed through daily work, exams, and essays. 2. Students will analyze stylistic features in works of the same era and recognize differences between works of differing eras. They will do so in clearly formulated and grammatically accurate sentences. Papers required in this course address this SLO. From assessment of quantitative results, it is clear that students do very well in understanding the material and have a better success in writing. Generally, sophomores take this course who may have a stronger background in paper writing. Analysis of musical scores and listening is a large portion of the content taught in this course. Through study, students can examine music scores and can easily identify musical periods (era’s). 3. Students will identify the major genres and forms in classical music and be able to locate particular musical works in relation to these genres and forms. Students in MUH 273 develop quickly in this area. Most can read music and discussions can be more developed than found in MUH 171. Identification of forms found throughout the classical literature are highly stressed. Students do very well with this. Plus the idea of studying rock and roll motivates students more than other GEN Ed music courses to learn additional information about the genres they are studying. 4. Upon hearing a new piece, students will apply critical thinking to evaluate the work, identify when it was composed and make an educated guess about the works’ composer. Critical thinking through score study and listening is well-developed in this course. Again, the prior knowledge before taking this course aids in the assessment. Though many students don’t have a lot of experience with music history, music periods with a little time can easily be identified. Discussion of instrumentation, style, staging, form, and sound (timbre) all are utilized in determining or guessing the composer and time period. The committee is pleased with this area. 5. Students will demonstrate an understanding of how to identify major works by important composers through skills in listening and methods of

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 30 of 84 analysis. As students develop in music, this skill is most important. Music majors MUST have these skills to continue their study in music history. The non-major usually struggles here and we recommend more attention be given to those students. Listening examples are made available to students and can access them anywhere. 6. Students will integrate relevant information about the composer’s compositional and stylistic innovations, basic facts about their lives, and their general historical significance. The paper addresses the integrations of all elements of music and this SLO. It’s the ultimate assessment means to show understanding of all aspects of the course. Students are required to do real-life research and study a particular piece of music to a level most have not experienced before. As a whole the committee is very satisfied with this assessment method and feel the paper does a great job assessing the most important elements of this course.

PHE 200

Comprehension assessed by Scores on Test 2 Fall 2015 The majority of scores were in the accomplished and competent range which is typical of the data from previous semesters. The fact that 14 people got scores in the 90’s tells me the information is available to the students. I have study guides and power points on the text and on the videos we view. The feedback in the past is that they couldn’t glean enough information from the videos and be prepared to discuss them on an exam so they now have power points. The students willing to read, watch the videos, listen to the discussion in class and review the power points find the material very comprehensible and are able to write essays on the tests that integrate the material. I typically have a lot of freshman in the class and many are not yet used to the amount of work required in a college course to achieve the accomplished distinction.

The next 4 rubric categories were assessed using 10 randomly chosen final papers from the 32 submitted. Clarity of Expression It seems more students each semester are coming to college without experience in writing a research paper. I feel like everyone tried hard to do their best work however not all were successful. Trying to integrate material across the semester while critiquing a classic modern dance work by Alvin Ailey (Revelations) is a higher order task. I add more information on Blackboard each semester on how to get help with writing on campus and on how to reference their sources. The worst part of the papers this semester was their lack of understanding that sources must be referenced throughout the paper. I will spend more time on this in class next semester.

Formal Structural Analysis/ Theoretical Application The Dance and Culture course covers a wide variety of topics from how dance has been used to express spirituality and social mores to the history of ballet and modern and the aesthetics involved. This means that the students don’t necessarily get very good at analyzing or evaluating artistic works. After seeing this lack of ability I will start doing more of this type of analysis of cultural dance earlier in the semester so they will be prepared to do this type of analysis and application for their final paper.

Integration It is not hard to imagine that the students would be able to integrate Ailey’s Revelations to earlier topics in the class and this is reflected in the data. Topics of integration include; using dance as spiritual expression, the experience of slavery and transition of slavery to emancipation and the

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 31 of 84 influence of African/African American dance on America, the role dance plays in reflecting societies mores etc. etc. I was actually pleased in the majority of papers how well the students pulled together ideas we have learned in their analysis of the work.

THE 100

Comparing the figures from Spring 2014, we found a far lower percentage of students scoring a 4 in any of the areas. Students scoring a 3 rose correspondingly and those scoring a 2 rose as well. We were pleased to see that those scoring a 1 dropped slightly. 90% - 97% of our students scored a 2 or passing grade in all four areas. These figures were interpreted as a very positive reflection on current methods. Jerome and Matt were late hires to replace Daniel Perez and Steven Higginbotham and had never taught THE 100 at EKU before. In addition, this was the first time Jerome and Matt had engaged in our assessment process. The figures suggest that despite the evidence of integration that was observed in several students, we need to better explain or model how students can incorporate class material into their critiques. Another area of improvement that was discussed was to better incorporate adjunct instructors in the assessment process. Another problem that was highlighted was a continuing misunderstanding regarding the wording of the critique prompt. We will discuss ways to insure that the prompt is standardized and distributed to all who are teaching THE 100 on Assurance of Learning Day. In summary, the theatre faculty was pleased with the results of the assessment and with the plans that were made to improve student’s achievement of educational goals

Jeffrey handed out score sheets and copies of Spring 2014’s assessment narrative to remind the members of the suggestions for improvement that had been determined last year. Some suggestions we developed concerning how students could improve their papers last year were Jeffrey, Jerome and Matt shared general impressions of their students this semester. Class attendance was again a concern of all three faculty members. Jerome and Matt gave extra credit incentives to their classes to come in to the scene or costume shop and work. This resulted in two students becoming very active in the department and considering changing their major to Theatre. We agreed to continue this practice next year. Another interesting observation from Matt centered on several students reacting very negatively to the content of the plays, but still being able to evaluate the shows using criteria learned in class and not just their own personal beliefs. We were encouraged by this observable evidence of integration.

FCC 210

The data were shared by the instructor with the section coordinator, who reviewed it and agreed with the instructor's judgment as reported here. Most students in this class demonstrated fairly good writing and research skills, although most had little knowledge of Asian history and culture. The large numbers of beginning students reflects the students who often missed class, wrote very poorly, and didn’t work enough to develop skills in the course. The data shows that while students are fairly familiar with discussing film in general, and even Asian film as long as it was kung fu or anime, they were less comfortable with learning about histories and cultures that have not been popularized in the west.

Therefore more focus needs to be put in this course on learning about the particular histories and cultures of regions in Asia, and less on generic film criticism.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 32 of 84 FCC 220

The data were shared by the instructor with the section coordinator and others who may teach this course in the future. The section coordinator agrees with the instructor's judgment that all relevant Gen Ed objectives are being met.

Therefore, little adjustment is required, although it is the instructor's view that In the future, it might be a good idea to have the students bring in a draft for the current events section part-way through the course for some general feedback.

FCC 227

The data were shared by the instructor with the section coordinator, who reviewed it and agreed with the instructor's judgment. / / Most students in this class were competent or even gifted writers and researchers, despite encountering unfamiliar and rather esoteric material. Beginning students were those who missed or slept through class and so did not develop the skills necessary to improve during the course. Analysis (formal and contextual), theoretical application and integration were the greatest weaknesses, which one might expect since most students had no background in Asian culture and civilization, particularly the classical periods.

In future classes the instructor intends to reduce the amount of material covered so that more time can be spent on exploring the interrelationships and influences between the different cultural periods, and some of the cultural underpinnings of Japan’s current state and relationships with the rest of the world.

PHI 110 (W)

This data was shared and discussed with faculty at our 2015 Assurance of Learning day.

Students are doing well with respect to comprehension and clarity of expression. It seems that our students in PHI 110 are good at getting the concepts, but they need to do better in Theoretical Application and Methods. Specifically, they need to learn to evaluate arguments more effectively. In light of this, we will devote more class time to building this critical thinking ability. Philosophy is often difficult for students who have never taken a course before, and with that in mind we've focused on making sure they understand the concepts. In order to move forward, we will devote more time and be more intentional about teaching them how to critically evaluate philosophical arguments and positions during class time.

PHI 130

For PHI 130, a positive trend in the data that stands out is that the students are doing well with respect to comprehension and the quality of their writing. We agreed that one way to improve student learning, using this data, is to devote more class time to argumentative analysis and criticizing General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 33 of 84 views. One concrete way to improve student learning is to tell them the types of questions to ask in moral philosophy when looking for an objection to an argument. This gives them a strategy and starting point for learning how to analyze and criticize arguments in ethics more effectively.

PHI 240 (W)

We discussed assessment data with faculty at our 2015 Assurance of Learning day.

The data we have with respect to this class is insufficient to draw a lot of conclusions for how to improve student learning. I received it after becoming the chair of our department, and it looks to me as if the assessment was done at a more general level than is needed. However, the data that we do have from this course, the fact that it is a lower-division course mainly taken by non-majors, anecdotal evidence, and my own personal experience teaching this course give good reason for thinking that the students are relatively better at comprehension than critical analysis and methods. Given this, we have also decided that in PHI 240 and PHI 240W, we will devote more time and be more intentional about teaching them how to critically evaluate philosophical arguments related to philosophy of religion. Next time we assess this course for general education, I will ensure that the assessment rubric is understood and filled out in a manner that is more helpful.

PHI 300 (W)

The data we have with respect to this class is insufficient to draw a lot of conclusions for how to improve student learning. I received it after becoming the chair of our department, and it looks to me as if the assessment was done at a more general level than is needed. However, the data that we do have from this course, the fact that it is a course mainly taken by non-majors, and the trends we have seen in our general education offerings in philosophy reveal that the students are relatively better at comprehension than critical analysis and methods. / / Given this, we have decided that in PHI 300, we will devote more time and be more intentional about teaching them how to critically evaluate philosophical arguments from this historical period of philosophy. Next time we assess this course for general education, I will ensure that the assessment rubric is understood and filled out in a manner that is more fine-grained and therefore generates a better and more useful set of data.

PHI 320

The data trends here reflect the same trends we are seeing in most of our general education course offerings in this area of the curriculum. Comprehension and Clarity of Expression are strong, but Analysis, Theoretical Application, and Methods are relatively weaker. The fact that comprehension is relatively strong here is important, because of the nature of the subject matter in this course. Students read primary sources from the 17th and 18th centuries, which can be difficult. The data show that they are relatively weaker at analyzing and critically evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments of philosophers in this time period. In view of this, more class time will be devoted to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the philosophical writings being discussed,

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 34 of 84 through such techniques as modeling this type of philosophical analysis in class and reading/considering opposing views.

POL 250

The scores for comprehension are very strong. This is likely a result of the fact that the terms assessed in the instrument are all key concepts highlighted in the textbook and included on the exam study guide. The scores for methods are less strong, but still good. The difference in outcomes between the two goals is likely a result of the fact that the comprehension questions are covered in the book and lecture, whereas the methods question were mainly covered in the text. To improve these scores the instructor could stress the concepts used in the methods questions during lecture so that students will be more competent in identifying and applying them. In evaluating application and analysis, students were judged on the breadth and depth of application of relevant arguments in responding to the essay question. Accordingly, there were two ways students tended to fall short. First, the question was not answered with sufficient breadth. For example, students did not address the range of arguments that they could have, based on the material covered in the course. Second, students failed to analyze Page 3 of 3 the question in sufficient depth. Here, a common mistake was for students to merely cite an argument covered in the course without explaining it in adequate detail. In terms of the goal of evaluation, students were required to express their own opinions about which of two perspectives discussed in the essay they were most sympathetic with. Here students typically fell short by either not offering reasons for their opinions or not explaining those reasons in adequate depth. In evaluating integration on the essays, students tended to fall short by not linking concepts, theories, and thinkers across the whole scope of the course. For example, only the ideas of two thinkers were considered, when three or four could have been introduced. The scores for comprehension are very strong. This is likely a result of the fact that the terms assessed in the instrument are all key concepts highlighted in the textbook and included on the exam study guide. The scores for methods are less strong, but still good. The difference in outcomes between the two goals is likely a result of the fact that the comprehension questions are covered in the book and lecture, whereas the methods question were mainly covered in the text. To improve these scores the instructor could stress the concepts used in the methods questions during lecture so that students will be more competent in identifying and applying them. In evaluating application and analysis, students were judged on the breadth and depth of application of relevant arguments in responding to the essay question. Accordingly, there were two ways students tended to fall short. First, the question was not answered with sufficient breadth. For example, students did not address the range of arguments that they could have, based on the material covered in the course. Second, students failed to analyze Page 3 of 3 the question in sufficient depth. Here, a common mistake was for students to merely cite an argument covered in the course without explaining it in adequate detail. In terms of the goal of evaluation, students were required to express their own opinions about which of two perspectives discussed in the essay they were most sympathetic with. Here students typically fell short by either not offering reasons for their opinions or not explaining those reasons in adequate depth. In evaluating integration on the essays, students tended to fall short by not linking concepts, theories, and thinkers across the whole scope of the course. For example, only the ideas of two thinkers were considered, when three or four could have been introduced.

To improve student performance on analysis/application, evaluation, and integration, the instructor will provide students with an essay rubric based on these categories. The instructor developed and

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 35 of 84 used a rubric in assessing the # Question Accomplished Exceeds Course Expectations 3 - Competent Meets Course Expectations Incomplete in Meeting Course Expectations Inadequate in Meeting Course Expectation Total Responses Text Response Text Response essays, but it was not provided to the students. The rubric given to students will indicate general goals for the three criteria, but it will not contain the same detailed notes about subject matter content that appears on the instructor’s rubric.

(1) To improve clarity of expression, students will be encouraged to write rough drafts of the essay and take those drafts to the Noel Center Writing Center for feedback before they write a final draft for the exam. (2) To improve in the areas of formal analysis, contextual analysis, theoretical application, and integration across the course, students will be provided with a rubric that explains what these criteria mean, and the instructor will encourage students to consult the rubric before writing their essays.

REL 301 (W)

In our estimation, the papers on average are better than they have been in the past, which is an encouraging sign. Comprehension of the different world religions is quite good. The primary area we will seek to improve is the ability of students to engage in a comparative analysis of the different religions of the world. They seem to be able to understand the main ideas, but they still struggle in relating the religions to one another so as to see the similarities and differences. We will work at helping students do this by such techniques as modeling it more during class time, and giving them the conceptual and analytical tools to help them engage in this kind of comparative analysis across religions. One other possibility is to focus on a set of questions that the major religions seek to answer, and then discuss their answers in this way with students, so as to highlight the comparative similarities and differences.

ELEMENT 4: NATURAL SCIENCES

ANT 201

1) Assessments: ANT 201 will continue to assess after each semester so as to identify issues earlier and to see if we are making progress in our deficiencies. 2) Course structure and design: We will continue to use the best practices provided in the Quality Matters instruction from the Instructional Development Center. 3) Internet-available materials: We will continue to make use of Bio- Anthropology News and other online sources to help fuel discussion, and to give students more opportunities to relate matters to personal or public importance. Now that virtual museums have been upgraded greatly, we will continue to have online students make use of these. Finer quality online videos have also become more available. 4) Methods (online): We will continue our current structure for online labs. These seem to be working well. We have learned from our first run of the online evolutionary force lab, and we believe this helped students retain knowledge about genetic drift, mutation, gene flow, and natural selection. 5) Methods (face-to-face): To address the decrease in Methods and Valid competencies, will involve more follow-up opportunities for students to show what they have learned, and not learned. 6) To address the decrease in Methods and Valid

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 36 of 84 competencies in face-to-face ANT 201, we will apply to begin lab fees as most other science gen ed. courses have. The lack of fossil models and instrumentation needs to be addressed with a more permanent and realistic solution than relying on department M&O funds. The ideal situation is for lab groups to be no more than THREE individuals. We currently face group size of FIVE students. These will hopefully reinforce critical points brought up in lab and lecture. As the deadline for a request for lab fees in 2015-16 passed in April, we will tread water on this until the 2016-2017 year. 7) To boost performance on major concepts, we plan to use several image-based slides in unit review/study guides. We currently make use of a course glossary, and discuss student learning outcomes. 8) We plan to use more video-prompted discussion at least once in each course unit. This may give students more practice in drawing valid and reasonable conclusions, and it may relate better more of the course’s major concepts.

Overall, ANT 201 is a demanding, challenging course that covers much information, but the students are getting a course that forces them to think critically about a lot of material. / We are seeing positive trends in this ANT 201 assessment: / / 1) ANT 201 students still seem to be maintaining previous assessment levels in most categories. The rigor has increased in several identified areas. Despite the fact that most students enter the course often lacking previous training in math or biology, students are grasping topics, such as human evolution, that challenge them on many levels. By the end of the course, students are comprehending evolution, genetics, anatomy, ecology, osteology, primatology, and paleontology. / 2) By the end of the semester, most students readily grasped foundational material in Units 1 & 2, and successfully integrated those concepts with material in the primatological and paleontological record. For example, students readily comprehended Unit 1 concepts, such as coevolution, and integrated them with issues about health and human interaction with the environment in the last 150,000 years of human evolution. / 3) ANT 201 responded well to previous Assessment-related attempts to bring in more discussion of issues that relate to matters of personal or public importance. Scores in “public” remained steady across assessment years, despite the decline (in percentage) of ANT majors. Non-majors and majors alike related to material about race, genetics, climate change, and public health. / 4) Methods competencies remained steady, but were still lower than desired. Given that initial assessments showed student difficulty with basic biological concepts, we decided in Spring 2015 to develop a completely new lab on evolutionary forces, both in face-to-face and online formats. Existing labs had more time devoted to applying statistics and to making more sense of hominin taxonomy.

AST 135

Results were compiled and sorted by Garett Yoder who then distributed results to faculty for input.

The scores for AST 135 are pretty much unchanged from the last cycle. We see mild improvements in understanding methods, explaining concepts and integration across the course and a mild decline in scores on application of scientific principles. The application score had jumped dramatically in the last cycle, so a mild decline is not too worrisome. In the last couple years the dome-projection system in the Hummel Planetarium has be greatly improved and we are using the facility more now than we were able to in the past. However, getting consistent access and time in the facility has proven somewhat difficult. Using the planetarium could really help students visualize the systems we are talking about as they involve three-dimensional geometry that may really improve scores. We hope this will also get students more excited about the material.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 37 of 84 AST 335

Garett Yoder collected and sorted the assessment data, then shared the results with appropriate faculty for input.

The scores for AST 335 are almost unchanged from the scores for AST 330 in the last cycle. We had hoped that the addition of the laboratory component would improve scores particularly in the understanding methods criterion. However, that criteria has only 7.4% that remain in the Beginning category at the end of the course, so there is not much room for improvement. The scores in application of scientific principles and integration across the course are much lower. These are higher order critical thinking criteria, so we expect that, but we will continue to make improvements to the course to try and improve those scores. The course is taught with lecture and laboratory integrated in a single studio classroom. This format gives us a lot of flexibility to improve the course and find ways to get better scores overall.

BIO 100

The report was sent to the faculty teaching the course after tabulation.

BIO 100: Introductory Biology The Department of Biological Sciences (Department) continues to monitor the success of students that take the Introductory Biology (BIO100) for the General Education requirements at Eastern Kentucky University (University). This is a very large course with 400 to 600 students per semester consisting of eight or more lecture sections and 20-30 lab sections. The students have a very wide background in biology. Some of the students are from high school programs where they had a strong background in biology, while most come from high school programs that had very limited biology courses. Also, many of the students take this course because they assume biology will be an easier science course, yet they still have a negative attitude towards science. / With the above background, this course does appear to be meeting the requirements for general education. Only seven percent of the students had a “Beginning” level of understanding of methods of biology by the end of the semester. That indicates that 97% of the students had a functional knowledge (above beginning) of how science in general and biology in particular works and obtains knowledge. Seventy-five percent of the students had a functional knowledge of the major concepts of how life is structured, function, and reproduces. Eighty-seven percent had a functional knowledge of the application of biology to deal with important issues to themselves and society. While there is room for improvement with these areas, this is a good indication of the success of the course to provide the students with a solid general understanding of how biology works and the major accomplishments of the field of biology. The areas of application of principles to make conclusions and the integration of the information are areas that are much more difficult for all students to excel at and this is demonstrated in the assessment of the BIO100 students. Only 62% of the students demonstrated a functional knowledge of how to apply the material they learned in the BIO100 course to decision making. In regards to the ability to integrate the knowledge obtained in BIO100, only 69% had a functional knowledge. These are two areas that need improvement. The difficulty with improving these areas is that this is the same areas of difficulty that is being faced throughout the University, that being how to improve student’s abilities of critical thinking. The Department is currently looking at modification of some of the labs that are performed in BIO100, which give the

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 38 of 84 students the ability to analyze data and to “force” them to draw conclusions from the data. We have recently implemented two new labs. One is where the students observe the contents of an owl pellet and based on their observations and the observations of others in the class, then must draw conclusions about the impact of owls on the populations of rodents within the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the implication this has on the evolutionary impact of owls on rodent survival. The second recently implemented lab is a lab were the students must examine and take measurements of skulls of multiple primates. Some of the primates are independent of human evolution and some are related to human evolution. After the students have taken the measurements and made some comparisons of the skulls, the students must draw conclusions about the evolutionary relationships between the different organisms. Recently the Department has also begun to assess the BIO100 students’ knowledge and critical thinking skills at the beginning of the semester by having the students take the General Education Assessment tool on the first day of class and then again on the last day of the class. The students do not get to see the assessment nor are they given the answers to the assessment at any time throughout the semester. Due to limited administrative staff, the data has not been analyzed to see if there is an improvement in student performance and how extensive the improvement may be. This is a procedure that the Department will continue to perform and will begin to analyze the data to determine possible additional modifications to be made in the course.

BIO 101

Data were shared with faculty via email.

BIO 101 is a three hour general education course with lab which is designed to offer general knowledge of biology for non-biology majors. It is a relatively new course that is 100% online and this (Spring 2015) was the first time BIO 101 has been assessed. The sample size consisted of two sections and was relatively low at 35, so we approach the results of the General Education assessment cautiously. Therefore, for us, these data serve as baseline from which we can begin identifying trends in student learning. The assessment results indicated that most of the students are meeting our established criteria to be considered successful. Greater than 57% of the students were assessed as competent or accomplished for all criteria. Since most of the students are non-majors with very little, if any, knowledge of biology when they enter the course we view these as positive results. We look forward to seeing the results of future assessments for comparison. These assessment numbers give us a general idea of what we may want to start focusing on for future sections. We would like to see even more students come into the upper echelon. As an example, the criterion “Application of Scientific Principles to Address Issues of Importance” and “Integration” there were several students (43% and 37% correspondingly) falling into the beginning or developing categories, so there is definitely room for improvement, more so in mentioned areas. Even though this is the first course assessment and the sample size is low we still intend to emphasize those aspects of the course which appear, at this point, to be more challenging to our students. This approach should help improve student outcomes going forward.

BIO 102

Data were shared with faculty teaching the courses via email.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 39 of 84 The assessment results suggest that students are doing well in the area of scientific methods. Clearly the results in the other areas are lower. Instead of addressing the scores, the most prudent course of action will be to revisit the questions used for assessment. Recently, Kentucky adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which should dictate our learning outcomes for BIO 102. Therefore, the top priority is to assess the extent to which our general education assessment aligns with the NGSS.

BIO 111

Data were shared with faculty teaching the course via email.

Before its inception in fall semester 2011, BIO 111 was taught as BIO 121, which included cell and molecular biology, ecology and evolution. Instructors of the course felt there was too much material to cover in one semester, and many other universities were teaching the same material in two courses. As a result, two committees were formed to develop BIO 111 Cell and Molecular Biology and BIO 112 Ecology and Evolution. BIO 111 now focuses on the fundamental principles of cell and molecular biology and evolution is a common thread throughout the course. The course is still quite rigorous and challenging for many students with varied experiential backgrounds from their secondary educations. However, trends in the assessment data show an overall increase in student success in the course. Competence in all of the areas measured has increased from 18 to 30%. In spring 2011, the last semester that BIO 121 was taught, 65% of students were competent in Understanding of Methods, whereas, 83% were competent in BIO 111 in spring 2015. Likewise, students show better ability to Explain Concepts (increase of 18% from 43 to 61%), Apply Scientific Principles (increase of 12% from 40 to 52% and increase of 15% from 56 to 71%) and Integrate their knowledge across the course (increase of 30% from 39 to 69%). / The increase in competence across all criteria indicates that creating a course with the ability to focus more on teaching pedagogies that reinforce learning has been successful. This does not mean there is still not room for improvement. For example, there were still just over half of students who were “Competent” in their ability to apply scientific principles to make conclusions. Additionally, several students for all criteria were in the “Developing” category. We will continue to revise teaching methods both in the classroom and laboratory which include more critical learning and problem-solving activities. These types of teaching methods are needed for students to make better application of their knowledge. Overall, the decision to create BIO 111 has been a positive move toward grounding students in the foundations of Biology.

BIO 112

Data were shared with faculty teaching the course via email.

BIO112 is a fundamental class in the EKU Biological Sciences degree program and is important for several other majors as well. This class is taught primarily at EKU’s Richmond campus, but is also sometimes offered at regional campuses. BIO 112 covers topics in evolution and ecology and has considerable focus on applying concepts in in-class activities and out-of-class projects. This class also has a laboratory component that seeks to reinforce key topics primarily through computer simulations, guided scientific experiments, and in-class projects. All sections use a common text, and usually instructors try to match the order of topics covered in lecture to the order of topics covered in lab. / Currently, we have data for assessments performed in Spring 2015 covering 82 students in two

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 40 of 84 sections. We were pleased to see that 91% of students achieved a “Competent” rating in the assessment category of “Application of Scientific Principals to Address Issues of Importance.” However, given this very high number, it may also indicate that we should recalibrate our assessment instrument to be somewhat more difficult. A strong majority of our students (71%) also scored as “Competent” in the “Understanding of Methods” category. More than half of our students (58%) scored as “Competent” in the “Integration” criterion, with 26% being scored as “Developing.” These results indicate that it may be useful to increase emphasis on how concepts in one area of science may be useful in different areas of thought. Only 42% of students scored in the highest category in the “Explain Major Concepts” area, while 35% scored in the “Developing” and 22% scored in “Beginning” categories. These low scores are a bit surprising since this criterion requires relatively little application and the lowest level of critical thought. This result may indicate that we need to review our fundamental concepts more carefully and integrate some review of these topics into in-class activities. / What we can determine from these results are somewhat limited by the fact that we have only one semester’s data. We are interested to see if these results are typical or not. These results seem to indicate fairly good attainment of critical thinking skills as indicated by high (91%) and moderate (58%) levels of achievement in Application and Integration, respectively.

CHE 100

On August 13, 2015, Dr. Martin Brock and Ms. Mary Lamar discussed the data in a meeting for this course. These two are the main instructors for the course.

Dr. Brock and Ms. Lamar were disappointed in the data, but they reflected upon the semester. Besides having each section canceled for about 1.5 weeks, both instructors had major medical emergencies requiring surgery. From the first week of February til spring break, Ms. Lamar was in charge of both sections. After spring break, Dr. Brock was in charge of both sections. This change in instructors was difficult for the students and may be the reason for the high number of students at the beginning levels for questions. From previous semester’s data, we have seen some fluctuations in these numbers. This course's activities have evolved. Pedagogical modifications were made in attempt to facilitate better explanations from the students. Another modification was to align the activities to the Next Generation Science Standards which these students are expected to use in their future classrooms. In addition, an activity concerning energy and heat transfer has been added which also incorporates the engineering design process which will be useful for the students' future classrooms. The instructors are also trying to have students focus on ways chemistry is used in their lives which is the focus of one of the General Education questions.

CHE 101

Faculty receive results of data as part of a regular faculty meeting during the next academic year (in this case, 2015-2016). Since the data are course-specific, we ask that faculty meet together with their colleagues to discuss the results, and then bring ideas on improving student learning back to a faculty meeting in the future. If time allows, these data are discussed during AOL Day. This year, that was not the case and they were instead discussed during a regular faculty meeting in Spring 2016 in preparation for the next assessment cycle.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 41 of 84 In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, two different strategies were taken. First, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. Second, we disaggregated the data to see if certain instructors were more successful at meeting the general education goals, so that we could use them as mentors to help other faculty improve their teaching. 1. For this semester, only one learning goal was met for one SLO: Methods. No other learning goals were met. Based on lowest progress toward learning goals, Major Concepts was chosen as the area for further improvement. These data are atypical for this course. Both sections were taught by part-time instructors, one of whom was new to EKU. In previous evaluation windows, the assessed courses were primarily taught by full-time, tenured faculty members. The difference is student progress toward learning goals is stark! 2. There are clear differences in student learning when the course is taught by part-time instructors vs. full-time faculty. Part-time instructors are required to meet with the department chair, who is a regular instructor of this course, for orientation on the course and its learning goals. However, the possible variations for teaching this course, especially as they relate to the amount of time relegated to traditional paleontology vs. conceptual earth history, is immense. One instructor is an Ordovician paleontologist/sedimentary geologist, while the other was a Mesozoic-era fan and a plate tectonics expert. So even though the course outlines were similar, the focus of each course was uniquely different. Historical general education assessment data suggest that progress toward student learning goals is normally much higher than in this round of assessment, and there is at least correlation between type of instructor (part-time vs. full-time) and success toward reaching learning goals. In all of the GLY courses (except GLY 102, which is a special course specifically designed for teachers), the weakest area of student learning is Major Concepts. This is, quite frankly, puzzling as heck since the entire focus of the class is built around students learning major concepts of the discipline: plate tectonics, deep time, and cycles/systems. The way in which the concepts are introduced is different depending on the focus of the class, but these learning outcomes are shared across all courses and the same instrument is used in all 4 courses, yet there is consistency that Major Concepts is the weakest area across all GLY courses. The program faculty will revisit the assessment instrument to determine if the questions are biasing the results of the assessment, since it seems unlikely that all faculty ranks and all courses in GLY would do the poorest job of teaching major concepts since this is a primary goal of each course.

CHE 105

On February 19, 2016, the 105 Chemistry for Health Sciences Working group met to discuss the results. The Working group consists of faculty that teach the lecture and potentially teach the lab sections periodically.

The Working Group discussed the labs and content that was covered by the test especially since several members of the Working Group are new to CHE 105. Copies of the lab final with the corresponding general education criteria rubric were distributed. Several members of the working group had not seen this assessment. Nine questions had less than 50% passing rate. Two of these questions were multi-step conversion problems. Some other issues involved the use of Significant Figures and metric conversions. A discussion occurred about the math requirements for the course. Students are have their developmental courses complete, but the completion of College Algebra is not a prerequisite for this course. Upon reviewing the nursing curriculum plan, students are supposed to

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 42 of 84 be in their Math course the same semester as taking Chemistry 105, but this course schedule does not always occur. The Chemistry 105 instructors are planning to focus some more time to multi-step conversion problems. Another area that showed less than 50% passing rate was a question about acids and pH. The question is phrased that for a given pH what can we know about the solution to be certainly true. The group plans to ensure that students realize pH does not predict whether or not an acid is strong or weak, but percent dissociation of the molecule indicates the strength. pH as a predictor of acid strength is a misconception. Another question was related to valence electrons. The lecture professors have discussed that with organic chemistry and biochemistry sections of the course they will reinforce the concept of valence electrons being the same for the main group families of the periodic table.

CHE 111

On April 4, 2016 an e-mail with the general education results was sent to the General Chemistry Working Group.

Spring 2015, the first semester American Chemical Society (ACS) test was used. This test is 40 questions lasting 50 minutes. Unfortunately, this test includes information that is covered in our second semester of General Chemistry. After some informal discussions during Spring 2015, the current General Chemistry Working Group decided to change the first semester General Chemistry final exam such that the General Education questions would be the same for all sections but the remaining portion of the exam would be written by the appropriate instructor. The Working Group felt that by having an exam which did not include new material would be beneficial for our students. During the Fall 2016 semester, the General Chemistry working group finalized the new General Education questions. Discussion were held on August 20, 2016 and October 30, 2016 to discuss the new questions. An improvement to our testing will be the inclusion of questions for the criteria: Applying scientific knowledge to address issues of personal and public importance. The ACS exam did not have questions that could be connected with this criteria.

GEO 210

In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, two different strategies were taken. First, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. Second, we disaggregated the data to see if certain instructors were more successful at meeting the general education goals, so that we could use them as mentors to help other faculty improve their teaching. 1. For GEO 210, we met our strategic plan benchmarks in 3 out of 5 SLOs: Major Concepts, and the two Application SLOs. We were equally weak on Methods and Integration. We had challenges discussing the results with all affected instructors because we rely so

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 43 of 84 heavily on part-time instruction, so a subset of faculty met to discuss the results. We decided to focus on Integration. The course is organized into distinct units of weather/climate, landscape/water and geology. We have decided to improve the success of this SLO by adding content to the end of the semester that explicitly demonstrates the interaction between these three topics in the real world (e.g., how weather can affect water quantity and quality). 2. For GEO 210, a general education course with very high demand that heavily relies on lecturers and part-time instructors to provide these courses to students, we found that the full-time lecturers were much more successful at meeting SLOs than the part-time instructors. We were initially hoping that we could design some mentoring experiences for the part-time faculty, but all of them have other job responsibilities and, in the case of courses at the regional campuses, geographic constraints that made it impossible for the group to meet regularly. We would appreciate help in thinking through possible solutions to this challenge.

GLY 102

GLY 102 is unique because it is a course for teachers, so course content is integrated with pedagogy. We spend as much time talking about how to teach well as actually teaching it, and we have a dichotomy of students, with a majority being elementary education majors but a significant group of middle grades education majors. Students met both learning criteria (Competent and Developing) for the Methods and Applying Scientific Knowledge to Issues of Personal and Public Importance. Students met one of the two goals (Developing) for Integration, and met neither goal for Major Concepts and Applying knowledge to make reasonable and valid conclusions. Although a major part of the course is learning Major Concepts in the discipline, that goal seems to get obscured a bit by all of the focus on pedagogy, but that pedagogical teaching is necessary to the success of the students in their teaching careers. Therefore, we chose to focus on Applying knowledge to make reasonable and valid conclusions as our area for improvement. In Fall 2015, the course was redesigned based on new science core content (NGSS). NGSS has as part of its core content standards specific tasks expected in the curriculum to address making reasonable conclusions based on solid content knowledge. We expect that the redesign of the course will address our area for improvement. Additionally, we have separated the elementary and middle grades education majors into separate sections, so we look forward to learning about each group's specific needs and areas for improvement.

GLY 104

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 44 of 84 Although GLY 104 is a high-demand course, we do not have adequate instructional faculty to teach many sections. In GLY 104, both gen ed student learning goals were met for the Methods SLO, and one student learning goal was met for the remaining SLOs. This gives us confidence that we have a qualified part-time instructor at the Danville campus, but since these data are not representative of the entire department's student assurance of learning, we were hesitant to draw any conclusions from such a small sample size. Instead, we decided to look at historical data from 2011-2014 to identify our area most in need of improvement. An analysis of 4 years of data clearly shows that we are strongest at meeting the Integration SLO for this course, but the weakest is a somewhat murky picture, being more or less equally split between Major Concepts and Applying knowledge to make reasonable and valid conclusions. Since learning concepts is necessary before one can apply them, we have chosen Major Concepts as our area of greatest need. This is supported by the Fall 2014 data, which shows the lowest number of competent students in this category. This course suffers, we believe, from a strong disconnect between student expectations and course content. Student take Oceanography assuming they will be learning about whales and dolphins; instead they learn about plate tectonics, currents, and climatology. An analysis of the course syllabi suggests that the Major Concepts are all included in the course and the content is strong, but that faculty may need to approach the content differently to draw students in better. This continues to be one of our more challenging courses to "get right."

GLY 107

In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. GLY 107 is only taught by part-time faculty as full-time faculty teaching loads have been adjusted to assure student learning in the program outcomes. The part-time instructor whose course was assessed no longer works at EKU, but we do still teach the course in Richmond and Manchester using part-time instructors (one section per semester/year). GLY 107 met one of its student learning goals for 3 of the SLOs: Methods, Applying course material to make decisions of personal or public importance, and Integration. No learning goals were met for Major Concepts or Applying course material to make reasonable and valid conclusions. Of these two, Major Concepts had the least number of competent students and highest number of beginning students, so this was the SLO chosen. Since the part-time instructor had left EKU by the time that results were analyzed and provided to the department, it was difficult to get firsthand insights into the cause of the poor results. However, Gold and Diamonds is unique compared to most of the other introductory GLY general education courses in that its focus is the APPLICATION of geologic concepts course, where students learn geologic concepts and skills through the lens of resource distribution, exploration and acquisition. Therefore, it is no surprise that the SLO with the highest number of competent students was Applying knowledge to make decisions

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 45 of 84 of personal and public importance. Our geology faculty recommend that part-time instructors receive more guidance on the goals of this course as they relate to general education, as the course seems to have been taught at a much higher level than introductory level, and the students need more practice with the major concepts prior to applying them to real problems.

GLY 108

In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, two different strategies were taken. First, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. Second, we disaggregated the data to see if certain instructors were more successful at meeting the general education goals, so that we could use them as mentors to help other faculty improve their teaching. 1. For GLY 108, we met one of our learning goals for one SLO: Integration at the Developing level. We were unable to reach any other learning goals. However, the SLO with the least progress toward learning goals was Major Concepts, so this is our chosen area for improvement. 2. This course suffers from several problems: first, it is taught by many faculty members, of which only one is actually a full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty member. So orientation of all incoming part-time instructors is a HUGE issue, which is currently handled solely by the department chair, who has not taught the course since 2010. Second, there has been a huge philosophical argument between full-time faculty members regarding the content and focus of this course. This course number was once used for Intro to Physical Geology, which is a very traditional laboratory geology class where 1/3 of the class is spent learning the names of various rocks and minerals, and the other 2/3 of the class learning the names of landforms, tectonic features, etc. This faction argues that as an introductory geology course, new students need to know these facts. The other faction prefers a concepts-based course where naming stuff just isn't that important, and the course is focused on why average citizens should care about geoscience (hazards! water quality! natural resources!). The official department documents indicate that the latter should be the focus of the course, and faculty have adjusted their syllabi to model the format, but the reality in the classroom seems to be different. Third, since we rely so heavily on part-time instruction for this course, and since most of our part-time instructors are alumni who had GLY 108 in the former format, it has been very hard to retrain these instructors to change their paradigm for this class. Also, for instructors who rely heavily on a textbook for course organization (as most part-time instructors do), the books are all written in the former format and not the latter, so it's much easier to "teach it the old way." With the constant fluctuation of part-time instructors, we spend 90% of our time with part- time instructors trying to retrain them, only to have them leave a few semesters later when a full-time gig opens up. We recently hired three more "stable" part-time instructors for Fall 2016, so we are hopeful that our output of effort can lead to longer-term improvement in the future. / / An analysis

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 46 of 84 of the assessment data clearly show that Model #2 for teaching this course leads to better scores than Model #1, now we have to get a mechanism in place to train new faculty to design courses in the style of Model #2.

GLY 109

On December 10, 2015, a meeting of the CHE 101 General Education Working Group meet. The Working group consists of faculty that teach the lecture and potentially teach the lab sections periodically.

The Working Group discussed the labs and content that was covered by the test especially since several members of the working group are new to CHE 101. Copies of the lab final with the corresponding general education criteria rubric were distributed. Some members of the working group had not seen the lab final prior to the December meeting. Five questions that had fewer than a 50% passing rate was discussed in order for the CHE 101 lecturers to be aware of potential issues and consistent misconceptions such as misinterpretation of heating curves and difficulties with Molarity calculations. Some of these CHE 101 experiments associate with the low passing rate questions have been changed. Dr. Tanea Reed modified the lab final to represent these changes. The five questions with the low passing rate were modified to represent the current set of experiments. Only one of the remaining twenty questions had to be modified to represent the changes to the lab content. The CHE 101 working group discussed these changes so that the lecture instructors understood the changes made in the lab and why changes had to be done to this assessment. Information about the experiments will be useful for the instructors to be able to link lecture material to lab.

PHY 101

Garett Yoder compiled and sorted the assessment data then distributed the results to appropriate faculty for input.

The results for PHY 101 are somewhat mixed. The understanding methods and explaining concepts criteria were unchanged or mildly improved from the last cycle. However the criteria that involve higher order critical thinking, application of scientific principles and integration across the course scores have declined slightly. With a full 50% of students not getting above the Beginning level in the application criteria. Part of the issue may be that instructors have a lot of flexibility in which content is addressed in the course, so not all of the topics in the assessment exam are covered uniformly across all sections of the course. While we made many changes to the assessment several years ago, because the course continues to change, we have to work to keep it useful and relevant. As we mentioned last cycle the student population of PHY 101 continues to change. We had previously raised the mathematical prerequisites for PHY 131. A few of the programs who were requiring that course decided it was in the best interest of their students to no longer require PHY 131 and are now requiring PHY 101.This has increased the enrollment in these courses with a very different set of students. So the course is continuing to evolve to accommodate the expectations of the different sets of students and results may again be very different in the next assessment cycle.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 47 of 84 PHY 102

There was very little change in scores from last cycle, where scores were good to begin with. Because of the very small sample size (20, and 13 last cycle), we expect see a lot of fluctuation of scores from one cycle to the next, so it is very difficult to see trends in the data. We still see a few too many scores in the Beginning category in the higher-order critical thinking criteria of Application of Scientific Principles and Integration Across the Course, but it doesn’t appear to be cause for great concern. This course is designed to prepare middle school and high school science teachers. As such, the material must be strictly in line with the state-mandated Core Content Standards, where the conceptual parts of the material are emphasized. This is reflected in our results. Emphasizing application will always be difficult. We may also need to revise the assessment instrument as the Core Content Standards are always changing and separate the test for this class from the one used for PHY 101. Currently the assessment for the two courses are the same.

PHY 131

Results were mildly disappointing. Mostly the numbers were similar to the results in the last cycle with mild increases in the number of students remaining in the Beginning category in both the Understanding Concepts criterion and the Integration Across the Course criterion. One of the big concerns in teaching this course physics is that the emphasis in solving problems allows the students to learn to solve problems (application) without really understanding the underlying concepts. This is a problem globally in Introductory Physics courses, not unique to our department. We will continue to revise classroom and laboratory activities to further emphasize conceptual learning and bring to the students a more robust understanding of the underlying principles, first, before moving to solving problems. Another issue is allowing students to complete the Blackboard assignments on their own. We will begin insisting that the students work the exam in the classroom, where the test-taking environment and student motivation are better and more uniform.

PHY 201

We are very pleased with the results from this last assessment. We see improvement across the board. We must remember, however, that this is a very small sample size. (Due to a communication glitch, data was not taken for the Spring 2015 section.) Scores on Explaining the Concepts are still a bit too low, but we see marked improvement from last assessment. Although Explaining Concepts tends to be seen as lower level critical thinking than Application of the concepts, in Physics students are often able to learn to solve problems (application) by recipe without understanding the underlying General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 48 of 84 concepts. This is a global issue in Introductory Physics courses and is not unique to our department. We continue to try and address this effect by having students “discover” the underlying principles in class and lead them directly to how this applies to the problems. Another issue is allowing students to complete the Blackboard assignments on their own. We will begin insisting that the students work the exam in the classroom, where the test-taking environment and student motivation are better and more uniform.

ELEMENT 5 A: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

ANT 200

The Anthropology Program continues to use the annual Assurance of Learning Day and monthly program meetings to consider ways of strengthening course content and student learning outcomes. ANT 200 Instructor Development / The results of this assessment will be shared with ANT 200 instructors for review and comment. In addition, the Anthropology Program will continue to dedicate time during the annual Assurance of Learning Day for General Education Course discussions and development. In the past, we have discussed areas for improvement in the delivery of the Anthropology General Education courses, clarified our goals for these courses using curriculum maps, shared common supplemental materials, and explored the ways that ANT 200 puzzles in with other Anthropology General Education courses. Course Textbook and Supplemental Materials The Anthropology 200 course utilizes two common textbooks, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond and “A Nest in the Wind” by Martha Ward. Additional textbooks are used to discuss contemporary issues among human societies. The results of this assessment indicate that student learning is supported by the current textbooks, though there are areas for improvement. Therefore, beginning in the Fall of 2015, additional supplementary texts and pedagogical tools will be introduced to strengthen students’ comprehension and analysis of course materials. This includes new films and course worksheets as well as the option to adopt new ethnographic texts to complement and support the “Guns, Germs, and Steel” text. These supplemental materials will be especially important to deliver content related to the Comprehension 1 and 2 learning outcomes.

The results suggest that ANT 200 learners acquire a competent level of knowledge of the course material. Ranging from 53.4-76.7% in the competent category, achievement rates reflect a high level of knowledge acquisition while indicating a degree of difficulty. ANT 200 learners are especially competent with regards to Integration (analyze and evaluate the condition of nonindustrial societies in the contemporary era, relative to their existence in the colonial era), Comprehension 1 (demonstrate knowledge of the text “Guns, Germs, and Steel”), and Methods (describe the methods anthropologists employ to understand human societies and integrate concepts associated with change in human societies along an anthropologist’s timeline). Student scores at the “Competent” level are higher than reported in the Spring 2013 assessment, indicating positive results from efforts to maintain a cohesive learning agenda for ANT 200. These efforts are a direct result of discussions based on the last assessment cycle in an effort to produce meaningful and measurable change in the course content and outcomes. A lower percentage of students achieved a competence level with Comprehension 2 and Application/Analysis/Interpretation. The lower percentages of students achieving competence in the Comprehension 2 area provide an opportunity for the ANT 200 instructors to consider the core course content and its delivery. Questions used to assess

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 49 of 84 Comprehension contain material largely delivered through supplemental materials (not textbook based), therefore, we can continue to collectively seek ways to strengthen student learning in the Comprehension area. With regards to the second criteria, scores at the competence level are expected to be lower in that Application/Analysis/ Interpretation is a higher order of learning. This indicates that ANT 200 instructors have the opportunity to present new ways of synthesizing course material and encouraging students to apply the methods that anthropologists use to understand human societies.

HIS 204 (W)

General Education is part of the History department's course assessment system. The department has an assessment committee which each years completes the department's course assessments and writes a formal report relaying results, trends from previous reports, and recommendations. This report is circulated among the faculty and then the results and recommendations are discussed at a faculty meeting specifically focused on assessment. The department determines what further actions all faculty will take to improve identified areas of weakness. Particular areas of concern have in the past also then become an agenda item for Assurance of Learning Day.

The department has seen an improvement in its general education scores because it has implemented the following approaches in ALL its general education courses: These approaches have come about as a result of discussion of the assessment data collected. - Since students often do not read assigned materials, the use of quizzes and reading response papers. - Some faculty also recording reading previews which they post on the course blackboard site. -Conducting numerous document analysis exercises throughout the semester which replicate the assessment assignment. -Making the assessment assignment the capstone document analysis essay student submit in each course.

MLS 303

Assurance of learning day Instructor quarterly counseling/assessment Senior Military Instructor and Professor of Military Science Conference Military History Instructor Meeting. The data was shared with faculty during Assurance of Learning Day.

This information is also discussed during faculty instruction in class assessment and review. During quarterly review information is assessed

We have increased the facilitated discussion to ensure comprehension, application and analysis of information is observed. We have noticed an increase in participation and critical thinking on many students.

The data was shared with faculty during Assurance of Learning Day. This information is also discussed during faculty instruction in class assessment and review. During quarterly review information is assessed.

POL 101

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 50 of 84 The scores offer both some understandable and encouraging signs as well as suggestions for potential improvement. To begin, it might be expected that students generally performed better on comprehension than on the other criteria. However, even on the comprehension criterion, barely over 1/2 of students met course expectations (at least competent). While we note that this indicates that we can do more as faculty to improve student learning even in terms of comprehension, we also note that the percentage of students meeting expectations for comprehension increased from the 2012 round of assessments. More generally, the percentages of students meeting expectations was higher in 2015 than in 2012 for all four criteria with the most pronounced increase coming in methods/interpretation.

This suggests that our departmental discussions following the 2012 assessment have resulted in some beneficial changes in the course. In particular, additional attention to weaving in historical perspectives throughout the course (i.e. not just at the beginning of the semester) and more explicit discussion of how political scientists engage in historical analysis (e.g. through examination of primary source documents) appear to be helping. Moving forward, our biggest challenge will be to develop strategies for bringing “developing” students up to the “competent” level.

POL 212

We had two major concerns about the results of this year’s assessments and have discussed ways to address these / issues. First, scores on the multiple choice assessment items were lower than in previous years. This may have been the mix of students who chose to take this course. However, both instructors were using the same new book and have agreed that the book may be too complex for a general education course on this topic. While one must go with what is available, timely, and affordable, we shall look to see if there is a better choice available, and also see how this semester’s 212 students handle this book. We shall also think about whether we can improve the ways we use this textbook with our students. One drawback with this book is that no on-line student aids were provided by the publisher. If these are added, it may help the students navigate the challenge of learning about multiple countries in the space of one semester. This textbook also did not include a chapter on the United States, which can be useful to put all the students on a “level playing field.” Secondly, and somewhat ironically, scores on the “interpretation” item were consistent with our last assessment on “accomplished” but considerably higher than on our last assessment on the other three categories. We used the same question both times and have no explanation for the improvement. It is possible that the instructors were subconsciously grading more leniently on this question to compensate for the lover multiple choice scores.

We hope that is not the case, but whether it is or not, we have concluded that the question needs to be changed to more clearly address the comparative nature of the course, so we intend to develop a new essay question before the next assessment. We also plan to develop a grading rubric for the essay question to insure more objectivity and standardization.

ELEMENT 5 B: SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ANS 200

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 51 of 84 Dr. Makecha and Dr. Mitchell met on Wednesday, 24 February 2016, to examine and talk about the data. See what we discussed below.

Comprehension: About 1/3 of the students performed competently, though most students achieved developing status. The quizzes appear to be distinguishing students who read thoughtfully from those who do not, or who fail to do the readings. It would appear that the quizzes are effective in assessing whether or not students have read the material they were assigned to read. The correlation between discussion points (points given for bringing up ideas from the readings in class) and quiz grades is high (>.80), indicating that students who can talk in class about the material do well on the quizzes. The two faculty who teach ANS 200 plan to meet to develop better quiz questions and avoid a surfeit of true/false questions. Analysis: Over 1/2 of the students were competent or accomplished overall, which is an improvement from the last assessment. Problems students exhibited in their answers were not answering all or part of the questions asked, not proofreading, not answering in enough depth, failing to tie in course materials in answering the question (sometimes relying solely on personal experience). Following the last assessment, faculty now discuss how to answer questions with students, making sure to go over the questions in class. This appears to have helped. Integration: Although only 18% of the students wrote accomplished integrative book reviews, about 2/3 of the students were competent or accomplished. This is an improvement from the last assessment in the competent category. Following the last assessment, faculty were more attentive to making sure students were aware of the need to integrate the two books, and integrate course material from the classroom readings. We will continue to discuss again in detail how to write a book review, so as to effect better integration on the part of students.

ANT 120

The results of this assessment will be shared with ANT 120 faculty, which includes one full-time, tenure-track professor and several adjunct professors. In addition, the 2015 Assurance of Learning Day activities will include a detailed discussion of the process and outcomes of the assessment. During that time, we will discuss areas for improvement in the delivery of the ANT 120 course and prioritize our goals, common supplemental materials, and the ways that Anthropology puzzles in with other Anthropology General Education courses. Course Textbook and Supplemental Materials Beginning in the Fall of 2011, ANT 120 courses began utilizing a common textbook by Conrad Kottak, “Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity.” The result of this action was substantial improvements in student learning across the criteria. However, over the past few years, the common textbook has fallen short in challenging students with material at the higher orders of learning and presenting materials that focus on the application of anthropological knowledge. A new textbook has been selected and will be used as the primary required book beginning Summer 2015. In addition to the new textbook, new ethnographic films and supplemental worksheets will be developed. Finally, new assessment instruments will be created with an emphasis on testing student learning at different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. The textbook was selected due to its question-based, applied approach to anthropological material, therefore, we expect to see improvement in results in application and analysis and integration.

Overall, the results suggest that ANT 120 learners acquire a competent knowledge of the course material. Ranging from the 64.7-79.3% achievement rate reflects a respectable level of knowledge acquisition while indicating a degree of difficulty. ANT 120 learners are especially competent with

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 52 of 84 regards to Application and Analysis (understand cross-cultural human practices) and Integration (understand the dynamic and integrated relationship among humans, culture, and the environment). ANT 120 student’s also demonstrated capability in the area of Comprehension (definitions and concepts in Cultural Anthropology). However, fewer students scored in the competent range for Methods (approaches to studying culture and key works in the development of Anthropology methods). Interestingly, the student learning strengths from the Fall 2014 assessment are opposite those of the Fall 2012 assessment. It may be that this reversal can be attributed to the applied anthropological background of the current cultural anthropologist (Wies). Overall, these results indicate that student learning is strong, and the course is delivered with a degree of rigor. This holds true across venues and delivery formats.

APP 200

At the end of the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters, each instructor was provided with a summary of the assessment results for each section of APP 200 taught and an aggregation of all sections taught. Then, in June of 2015, Catherine Herdman was contracted to aggregate and summarize all assessment results into a written report and a powerpoint summary. This summary included data aggregated across all sections, and broken down by instructor (with identities obscured) and class type (e.g., online, hybrid, night class). In August of 2015 prior to the Fall semester, two APP 200 instructor orientation sessions were held, and all returning and incoming APP 200 instructors were required to attend one of the sessions. All but two instructors attended--both of whom were senior faculty approaching retirement. The purposes of Gen Ed and APP program assessment were reviewed, the assessment methods discussed in detail. Then, the data from the Fall of 2014-Spring 2015 wer shared and discussed with all faculty during these sessions. The assessment me There were no Gen Ed Area 5B areas that were identified for improvement across all sections. However, six questions on the 24- question objective instrument were identified as having confusing or confounding "distractor" responses that several returning faculty were concerned may have affected their students' performance because of the way the material was presented by that instructor. A committee (Rob Weise, Alice Jones, Catherine Herdman) was appointed to review these six questions and propose alternative distractor responses for the Fall 2015 semester. The Gen Ed Area 6- "Clarity of Expression" was identified as an area for improvement (discussed below).

GEN ED- Clarity of Expression The one Gen Ed area that was identified as needing improvement was "Clarity of Expression" (associated with Gen Ed 6-Diversity). It was determined that this was largely the result of confusion over how to incorporate the clarity of expression writing task into the course. We clarified and agreed that the writing prompt must (a) be of at least 500 words in length; and (b) must be given in a context where students have the opportunity to review and revise their work before turning it in [e.g., it cannot be given as a "writing on demand" assignment such as an exam question to be answered in class.) We anticipate this will improve performance during the 2015-2016 term. PROGRAM EVALUATION--Politics and Activism Overall, students performed somewhat worse on that area than on any other area of either the program or Gen Ed assessment. The two groups of faculty at the two orientation sessions discussed this at some length, and identified inconsistency in language when discussing different political/activism topics. For example, many faculty discuss mountaintop removal as "environmental activism", but labor issues of the early 20th century coal fields using the term "labor movement" or "union history". Few used the term" activism" or "political movement" in connection with labor history, and students did not perform as well on the assessment

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 53 of 84 instrument questions that linked labor history with "politics and activism." Faculty agreed to be conscious of the language used when introducing these topics. OVERALL PERFORMANCE- ENVIRONMENT AND ECOSYSTEMS / While not related to gen ed assessment, at the orientation sessions, many faculty expressed concern about their own coverage of topics in the "environment and ecosystems" programmatic evaluation area. Since almost all of the adjuncts have backgrounds in social sciences, there was a general consensus that they felt unprepared to cover ecosystem and physical geography topics with confidence. As a result, Director Alice Jones--whose background is in environmental geography-- agreed to (a) prepare an introductory powerpoint with lecture notes that would cover all of the expected programmatic content for the course; and (b) provide training over the material to any faculty requesting it; and (c) act as a resource or guest lecturer to any faculty member requesting it. [And almost all faculty incorporate the resulting lecture(s) into their Fall 2015 courses. ORIENTATION FEEDBACK--BUILDING TEACHING COMMUNITY / While several faculty expressed annoyance with being required to attend one of the orientation sessions BEFORE they occurred, afterwards, ALL faculty who attended reported that the experience with both extremely positive and extremely useful and should be continued. Another was that by meeting face to face, several faculty found other APP faculty with greater expertise in areas where they themselves felt deficient, and over the Fall 2015 semester many of these faculty followed up with each other to fill in gaps in their own background. In addition, at the instructors' collective request, we created a shared dropbox folder where faculty can share teaching tips, successful assignments, and even lectures and other materials with other APP 200 faculty. An informal survey of faculty during the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 suggests that ALL of the adjunct faculty and several of the full-time faculty have made regular use of resources shared through this outlet.

COM 200 (W)

Faculty participated in data collection and analysis, then collaboratively developed strategies in response to conclusions reached.

Two important conclusions were reached as result of this data: 1) Students needed more opportunity to engage in critical writing in order to improve critical thinking. Additional essay questions were included in exams to encourage more methods application as well as analysis. Faculty continue to explore options in improving integration. 2) The essay questions in the assessment needed to be rewritten for clarity. Students simply were not sure what high quality mean. The results this year showed improved wording improved student responses.

ECO 120

The percentages of students being rated as competent or better were roughly 73 percent in methods, 80 percent in comprehension, 64 percent in application and analysis, and 44 percent in integration. Since application and integration are higher order critical thinking skills, the assessment results are consistent with expectations.

We plan to use these results to improve our courses further. While we might not be able to combat our students’ lack of mathematical-reasoning ability, we are emphasizing the tutoring opportunities for them and making practice quizzes available through online homework. We have also been discussing the course objectives to make sure we cover what we feel the course should cover. In

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 54 of 84 addition, student learning objectives are now included in the chapter outlines that are made available for students and are reviewed in class. Students are also reminded and encouraged to review the learning objectives at the end of each chapter.

ECO 130

The categories with the highest percentage of students rated as competent were the Knowledge/Comprehension category, with 68.4 percent of the students rated as Competent in this two category. Mostly the questions in the Knowledge/Comprehension category were simply memory and recall of information covered in class, so scoring high in this category is not uncommon. Exactly half of the student were rated as Competent in the Methods category. Similar to the multiple choice category, questions in the Methods category were not overly challenging for good students in this 100-level class, in that multiple choice questions on Methods do not involve problems and calculations, but are more a recall of how and in what circumstances these various methods are employed in economics. By the time the students are past the first and second exams, the methods used in economics in this course are more easily understood. The Application and Integration categories had lower percentages of students rated as Competent, 31.6 percent for each category. Both of these categories demand higher-level thinking skills. For almost every one of these students, ECO 130 is the first economics course they have ever taken, and these higher-order skills take time to develop. Integration consistently scores as the lowest category. Given the nature of the issues- oriented instruction in ECO 130, lower scores in this category are not surprising. Integration of economic concepts to alternative settings is an area which requires higher-order critical thinking skills. In this Issues course, students are asked to focus on one issue per chapter (e.g., education, international trade, the environment, etc.) and are given little opportunity to focus on the “bigger picture”, to take economic theory to a higher level. Similar results follow for students rated as Developing. Knowledge/Comprehension and Methods were very high (92.1 and 94.7 percent, respectively, rated as Developing or Competent), with Application a bit further behind (89.5 percent). Integration was again the weakest area, with only 84.2 percent rated at Competent or Developing-- that is, 15.8 percent, almost one-sixth of the class, were rated as Beginning. Again, Integration demands the highest level of economic analysis, in taking material from one context and applying it to another.

The questions asked for the third exam were identical to those asked in Fall 2010 and Fall 2012 classes and very similar to those asked in Fall 2006 and Fall 2009, with somewhat similar results for all four years. The multiple-choice questions in the fourth exam were quite different this Fall 2014 semester, owing to the use of a different textbook (which will not be used again). In spite of different material and different fourth-exam questions, the results this semester were remarkably similar to prior years. Knowledge/Comprehension and Methods rated as the highest categories for all four sets of students (2006, 2009, 2012, 2014), with Integration as the lowest category. These 100-level students have difficulties integrating and applying what they have learned beyond the actual material studied, but they tend to do quite well in mastering the material that is covered in class. Improving Integration and Application will continue receive particular attention in this course.

ECO 230

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 55 of 84 One issue with this assessment is the nature of the assessment tool. By having several professors teach different sections of the same course, the criterion being assessed might change. For example, what is integration in one section might be application in another section that covered the connection between the topics. Also, the reading comprehension skills of the students seemed to play a factor. If an assessment question was worded in a style the students had seen before, they tended to score better, even if the topic being assessed was new. Consequently, it seemed that students tended to score better on questions written primarily by their own professors. The percentages of students being rated as competent or better were roughly 44 percent in methods, 29 percent in comprehension, 29 percent in application and analysis, and 28 percent in integration. Since application and integration are higher order critical thinking skills, the assessment results are roughly consistent with expectations. Comprehension was expected to be higher than application and integration, however. The Fall 2014 assessment results show that student scores were slightly lower than the assessment results in 2012 for all four categories. However, integration and methods were relatively consistent with the pattern from previous years. 2012 might have been unusually high in those two areas. When looked at over a longer time frame, it appears that earlier attempts to improve methods did improve those scores. In comprehension and application, however, there seems to be a need for improvement. In comprehension, lower scores were identified in 2012, and the drop-off was not reversed (39 percent in 2012 and 29 percent in 2014) as planned. This signifies that the specific efforts to close the loop from the 2012 assessment cycle were not successful. On the other hand, lower comprehension coincides with an anecdotal observance of a decrease in student reading skills and initiative. We plan to give more direct attention in class to matters of comprehension. Also, there was a marked drop-off in application (40 percent in 2012 and 29 percent in 2014). It is unclear if this is a single aberration or if this is a longer-term problem. One of the five professors for the course did not complete the assessment, so that might point to a measurement problem.

We plan to use these results to improve our courses further. Each professor knows his or her own sections’ results and can alter the teaching if the students are not scoring as well on one particular criterion. The active learning did not seem to have an appreciable difference on assessment results as hoped. In-class assessments also did not show a gain in student learning. So, the department has not pursued any concerted effort to use more active learning. Instead, each professor is encouraged to utilize his or her own strengths and interests to increase comprehension. However, the professors will emphasize economic applications more to try to improve those, and the department will wait to see if more concrete action is warranted.

ECO 231

The percentages of students being rated as competent or better were roughly 37 percent in comprehension, 35 percent in application and analysis, 28 percent in methods, and 24 percent in integration. Compared to the previous assessment (Fall 2012), there was a slight improvement in application and analysis; in the remaining three categories, student performance was worse overall, particularly in integration and methods.

We plan to use these results to improve our courses further. The overall results have been communicated to each instructor so he/she may compare student performance in his/her section relative to the entire sample. Each instructor will make an effort to make necessary changes to focus

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 56 of 84 in the area or areas that need particular attention. Lack of student preparedness, particular with regard to reading and quantitative skills continues to be major impediment to student success. The department has a dedicated tutoring service available for students who are being encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity. We also continue to review and discuss the learning objectives to ensure that the necessary material is adequately covered during the semester.

ENV 200

The ENV 200 Gen Ed assessment was administered for the first time in the Spring of 2015. The instructor submitted the assessment instruments at the end of the semester to the administrative assistant of CARES in late May. In early June of 2015, CARES was reorganized, and the assessment instruments were misplaced during the changeover to a new administrative structure and office. Both the former CARES AA and the new University Programs AA to which ENV then reported have searched repeatedly for both hard copy and digital copies of the instruments with no success. GEO 100

Despite the loss of the instruments, the instructor reported that the assessment process made her more aware of her coverage of some of the content areas. She reported revising several assignments and lectures to cover subjects addressed on the assessment instrument in more detail--notably the "Methods" area of differing approaches to quantifying sustainability across communities and ecosystems.

GEO 100

In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, two different strategies were taken. First, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. Second, we disaggregated the data to see if certain instructors were more successful at meeting the general education goals, so that we could use them as mentors to help other faculty improve their teaching. 1. For GEO 100, we met our strategic plan benchmarks in 1 out of 4 SLOs: Comprehension, and partially met our goals (Developing but not Competent) for two SLOs: Analysis and Integration. Since we met none of our benchmarks for Methods, we decided to focus on this SLO for improvement. In GEO 100, we talk about how geographers think and do their work, but we do not explicitly have a unit on Methods as we do in the Element 4 courses that we teach. Therefore, we have decided to develop a methods unit/discussion to more explicitly highlight the way that geographers solve problems. 2. Our GEO 100 course is taught by full-time faculty members, and it shows in the level of our success, meeting our 1st benchmark (Developing) in 3 out of 4 SLOs. Therefore, it did not appear that mentoring was required, but that small tweaks to the course were necessary to address our student learning goals.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 57 of 84 GEO 220

In the past, the department attempted to respond to the assessment data by trying to "fix all the problems" in one fell swoop through adjustments to course content. This year, we focused on the weakest SLO outcome in each course, and discussed ways to address that one SLO. For GEO 220, students met both the Competent and Developing criteria for 2 SLOs: Comprehension and Analysis. We met neither benchmark for the remaining two SLOs: Methods and Integration. Since Methods had the lowest number of students who were competent and they both had equal amounts of students that were developing (add 3 and 2 together), we decided to focus on Methods as our area for improvement. Since only one instructor teaches this course, she has agreed to revise the course content to more explicitly demonstrate geographic methods of problem-solving beginning in Fall 2016.

POL 101

The distribution of scores appears most reasonable for the comprehension criterion. This criterion is typically the primary focus of the course and is arguably the “easiest” criterion for students to master. Thus, we would expect over ¾ of our students to meet expectations on this criterion. On the other hand, it is surprising that over 80% of students meet expectations for both the application and analysis and integration criteria. These criteria are typically regarded as more demanding. Thus, we have some concern that perhaps the assessment instrument is not rigorous enough in evaluating these criteria. This suspicion is at least partially reinforced by results from the criteria for the Element 5A assessment although perhaps such a comparison more realistically reveals troubles our students experience with written communication. Finally, the scores on the methods criterion appear reasonable. Faculty generally spend little time in the course explicitly discussing how political scientists go about their profession and feel that this is generally tangential to this course, being instead more central to our POL 100 offering (which is an introduction to political science as opposed to an introduction to American government).

It is also worth noting that scores in 2015 were a bit lower than in 2012 but not by enough to be troubling. Because we now have data from several assessment cycles and have been using the same instrument for a number of years, it is time for the department to discuss potential changes and we plan on doing so as part of Assurance of Learning day in Fall 2016.

POL 212

We had two major concerns about the results of this year’s assessments and have discussed ways to address these issues. First, scores on the multiple choice assessment items were lower than in previous years. This may have been the mix of students who chose to take this course. However, both General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 58 of 84 instructors were using the same new book and have agreed that the book may be too complex for a general education course on this topic. While one must go with what is available, timely, and affordable, we shall look to see if there is a better choice available, and also see how this semester’s 212 students handle this book. We shall also think about whether we can improve the ways we use this textbook with our students. One drawback with this book is that no on-line student aids were provided by the publisher. If these are added, it may help the students navigate the challenge of learning about multiple countries in the space of one semester. This textbook also did not include a chapter on the United States, which can be useful to put all the students on a “level playing field.” Secondly, and somewhat ironically, scores on the “interpretation” item were consistent with our last assessment on “accomplished” but considerably higher than on our last assessment on the other three categories. We used the same question both times and have no explanation for the improvement. It is possible that the instructors were subconsciously grading more leniently on this question to compensate for the lover multiple choice scores.

We hope that is not the case, but whether it is or not, we have concluded that the question needs to be changed to more clearly address the comparative nature of the course, so we intend to develop a new essay question before the next assessment. We also plan to develop a grading rubric for the essay question to insure more objectivity and standardization.

POL 220

Not applicable. Dr. Kalkan is the sole instructor for this course. He collected and analyzed the data.

Comprehension. The distribution of scores for Comprehension is reasonable. Most of the students were “competent.” There were seven students who were “developing,” and one student who was categorized as “beginning.” There were two questions on which the students struggled the most. I will share this information with the current instructor of the course, Dr. Christopher Cyr. Methods. The frequency distribution of scores for Methods is reasonable as well. Like “comprehension,” most of the students are in the “competent” category, and fewer students are in either the “developing” or ”beginning” stages. There was one question that prevented most of the “developing” students from reaching the “competent” level. The plan is to allocate more time to explain the theory behind this question with more examples from real life situations. I share this information with Dr. Cyr as well. Application & Analysis and Integration. Integration is assessed by the first simulation, and Application & Analysis is assessed by the second simulation. The simulations were a great success. The students felt engaged with both of the simulations, particularly the first one. The majority of students met or exceeded the expectations in these simulations. Three quarters of students in both simulations were either “accomplished” or “competent.” There were only a few students who were “beginning,” and they were the ones who had a sporadic record of attendance. The prospective instructor may want to use one or two more simulations to enhance the application and integration aspects of the course. Dr. Cyr will be informed about the simulations as well.

POL 250

Accordingly, there were two ways students tended to fall short. First, the question was not answered with sufficient breadth. For example, students did not address the range of arguments that they could have, based on the material covered in the course. Second, students failed to analyze / Page 3 of 3 /

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 59 of 84 the question in sufficient depth. Here, a common mistake was for students to merely cite an argument covered in the course without explaining it in adequate detail. / In terms of the goal of evaluation, students were required to express their own opinions about which of two perspectives discussed in the essay they were most sympathetic with. Here students typically fell short by either not offering reasons for their opinions or not explaining those reasons in adequate depth. / In evaluating integration on the essays, students tended to fall short by not linking concepts, theories, and thinkers across the whole scope of the course. For example, only the ideas of two thinkers were considered, when three or four could have been introduced.

To improve student performance on analysis/application, evaluation, and integration, the instructor will provide students with an essay rubric based on these categories. The instructor developed and used a rubric in assessing the essays, but it was not provided to the students. The rubric given to students will indicate general goals for the three criteria, but it will not contain the same detailed notes about subject matter content that appears on the instructor’s rubric.

To improve application/analysis and integration, students will be provided with a rubric that explains what these criteria mean, and the instructor will encourage students to consult the rubric before writing their essays.

PYS 200 (W)

Comprehension: The distribution of scores does not appear reasonable. Because this is primarily a class that requires comprehension, we would like for at least 75% of students to score as competent or higher on this assessment. Currently, only 58% of students score as competent or higher on this assessment. Application: The distribution of scores appears reasonable, with 89% of students scoring as developing or higher on this assessment. Because PSY 200 is an introductory course, it is reasonable for students to be beginning (developing) to be able to apply course material to their everyday life outside of what was learned in class. We are very pleased that almost half are scoring as competent or higher on this assessment. Methods: The distribution of scores appears reasonable, with 82% of students scoring as developing or higher on this assessment. As with Application, because PSY 200 is an introductory course, it is reasonable for students to be beginning (developing) to understand the methods and/or theories used to generate knowledge in Psychology. We are very pleased that more than half of the students assessed scored as competent or higher on this item. Integration: We did not assess integration on this round of assessment. In order to assess Integration, we will ask students to pick a second key term from a different chapter and to explain who that term goes with the first term selected. (See revised question below.) Follow Up with Instructors: A subset of faculty teaching this course met to discuss the data. Instructors are finding that students are confused by the use of the term “topic” in the question, which is leading students to select items for their answers that are overly broad. Faculty also felt that students could benefit from a graded assessment of this question prior to the assessment to be used for general education purposes.

The instructions will be revised to ask students to select a “key term” found in the margin of their textbook or in bold within a chapter (e.g., operant conditioning instead of learning). We will also ask all faculty teaching this course to give this question at least one time for graded feedback prior to the assessment that will be submitted for general education assessment. A fourth question was added in order to assess Integration. Here is the revised question: Please select TWO Key Terms from your

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 60 of 84 Introduction to Psychology course. A Key Term is a term that can be found in the margins of your text or in bold within the body of your text. Answer the questions below on each Key Term. Key Term 1: ______1. Describe the Key Term in a paragraph that is written in your own words. 2. Give your own example of the Key Term that is found in everyday life that is different from an example already given in class or the textbook. 3. Describe a study and/or a theory that is related to the Key Term. 4. Pick a second Key Term from a different chapter and explain how it goes with the Key Term listed above. Key Term 2: ______1. Describe the Key Term in a paragraph that is written in your own words. 2. Give your own example of the Key Term that is found in everyday life that is different from an example already given in class or the textbook. 3. Describe a study and/or a theory that is related to the Key Term. 4. Pick a Key Term from a different chapter and explain how it goes with the Key Term listed above.

PSY 280 (W)

The faculty who teach this course produced and assembled this data and met to discuss the data and resulting action plan for supporting student learning. The criterion of 75% Competency was reached for the assessment of Comprehension, as it was for our last assessment. Two other assessments were within a reasonable range, with Integration at 64% and Application at 68%. For the current sample of students, Methods was a concern, with only 41% meeting criterion. This is a decrease from the 63% at criterion during our last assessment.

The instructors of the course have agreed to provide a more emphasis on methodology in life-span development in lectures and we would like to take another Methods sample this semester. We may need to add more questions to our Methods set. We will meet with students to discuss their Integration assignment prior to this assignment due date to improve performance, as well as reviewing the applicable theories in class. Because the Application assessment was closer to 75%, we are not addressing that one right now. The current assessment shows improvement from previous years in this area, and we will address that assignment if scores fall in future assessments.

SOC 131

Data are shared from prior General Education assessments and new activities are designed by individual faculty members to align learning with programmatic goals. Program goals are reviewed at program meetings throughout the year with particular focus on program goal attainment reviewed on Assurance of Learning Day each Fall Semester.

The following activities were initiated by faculty to enhance student learning: Comprehension: • New course materials with electronic flashcards emphasizing key concepts and terms for each chapter. • Practice quizzes based on key concepts, resulting in improved student scores over past semesters. Application and Analysis: • The use of short discussion questions that challenge the students to apply concepts in real time / • The analysis of actual data from the United States Census and the CIA Factbook on income, comparative international measures of quality of life (GDP, infant mortality). • The use of case studies from fictional and documentary accounts to demonstrate examples of sociological concepts (such as primary socialization and bureaucracy) in conjunction with written analyses as class assignments. • Concept and theory application questions are included on all exams. • The use of short research articles that relate to specific sections of material, with class discussions

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 61 of 84 based on research article in class. • Research article essay questions are included on exams. Methods: • The use of secondary data which allows students to learn how to construct tables using simple descriptive statistics (i.e. percentages, measures of central tendency) and cross tabulations. • The use of an interactive class assignments where students first complete a web- based survey in real time and then analyze the data using simple descriptive statistics for comparison. Integration: • The use of data to assess the explanatory power of theories (e.g.cross comparisons of country characteristics such as life expectancy, GDP, and fertility rates to assess the explanatory power of dependency and modernization theories). • As the semester progresses, course lectures are designed to integrate previous concepts/topics in the class. Exam application questions (all exams throughout the semester) require integration of material throughout the course. / • Theory, simple data analysis exercises, and methods are integrated into a series of short class assignments timed to coincide with coverage of class topics.

SOC 235

Data from ongoing General Education evaluations are shared with faculty on completion of the assessment. Program meetings and Assurance of Learning Day sessions insure on going focus on and adjustment of, practices used to enhance student learning of concepts and empirical knowledge relevant to comprehension, application and analysis, methods, and integration.

The following specific actions were reported by Sociology 235 sociology faculty as techniques used to improve student learning based on earlier assessment findings. Responses are organized along the four General Education components:1) Comprehension, 2) Application and Analysis, 3) Methods, and 4) Integration. Comprehension: • Assignments are incorporated that have students summarize original research and chapters in the text. Application and Analysis: • Students incorporate sociological concepts from course materials so that they can apply these concepts to a social problem they have chosen for their research paper. Methods: • Assignments focus on "what makes a quality source" which emphasizes methodological quality. • Assignments focus on different approaches to data collection. Integration: • Assignments are designed to foster skills for integrating knowledge, data, methods, application, and analysis while using sociological concepts and theories related to current social problems.

ELEMENT 6: DIVERSITY OF PERSPECTIVES AND EXPERIENCES

AFA 201

The data was shared discussed with the faculty at our monthly faculty meeting.

How will the results from the Spring 2015 assessment be used? • AFA 201 will continue to assess every student at the end of each semester to identify any issues and to ensure we are hitting our student learning objectives; • More emphasis will be placed on the developing students’ metacognitive skills to see if their ratings on the Comprehension criteria can be improved; • More emphasis will be placed on showing relationships between the major concepts of the course and prompting the students to reflect and analyze the information presented in class. Hopefully, this will lead to better scores on the Contextual Analysis and Integration across Course criteria; • This General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 62 of 84 assessment essay has not been changed in a few years (since 2011) thus we will also adopt a new assessment question that is technology-based and have varied comprehension questions (essay, multiple choice); • We will use several video-prompted discussion and reflection exercises throughout the semester to give students practice in critical reflection and in-depth comprehension writing exercises; and • We will encourage faculty to collaborate and share best teaching practices with each other.

AFA 202 OR 202W

Data results were shared at a faculty meeting.

Assessments: AFA 202 will continue to assess every student at the end of each semester to identify any issues and to ensure we are hitting our learning targets; • This assessment essay has not been changed in a few years thus we will also adopt a new assessment instrument that is technology-based and have varied comprehension questions (essay, multiple choice); • We will use several video- prompted discussion and reflection exercises throughout the semester to give students practice in critical reflection and in-depth comprehension writing exercises; and • We will encourage faculty to collaborate and share best practices.

AFA 361/ENG 361

Fall 2016 By self-Assessment. No other faculty currently teach this course.

Report on the General Education (Element 6) of African American Literature, ENG 361 Assessment Process: Eight essays were chosen at random out of a class of fifteen students. This group of essays was a mixed assortment receiving 3 A’s, 3 B’s, 1 C and 1 D. They were assessed in terms of the General Education Assessment Rubric for Element 6: Diversity of Perspective and Experiences. The prompt to the students was the following: Examine the interaction between majority (controlling) populations and minority (suppressed) populations in Octavia Butler’s story “Bloodchild.” Ensure that you include how Orlando Patterson and bell hooks would respond to Butler’s perspectives. (5-6 pages in length, MLA format) Although this prompt might appear cryptic to an outsider, in the second week of class we read Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s “Blacklash” concerning gender relations in much of (according to Patterson) the contemporary African-American community as well as feminist bell hooks’ response to it. Throughout much of the semester we returned to the two theorists as we read and discussed literature. All the essays were evaluated according to the four-point rubric of 1- Beginning, 2-Developing, 3-Competent, 4-Accomplished. / Perspective: 1: 1 essay; 2: 1 essay; 3: 2 essays; 4: 4 essays / Integration: 1: 1 essay; 2: 1 essay; 3: 3 essays; 4: 3 essays Clarity of Expression: 1: 2 essays; 2: 2 essays; 3: 2 essays; 4: 2 essays / Comprehension: 1: 0 essays; 2: 2 essays; 3: 3 essays; 4: 3 essays / Significance: 1: 1 essay; 2: 1 essay; 3: 2 essays; 4: 4 essays Summary of Spring 2015 Results: The evaluation results seem in line with what I anticipated. The one caveat is that the D paper that was composed of mostly Beginning scores was a non-native speaker who had some difficulty with the language barrier. The weighted number of Competent and Accomplished scores reflected upper-level students who were taking the class not as a Gen Ed, but as an elective in the English major or the AFA minor. Although the results reflected what students had learned in the

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 63 of 84 course itself in terms of content, I believe that this method of assessment is somewhat flawed. The problem with using a formal paper in a college course as an assessment tool is that ultimately the student is being assessed on two completely different skill sets. First, the student’s paper is closely examined in terms of the quality of ideas and analysis which would arise largely from reading and conversation in the course. The majority of the student papers examined succeeded. Second, however, the student is also being assessed on a set of skills related to English grammar, mechanics and style. The problem here is that students have varying degrees of mastery based on how strong or weak their primary education was. I already spend one full class going over a handout that I have generated over the years that covers common problems that students have in the structure of a formal paper, and English usage, mechanics and style, but I suspect (based on the sampling of papers submitted) this may not be enough. I believe that I will have to expand the discussion more widely and dedicate another class period to the issue. One of the underlying assumptions, though, that seems to occur among different majors is that once a student completes ENG 101 and 102 (the freshman composition courses), he can write a formal paper forgetting all rules. Rather than have this issue addressed in every upper-level class that demands a paper, many programs assume that it is an issue that is solely relegated to the Department of English. The Future: I plan to change the assessment model in Spring 2016. Rather than a researched essay, I think that I will use a targeted question on the final exam which will allow for less elasticity in the responses. Since an in-class timed essay creates certain types of pressure on the writer, errors in grammar are more acceptable and only the actual ideas and analyses generated from course readings and discussions are assessed. Despite this change in assessment tools, I believe as noted above that I will need to expand my grammar, style and structure review into a two-day discussion.

ANT 330

The previous assessment results informed a revision to the course textbook, materials, and assessment instrument. After 3 years of course delivery, course evaluations, instructor feedback, and these assessment results have contributed to the commencement of a course overhaul. Throughout the Summer of 2015, the primary course instructor (Carmean) and principle cultural anthropologists (Wies) have selected new textbooks and revisioned the course schedule and materials map. In addition, we are creating new course activities and lectures, as well as integrating additional disciplinary integration points throughout the course. This is a significant undertaking with the goal of better meeting the existing student learning outcomes and contributing to a strong General Education offering. These efforts have also taken into account the different formats of the course, and the goal is that the on-line course will mirror the face-to-face offering. This will further support the student learning goals in the course.

The results suggest that ANT 330 learners acquire a competent knowledge of the course material. Student learning outcomes are particularly strong in the Clarity of Expression, Significance, and Perspectives areas. These areas are unique to Element 6, therefore we feel confident that students are learning diverse perspectives and acquiring an understanding of diverse experiences through the lens of American Indian studies in anthropology. Lower scores at the competent level in the Integration and Methods criteria indicate areas for student learning improvement. These are areas that deal most directly with disciplinary content, and therefore the ANT 330 faculty need to consider ways to deliver this material more effectively to meaningfully engage these results.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 64 of 84 APP 200

There were no Gen Ed Area 5B areas that were identified for improvement across all sections. However, six questions on the 24-question objective instrument were identified as having confusing or confounding "distractor" responses that several returning faculty were concerned may have affected their students' performance because of the way the material was presented by that instructor. A committee (Rob Weise, Alice Jones, Catherine Herdman) was appointed to review these six questions and propose alternative distractor responses for the Fall 2015 semester.

GEN ED- Clarity of Expression The one Gen Ed area that was identified as needing improvement was "Clarity of Expression" (associated with Gen Ed 6-Diversity). It was determined that this was largely the result of confusion over how to incorporate the clarity of expression wrting task into the course. We clarified and agreed that the writing prompt must (a) be of at least 500 words in length; and (b) must be given in a context where students have the opportunity to review and revise their work before turning it in [e.g., it cannot be given as a "writing on demand" assignment such as an exam question to be answered in class.) We anticipate this will improve performance during the 2015-2016 term. PROGRAM EVALUATION--Politics and Activism Overall, students performed somewhat worse on that area than on any other area of either the program or Gen Ed assessment. The two groups of faculty at the two orientation sessions discussed this at some length, and identified inconsistency in language when discussing different political/activism topics. For example, many faculty discuss mountaintop removal as "environmental activism", but labor issues of the early 20th century coal fields using the term "labor movement" or "union history". Few used the term" activism" or "political movement" in connection with labor history, and students did not perform as well on the assessment instrument questions that linked labor history with "politics and activism." Faculty agreed to be conscious of the language used when introducing these topics. OVERALL PERFORMANCE- ENVIRONMENT AND ECOSYSTEMS / While not related to gen ed assessment, at the orientation sessions, many faculty expressed concern about their own coverage of topics in the "environment and ecosystems" programmatic evaluation area. Since almost all of the adjuncts have backgrounds in social sciences, there was a general consensus that they felt unprepared to cover ecosystem and physical geography topics with confidence. As a result, Director Alice Jones--whose background is in environmental geography-- agreed to (a) prepare an introductory PowerPoint with lecture notes that would cover all of the expected programmatic content for the course; and (b) provide training over the material to any faculty requesting it; and (c) act as a resource or guest lecturer to any faculty member requesting it. [And almost all faculty incorporate the resulting lecture(s) into their Fall 2015 courses. ORIENTATION FEEDBACK--BUILDING TEACHING COMMUNITY. While several faculty expressed annoyance with being required to attend one of the orientation sessions BEFORE they occurred, afterwards, ALL faculty who attended reported that the experience with both extremely positive and extremely useful and should be continued. Another was that by meeting face to face, several faculty found other APP faculty with greater expertise in areas where they themselves felt deficient, and over the Fall 2015 semester many of these faculty followed up with each other to fill in gaps in their own background. In addition, at the instructors' collective request, we created a shared dropbox folder where faculty can share teaching tips, successful assignments, and even lectures and other materials with other APP 200 faculty. An informal survey of faculty during the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 suggests that ALL of the adjunct faculty and several of the full-time faculty have made regular use of resources shared through this outlet.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 65 of 84 ASL 101

The data collected for this is the second time reporting under the new Gen Ed Element six. We had prior approval to change our assessment tool so that we were able to gather more accurate picture of student achievement as it relates to our Gen Ed goals. This is the first time collecting data using the new assessment tool. There is significant difference in scoring between ASL 101 and ASL 102 courses. As a department we need to conduct a training on how to accurately rate and translate assignment results to meet the criteria for common assessment. We will plan to host this training on August 18 during our start of the year department meeting. During this training, we will provide samples of work that meet each criteria in each level of accomplishment. These examples will be what is provided to students as well.

The data indicate that students are gaining a broad understanding of the Deaf community and its diverse community. The assignment allows faculty to gain insight on how students interpret, infer, and apply information they have learned in class. Revision added 6/2: A new tool was developed to assess student learning. The faculty reviewed the tool and made suggestions prior to adopting the new tool. Data indicate that students have depth and breadth in their understanding of Deaf culture and community. The assignments used in class, 3 videos focusing on Deaf culture and community, along with incidental and intentional instruction in class seem to provide foundation needed for developing greater perspectives of/for the Deaf and their community. Areas to focus on are helping students to integrate and apply knowledge or information. The 2015 data range between ASL 101 and ASL 102 courses also suggested that instructors needed additional training in evaluating student papers and more standardized expectations amongst the faculty. Faculty agreed to submit samples of assessed student work to gain better insight on individual faculty expectations and come to a consensus on acceptable work. We will have a practice session where instructors will individually grade a sample paper, provide feedback, and share responses with the group. We feel this will aid faculty in gaining a more standardized grading approach and expectation of students in ASL 101 and 102. Faculty also believe providing students with sample papers that provide clear expectations that will satisfy components of the rubric would be helpful.

ASL 102

The data collected for this is the second time reporting under the new Gen Ed Element six. We had prior approval to change our assessment tool so that we were able to gather more accurate picture of student achievement as it relates to our Gen Ed goals. This is the first time collecting data using the new assessment tool. There is significant difference in scoring between ASL 101 and ASL 102 courses. As a department we need to conduct a training on how to accurately rate and translate assignment results to meet the criteria for common assessment. We will plan to host this training on August 18 during our start of the year department meeting. During this training, we will provide samples of work that meet each criteria in each level of accomplishment. These examples will be what is provided to students as well.

The data indicate that students are gaining a broad understanding of the Deaf community and its diverse community. The assignment allows faculty to gain insight on how students interpret, infer, and apply information they have learned in class. Revision added 6/2/16: A new tool was developed to assess student learning. The faculty reviewed the tool and made suggestions prior to adopting the

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 66 of 84 new tool. The 2015 course evaluation indicated that students struggle with the integration and significance of understanding Deaf culture. Currently all courses require three videos that explain the history of the Deaf community, struggles within the community, and successes of the community. The faculty believe assignments paired with incidental learning in class and intentional instruction of cultural understanding prepare students for the assignment used to assess student learning. However, faculty assessed the data and agreed to alleviate student struggles with integration and significance, assignments throughout the semester and class discussions need to be emphasized and thoroughly discussed to provide greater recognition, significance, and application for students. The 2015 data range between ASL 101 and ASL 102 courses also suggested that instructors needed additional training in evaluating student papers and more standardized expectations amongst the faculty. Faculty agreed to submit samples of assessed student work to gain better insight on individual faculty expectations and come to a consensus on acceptable work. We will have a practice session where instructors will individually grade a sample paper, provide feedback, and share responses with the group. We feel this will aid faculty in gaining a more standardized grading approach and expectation of students in ASL 101 and 102. Faculty also believe providing students with sample papers that provide clear expectations that will satisfy components of the rubric would be helpful.

CDF/WGS 232

Data were discussed and shared with the two full-time faculty members in April 2016. Moving forward, data will be discussed and shared with part-time faculty.

For the academic year being assessed, two rubrics were used to assess the assignment, a grading rubric and the general education scoring guide. The grading rubric asked students to answer five questions in a paper format that were well-developed, thoughtful, and used examples and theories to support their answers. The questions are as follows: 1.Reflecting on the cultural attitudes and sociocultural messages explored in this course and in your sociocultural project, in what ways are race, gender, and sexuality social constructions? 2. What influence have these sociocultural messages had on the social constructions of race, gender, and sexuality? What is the significance of the impact of sociocultural messages related to race, gender, and sexuality? Feel free to bring in information from outside research and other readings you have done for class. 3. To what extent do the sociocultural images you selected reinforce myths/stereotypes about gender and sexuality? 4. What new knowledge or perspectives about sexuality has your sociocultural project, as well as the text and discussions in your class, provided you? How do these issues relate to your life and your own personal assumptions about sexual identity and gender? 5. What are some methodological issues that impact our knowledge about race, gender, and sexuality. Include a discussion of sampling, measuring behaviors, and application of research findings. Grammar and spelling, organization, clarity of writing, and the use of formal writing style was also assessed. The general education scoring guide assesses diversity of perspectives and experiences. After reviewing the data, we noticed student scores were evenly distributed between the scores 4 – Accomplished, 3 – Competent, and 2 – Developing. We feel students may not fully understanding the meaning of the words used and emphasized in the General Education Scoring Guide for Diversity of Perspectives and Experiences (GE- 12, Element 6) rubric, such as breadth, depth, accurately, significant, or relevant. To improve student learning and understanding, we will discuss and define relevant definitions for terminology clarity. For the online courses, we will make a video recording of the instructor explaining the project and definitions for students to view. After reviewing the data, we realized many changed needed to be

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 67 of 84 made. First of all, the rubric we were using to grade the papers was not the rubric needed for general education classes. Due to the subjective nature of the class, students were graded more on content, grammar, and punctuation. We went back through the papers using the general education rubric and we noticed a big difference in scoring. Not only critical thinking was stressed, but there was a big discrepancy in student’s grades in the traditional face-to-face classroom with students in an online class. Not only will we be using the general education rubric from this point on, we also need to go over the rubric with students and discuss what critical thinking is and how to apply it to their sociocultural papers. Online classes need much more discussion regarding the project and more information regarding critical thinking and information about the rubric. The students need much more direction and guidance on the project. The two full-time faculty staff discussed ways to speak with students, not only in the classroom, but how to discuss the project with the online students. The rubric will be stressed and discussed, meetings will take place with part-time faculty so that we can all be on the same page when grading the final project. Additionally, ongoing meetings will take place throughout the semester to assure continuity of course materials.

ENG 366/WGS 366

This data was shared during the department's Assurance of Learning Day and is also available through Blackboard.

One conclusion that might be reached based upon the above results is that the essays need to be assessed with greater rigor since the scores suggest grade inflation. I don’t dispute this conclusion, but I might add that the Assessment Rubric includes criteria for which one might expect a student who registers for a course called Queer Theory to have already some familiarity and perhaps proficiency particularly in the following areas: Perspective, Comprehension, and Significance. The students who register for such a course are already pretty familiar with the history and complexity of the subject and are open to the idea of diversity, and they already have a heightened awareness of social stigma and marginalization. It may serve the Element 6 assessment to reconsider the criteria being evaluated since I do not find a very meaningful distinction between the three previously cited criteria. Perspective and Comprehension seem almost indistinguishable. The criteria even seems to suggest that the students in the class might be hostile to the idea of diversity and LGBT related issues. The students had a little more difficulty with the writing related categories of Clarity and Integration, but even here most of the scores were acceptable. It was after all a Junior level English class. Nevertheless, the most prevalent problem within the sample essays was substandard English. Closing the Loop: Several improvements can and will be introduced to the course assessment that would make the results more valuable and/or interesting. The assignment that is assessed should be a very specific exam question that each student has in common rather than an open ended research paper assignment. The assignment should stipulate that the student has to write specifically about an LGBT social issue as it is manifest in a literary work. The former assignment assessed above could include a purely literary topic. The course itself should include class time addressing the idea of topic development and clarity of expression. In response to the student evaluations, the course also needs to introduce shorter and more contemporary works. I have been working on developing a new reading list.

FLS 101

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 68 of 84 Data were shared with incoming Chinese instructor Wei-Lien Hsu for FLS 101 courses taught Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. Since Wei-Lien was using a different text and methodology, we discussed in particular how to improve the learning outcomes of students in the bottom third of the class. We did this by comparing texts, revising the syllabus, and discussing activities and student progress throughout the year.

Although the majority of students in Fall 2014 did relatively well in the course, 2015-2016 students struggled particularly with Comprehension and Clarity of expression. Because many of the students in Fall 2014 had already taken one more semesters of Chinese in high school, we hypothesized that the struggling students may have lacked sufficient background in experiencing foreign cultures and languages Therefore we decided to reorganize the course by creating activities focused on Integration, Perspectives, Comprehension and Significance as foundational elements for developing skills in Methods and Clarity of Expression.

FRE 101

We are in constant conversation about using data and implementing means of assessment that help us identify strengths and weaknesses of the program and help us fix them. We do this for diversity and for language.

We are always looking at how to use assessment data in meaningful ways that add coherence to our courses across the different sections and levels. The cultural perspectives and view of the diverse areas of the Francophone world have been increased in FRE 101 in order to better fit with the diversity rubric’s themes. / We are leaning toward a cumulative project that will be expanded upon during the 4 semester sequence of basic and intermediate levels (FRE 101-202) and intend to develop assignments and assessment rubrics that will be used in all sections. This initial data will show us weak areas or inconsistencies in different sections. It will also help us to identify weak areas that can addressed in the curriculum in future semesters. Of course this information is important, but we also want to come up with a common assessment to track progress in the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). In FRE 101, this consisted of certain sections on the final exam aimed to test students in these various skills. The listening comprehension portion of the assessment was comprised of a series of questions the instructor orally asked the students based on the vocabulary and grammar taught in FRE 101, such as weather and seasons, telling time, days, and personal opinions, likes, and dislikes. The reading comprehension portion was a short reading on a thematically, culturally, and grammatically relevant topic that the student must use as a resource to respond to a series of questions. The written production portion of the assessment asked the student to produce a short paragraph using the vocabulary and grammar studied throughout the semester, notably vocabulary pertaining to family, professions, descriptions, and leisure activities, in order to demonstrate their mastery of FRE 101 concepts and skills. 4-Accomplished 3-Competent 2-Developing 1-Beginning Written Expression 10 22 17 11 / Fluency in Reading 14 21 15 10 / Quality of spoken French N/A N/A N/A N/A Clarity of Expression 10 20 18 12 Comprehension 11 23 17 9 The data for this course indicates that written comprehension and fluency in reading are progressing more quickly than other skills, which indicates to us where we need to work with our students in order to increase their preparedness to continue with French. In preparation for the fall semester, Dr. Polk plans on constructing rubrics that will be common across the 1st four semester French sequence so as to

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 69 of 84 better assess and track student progress. This, in turn, will allow us to better understand our students’ progress and help them succeed across all elements.

FRE 102

Collaboration is done before and after the assessment to decide on the metric, how to interpret data, and improvements that can be implemented.

We are always looking at how to use assessment data in meaningful ways that add coherence to our courses across the different sections and levels. While we have always taught culture and different perspectives, we have increased this part of the course to give assignments that speak to the types of themes addressed in the diversity rubric. We are leaning toward a cumulative project that will be expanded upon during the 4 semester sequence of basic and intermediate levels (FRE 101-202). I am in the process of developing assignments and assessment rubrics that will be used in all sections. This initial data will show us weak areas or inconsistencies in different sections. It will also help us to identify weak areas that can addressed in the curriculum in future semesters. Of course this information is important, but we also want to come up with a common assessment to track progress in the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). In FRE 102, I use an assignment where the students write a 150 word essay detailing a vacation or memorable event. They are given criteria to work from to make sure they master the concept of the passé compose and learned vocabulary. Students then read their stories in class and the others write 10 sentences that summarize the stories of their classmates. Finally, they are required to ask at least 3 follow-up questions. This assignment was meaningful to students because it was used for multiple tasks and gave them time to practice skills. 4-Accomplished 3-Competent 2-Developing 1-Beginning / Written Expression 21 14 4 5 / Fluency in Reading 9 19 10 6 Quality of spoken French 9 18 8 9 Clarity of Expression 10 19 7 8 Comprehension 15 15 7 7 This data is telling as the written expression is progressing at a much higher rate than the other skills. This is due to many factors such as shyness, past instruction, absences, etc. However, it is noteworthy and shows that more work needs to be done on speaking to get the students at a higher proficiency level in that area. This summer, I am planning to construct assignments that will specifically target each skill and construct a rubric that will be shared and implemented at each level. This will aid in addressing each skill and make sure that all students in all sections have the same exposure to topics for assessment.

FRE 201

We are always looking at how to use assessment data in meaningful ways that add coherence to our courses across the different sections and levels. While we have always taught culture and different perspectives, we have increased this part of the course to give assignments that speak to the types of themes addressed in the diversity rubric. We are leaning toward a cumulative project that will be expanded upon during the 4 semester sequence of basic and intermediate levels (FRE 101-202). I am in the process of developing assignments and assessment rubrics that will be used in all sections.

In addition to the information on diversity, we do a separate assessment for the skills we are teaching as the medium of communication as noted below. 4-Accomplished 3-Competent 2-Developing 1- Beginning Written Expression 4 4 1 1 Fluency in Reading 3 3 3 1 Quality of spoken French 3 3 3 1 Clarity of Expression 3 4 2 1 Comprehension 3 4 2 1 Across levels, we see that students are more apt

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 70 of 84 in written expression as it is easier to produce. However, by the 201 level, we start to see the other skills catching up. This is particularly true of aural comprehension and there does seem to be improvement of speaking proficiency as students make progress in the completion of 101-202. In preparation for the fall semester, Dr. Polk plans on constructing rubrics that will be common across the 1st four semester French sequence so as to better assess and track student progress. This, in turn, will allow us to better understand our students’ progress and help them succeed across all elements.

FRE 202

Constant collaboration on assessment tools and implementing improvements.

We are always looking at how to use assessment data in meaningful ways that add coherence to our courses across the different sections and levels. The communicative cultural project done by FRE 202 students was designed in order to increase diversity and cultural awareness to better fit with the diversity rubric’s themes. / This project served not only as a cumulative project for FRE 202, but as the culmination of the 4 semester sequence of basic and intermediate French (101, 102, 201, and 202). The intent within the French section is to develop similar projects for all levels of introductory French and to develop assignments and assessment rubrics that will be used in all sections. This initial data will show us weak areas or inconsistencies in different sections. It will also help us to identify weak areas that can addressed in the curriculum in future semesters.

We are always looking at how to use assessment data in meaningful ways that add coherence to our courses across the different sections and levels. The communicative cultural project done by FRE 202 students was designed in order to increase diversity and cultural awareness to better fit with the diversity rubric’s themes. / This project served not only as a cumulative project for FRE 202, but as the culmination of the 4 semester sequence of basic and intermediate French (101, 102, 201, and 202). The intent within the French section is to develop similar projects for all levels of introductory French and to develop assignments and assessment rubrics that will be used in all sections. This initial data will show us weak areas or inconsistencies in different sections. It will also help us to identify weak areas that can addressed in the curriculum in future semesters. Of course this information is important, but we also want to come up with a common assessment to track progress in the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). This final project also served to fulfill this purpose for FRE 202. Not only did this project serve to increase cultural knowledge and diversity awareness, but it also functioned as a cumulative assignment testing the four skills. After researching their various city and region in French-language only resources, the students wrote about their research using the prescribed grammatical forms, with particular attention to the variety of verb tenses and object pronouns they have been perfecting over the course of the semester. The final element of this project was an oral presentation of their research to the rest of the class in which they both presented their cultural knowledge and demonstrated their mastery of the various grammar and vocabulary tasks. They also had to demonstrate their oral comprehension through asking questions and making comments on the other students’ presentations. 4-Accomplished 3-Competent 2-Developing 1- Beginning / Written Expression 2 3 1 1 Fluency in Reading 3 2 1 1 Quality of spoken French 1 3 2 1 Clarity of Expression 2 2 1 2 Comprehension 2 3 1 1 The data for this course indicates that comprehension, both oral and written, and written expression are progressing more quickly than oral expression and written production, which indicates to us where we need to work with our students in order to increase their skills. In preparation for the fall semester, Dr. Polk plans on constructing rubrics

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 71 of 84 that will be common across the 1st four semester French sequence so as to better assess and track student progress. This, in turn, will allow us to better understand our students’ progress and help them succeed across all elements.

GER 101

There is only one person involved in teaching these courses.

Perspectives, Integration, Comprehension, Significance: The distribution appears reasonable. Methods, Clarity of Expression: I will incorporate more writing/listening practice opportunities in daily classroom activities and homework assignments in future semesters.

GER 102

Only one person teaching this course.

Perspectives, Integration, Comprehension, Significance: The distribution appears reasonable. Methods, Clarity of Expression: I will incorporate more writing/listening practice opportunities in daily classroom activities and homework assignments in future semesters.

GER 201

There are few sections of the course taught, but we always make sure that all languages are comparable and that the same skill sets are being taught and assessed. We regularly meet to discuss idea.

The assessment data is used to give us an idea of how to better prepare students and we have recently become more aware of how to implement instruction that will specifically lead to diversity knowledge in addition to language.

HEA 310

This data was shared as a discussion point with faculty during a section meeting.

This semester we added two new faculty to the course and an online section. The data were used to see which areas we needed to focus on during the course. Through this process, it was decided that the online section would need an overhaul. This would include more interactive assignments. All sections decided to go to a rough-draft/literature review process to build up to the final paper. Revision added 5/25: We actually have added a country simulation activity which lasts throughout the semester and forces students to work in small groups to come up with solutions to global health issues facing their fictitious country. This addition has seemed to improve student understanding of the complex nature of global health issues. In the fall, we will be discussing ways to better address the issue of global health funding in class.

HIS 205

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 72 of 84 General Education is part of the History department's course assessment system. The department has an assessment committee which each year completes the department's assessments and writes a formal report relaying results, trends from previous reports, and recommendations. This report is circulated among the faculty and then the results and recommendations are discussed at a faculty meeting specifically focused on assessment. The department determines what further actions all faculty will take to improve identified areas of weakness. Particular areas of concern have into the past also then become an agenda item for Assurance of Learning Day.

The department has seen an improvement in its general education scores because it has implemented the following approaches in ALL its general education courses. These approaches have come about as a result of discussion of the assessment data collected. -Since students often do not read assigned materials, the use of quizzes and reading response papers.-Some faculty also recording reading previews which they post on the course blackboard site. -Conducting numerous document analysis exercises throughout the semester which replicate the assessment assignment. -Making the assessment assignment the capstone document analysis essay students submit in each course.

HUM 360

The Humanities section regularly meets to discuss all matters related to curriculum, including Gen Ed assessment. The report is as follows: Evidence suggests that the materials and methods used in this course are accomplishing all relevant objectives very well. Because HUM 360 is an upper division course, with a usual enrollment of about 50% Comparative Humanities majors and 50% General Education students who have a strong interest in the particular subject (Modern Asian literature and cinema in this case), the motivational level and skill levels in critical analysis and writing are generally advanced. Thus in every category, the competent and accomplished performers equal or outnumber the developing and beginning performers. Furthermore the developing category, at the 300 level, is really indicative of very solid work, underwritten by a very demanding reading schedule and the absorption of extensive background material on the various Asian cultures undertaken (China, India, Japan, Korea). Even beginning level performers had to read, analyze, and demonstrate knowledge of literary and film pieces in specific cultural contexts.

This course is very contemporary and also involves current events in the non-western region(s) under study; accordingly, while the course is clearly meeting the goals, continuing to do so will also continue to require faculty to upgrade materials and maintain a rigorous and demanding assignment schedule, to which students to date have responded well. Revision 6/14 / Evidence suggests that the materials and methods used in this course are accomplishing all relevant objectives very well. Because HUM 360 is an upper division course, with a usual enrollment of about 50% Comparative Humanities majors and 50% General Education students who have a strong interest in the particular subject (Modern Asian literature and cinema in this case), the motivational level and skill levels in critical analysis and writing are generally advanced. Thus in every category, the competent and accomplished performers equal or outnumber the developing and beginning performers. Furthermore the developing category, at the 300 level, is really indicative of very solid work, underwritten by a very demanding reading schedule and the absorption of extensive background material on the various Asian cultures undertaken (China, India, Japan, Korea). Even beginning level performers had to read, analyze, and demonstrate knowledge of literary and film pieces in specific cultural contexts. This course is very

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 73 of 84 contemporary and also involves current events in the non-western region under study; it will continue to require faculty to upgrade materials and maintain a rigorous and demanding assignment schedule, to which students to date have responded well. The data above has been shared with full time faculty, who are the only faculty members that would normally teach HUM 360. In spring 2015, as indicated above, there were 14 students enrolled; in spring 2016, with the topic of Modern Middle Eastern Humanities, there were 32, of whom 27 completed the course. The doubling of the enrollment, due to the modest increase in Comparative Humanities majors and an even larger increase in General Education students, necessitated some abrupt changes in the delivery of the course. With 12 to 15 students, the prior norm, it was preferable to conduct the course as a seminar, with emphasis on student presentations and individually assigned topics; with twice that number, however, it was necessary to revert to the more traditional classroom model of lecture, discussion, and frequent short answer testing. However, the basic format of two outside papers on given materials and two exams, midterm and final, was maintained. The approach to the cultures of the Modern Middle East in this course is (like that of the Modern Asian Humanities) basically geographical, the first unit focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, the second on the secular democratic Muslim cultures of Egypt and Turkey, and the third on the more radical cultures of Iran and Pakistan. Students are introduced to the wide variety of linguistic, economic, social, and political conditions of the modern Middle East, and to the history and geography of this vast region. It is a primary objective to overcome the idea, often encountered in the West, that all Middle Eastern cultures and peoples are Islamic and that all Islamic cultures are the same. The selections of literature and film are primary, featuring two Nobel authors (Naguib Mafouz and Orhan Pamuk) and two others who will assuredly receive that prize at some point (Amos Oz and Salman Rushdie) as well as prize winning films (The Syrian Bride, The Yacoubian Building and The Color of Paradise). The goal of HUM 360 as a non-Western course is to open students’ eyes and minds to the sophistication and depth of other cultures, which is perhaps the axis of consideration when changes are made or new topics introduced under the HUM 360 rubric.

JPN 101

Clarity of expression is a great challenge for students in first semester Japanese. As can be seen from the data, there is not huge variance in the accomplished and competent categories. These students seem to do well with both linguistic and analytical skills. The students who struggle linguistically tend to reply on machine translation of googled topics. I intend to create more activities in class for students to gain experience and confidence in expressing their own ideas and findings in Japanese. On the positive side, students nowadays seem to have a pretty good awareness of the world around them and in the significance of understanding other cultures. The data shows that most students are aware of the importance of understanding other cultures and languages, which is why many of them choose to study Japanese in the first place.

Clarity of expression is a great challenge for students in first semester Japanese. As can be seen from the data, there is not huge variance in the accomplished and competent categories. These students seem to do well with both linguistic and analytical skills. The students who struggle linguistically tend to reply on machine translation of googled topics. I intend to create more activities in class for students to gain experience and confidence in expressing their own ideas and findings in Japanese. On the positive side, students nowadays seem to have a pretty good awareness of the world around them and in the significance of understanding other cultures. The data shows that most students are

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 74 of 84 aware of the importance of understanding other cultures and languages, which is why many of them choose to study Japanese in the first place.

JPN 102

The date show Integration and Comprehension to be the biggest challenges for students, as might be expected in a lower level language class. Nonetheless, students do show progress in methods, expression and significance over JPN101. I will introduce more activities in conjunction with grammar modules that give the students opportunities to express themselves outside parameters of the textbook so that they gain greater confidence in intercultural communication.

JPN 201

Although the numbers are too small for this data to give much guidance, I believe that they demonstrate the struggle students undergo to achieve integration of concepts and skills when developing self-expression in a foreign language and when seeking to understand a foreign culture. Comprehension and expression continue to show good development, but more emphasis needs to be placed on class activities that develop students’ “methods.” In other words, I need to create class activities that will enable students to develop their own tools for comprehending and dealing with unfamiliar cultural and linguistic situations that they may encounter in Japan.

JPN 202

Perspectives and Significance show a fairly high correlation and reflect the maturity and awareness of students at this level of Japanese. Expression and comprehension also show development from the earlier classes, while integration and methods, while improving, still show challenges. Because the first two years of Japanese require learning two alphabets, 500 Chinese characters, and vocabulary and grammatical forms that are unfamiliar to most native English speakers, less time is spent on these courses on methods and integration. I believe that these scores can be improved by assigning more independent research, perhaps even in English, to overcome the high linguistic barrier that Japanese imposes on gathering and assessing information. General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 75 of 84 Perspectives and Significance show a fairly high correlation and reflect the maturity and awareness of students at this level of Japanese. Expression and comprehension also show development from the earlier classes, while integration and methods, while improving, still show challenges. Because the first two years of Japanese require learning two alphabets, 500 Chinese characters, and vocabulary and grammatical forms that are unfamiliar to most native English speakers, less time is spent on these courses on methods and integration. I believe that these scores can be improved by assigning more independent research, perhaps even in English, to overcome the high linguistic barrier that Japanese imposes on gathering and assessing information.

LAT 101

Combined Scoring Guide for Foreign Languages 4 / Accomplished 3 / Competent 2 / Developing 1 / Beginning N / A / / Culture / / 7 / 3 / / Oral Communication / / 8 / 2 / Written / Communication / 9 / 1 How I will use this data: For cultural material, students in the past primarily have read several pages and listened to a lecture during the next class period. Worksheets were given for some cultural material this semester and seemed to help students with remembering important information. In future semesters, more worksheets will be given for cultural material; moreover, students will watch more small videos that relate to cultural topics.

Upon receipt of the submissions, we noticed there was a problem with the data and the diversity rubric had not been properly implemented. We were unable to rectify the problem given the instructor is no longer employed by EKU. We have a new instructor who has been working to update the SLOs and will make certain the diversity is evaluated.

LAT 102

For cultural material, students in the past primarily have read several pages and listened to a lecture during the next class period. Worksheets were given for some cultural material this semester and seemed to help students with remembering important information. In future semesters, more worksheets will be given for cultural material; moreover, students will watch more small videos that relate to cultural topics.

Upon receipt of the submissions, we noticed there was a problem with the data and the diversity rubric had not been properly implemented. We were unable to rectify the problem given the instructor is no longer employed by EKU. We have a new instructor who has been working to update the SLOs and will make certain the diversity is evaluated.

POL 319

All seventeen students are included in the assessment. While I have taught this course a number of times and while it has always included diversity as a major theme, this is only the second time I have taught it as a gen. ed. diversity course. This class was twice the size of the previous one and on the whole they were better and more interested students. They seemed to enjoy the book review and they chose books on a broader range of topics than last time, which had the effect of enhancing class discussion on these topics. They were able to empathize with marginalized people but did slightly less General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 76 of 84 well in looking at government’s role in addressing past wrongs. /Students tended to come into the course with a rather narrow view of what diversity encompassed. It was easy for them to empathize with black Canadians and First Nations but less so with gays, families of victims of crime, etc. They had particular problems understanding the concept of language rights for people other than English- speakers. And it was easier for them to be emotional than to be analytical. So in the future, these ideas simply need to be hammered at consistently. But I also think I may have tried to cover too much and with the upcoming shortened semester that will become even more of a challenge. (Snow days didn’t help this time around.) I tried to cover the ongoing election campaign (theirs, not ours) and where diversity issues fit into the positions of parties and candidates. As important as this seemed for the political science students in particular, I should probably have omitted it as it involved ongoing attention to the campaign at the same time as we were trying to cover other topics. I did omit some of my planned topics—for example prostitutes as a marginalized group. This has been a big topic in Canada this year because of new regulations but trying to work it in, especially since it wasn’t addressed in the textbook, got to be too much and I chose to focus instead on Black Canadians, also barely covered in the text. / / I felt that that the same problem I noted in my last assessment was still present to some degree this time--that students tended, in varying degrees, to treat the course as involving two distinct topics—politics and diversity—without grasping the many levels of constant interaction between the two, even though the textbook I use, a basic introduction to Canadian politics book, makes mention of diversity issues in virtually every chapter, with five chapters specifically devoted to that topic. And I make that clear in the syllabus. (For comparison’s sake, this is far more than the typical introduction to American government textbook does.) Part of this is that study of a parliamentary system is a challenge to many because they don’t understand their own U.S. system. I tried this time to start the course with an overview of a parliamentary system so they would understand references to such in the earlier part of the textbook and then go over this more thoroughly when we came to those chapters in the textbook. I think this helped but it is just something that must be constantly stressed and explained constantly. For example, some students simply could not understand that the Queen does not rule Canada even though she is head of state. Students, for the most part, tended to look at these groups through an American “superiority” lens. An ongoing effort must be made in the future to help them realize that it is possible to be analytical and still be patriotic. But that is why this course is so important as a learning experience for our students—it’s not just about our diversity—it is about their diversity.

Finally, the method of assessing might need to be addressed. Students in general did far better on methods, clarity of expression, and integration than on the other criteria but in large part that is because these were judged based on an out-of-class assignment that they were introduced to at the start of the course while the others were based on a closed-book in-class exam. Thus the question needs to be addressed as to whether there is a better way to do the assessment without letting the assessment demands drive the course.

REL 335

This data was shared and discussed with faculty at our 2015 Assurance of Learning day. I also communicated the summary below via email to faculty in February 2016, since we spent more time discussing our lower-division courses on AOL day.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 77 of 84 Faculty were encourage to continue doing what they are doing in this course related to comprehension and clarity of expression. The religion faculty who assessed this course expressed their judgment that these were strengths of the student work they assessed. In order to improve student learning, we have chosen to focus on Integration and Significance more in the classroom and in assignments/assessments that students complete. We would like to help students become aware of ways in which they can more fully demonstrate an awareness of the ideas and concepts of Islam covered in this course in ways that are deep and broad. This is something that can be fostered by in- class discussion and assignments tailored to these ends.

REL 350

This data was shared and discussed with faculty at our 2015 Assurance of Learning day. I also communicated the summary below via email to faculty in February 2016, since we spent more time discussing our lower-division courses on AOL day.

The religion faculty who assessed this course expressed the judgment that comprehension and clarity of expression were strengths of the work they assessed. This seems to be a fairly common trend across our courses in philosophy and religion. In order to improve student learning, we have chosen to focus on Integration and Significance by devoting more time to these criteria in the classroom and in assignments that students complete. We would like to help students become aware of ways in which they can more fully demonstrate an awareness of the ideas and concepts of Buddhism covered in this course in ways that reflect both depth and breadth, as well as the proper use of methods in the field of religious studies as it relates to diversity.

SED 104

Faculty for SED 104 participated in inter-rater reliability sessions to assure that all students were assessed equally. In addition, the data from the previous semester was discussed. In looking at the rubric, faculty determined that three elements—perspectives, comprehension, and significance— captured the essence of what they hoped students would learn in taking SED 104. That is, students would leave SED 104 with a better (deep) awareness of perspectives of other cultures and/or historically marginalized groups. That students would leave SED 104 with an ability to articulate clearly the cultural, historical, political and social struggles of historically marginalized groups. And, that students would leave SED 104 with an awareness of the complexities of living in a pluralistic society.

In looking at the rubric, faculty determined that three elements—perspectives, comprehension, and significance—captured the essence of what they hoped students would learn in taking SED 104. That is, students would leave SED 104 with a better (deep) awareness of perspectives of other cultures and/or historically marginalized groups. That students would leave SED 104 with an ability to articulate clearly the cultural, historical, political and social struggles of historically marginalized groups. And, that students would leave SED 104 with an awareness of the complexities of living in a pluralistic society.

Analysis of the data revealed that an unacceptable number of students fell in the beginning category. Faculty will increase their emphasis on the significance of the what the students observe and report in their reflections. This assignment is completed twice (data from the second observation is reported

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 78 of 84 here), so the feedback on the first observation will emphasize significance. We hope that the second observation will demonstrate better understanding.

Analysis of the data revealed that an unacceptable number of students fell in the beginning category. Faculty will increase their emphasis on the significance of the what the students observe and report in their reflections. This assignment is completed twice (data from the second observation is reported here), so the feedback on the first observation will emphasize significance. We hope that the second observation will demonstrate better understanding. In addition, in the future, all faculty teaching SED 104 will participate in inter-rater reliability training to assure that all students are scored the same across all sections.

SOC 399

Periodically, sociology faculty consider the extent to which courses are meeting student learning outcomes, including alignment with general education goals. In fall 2015, (Assurance of Learning Day) sociology faculty reviewed the “curriculum map” to assess whether courses were meeting student learning outcomes as well as our overall strategic goals.

Term Papers: The previous assessment (2013) indicated that while the majority of students were competent or developing on perspectives, methods, clarity of expression, and comprehension, there was still room for improvement with respect to competency on all criteria. For spring 2015, a mid- semester assignment was incorporated into term paper requirements to promote better incorporation of scholarly/research material as well as more focused application of foundational material covered during the first weeks of the term (i.e, perspectives, theories, concepts). Students were required to complete structured abstracts to accomplish these objectives (completed prior to writing the final paper). For spring 2015, there was some improvement in competency on perspectives, clarity of expression, and comprehension (+4% increase for all three), but scores for methods remained stable (0% change from 2013). This strategy seems to have been effective for some students, but there were a few students in this course who consistently performed at lower- levels throughout the term (e.g., lack of attendance, poor work, and incomplete assignments), including poor work on the term paper. All of these students received beginning scores on all four criteria. Final Exam Essays: From the previous assessment (spring 2013) it was determined that improvements on integration and significance might be accomplished by requiring students to come prepared (for discussion sessions) with specific written questions to help them 1) integrate material from both sides of the issue debates, and 2) demonstrate the significance of considering various positions on controversial issues. This assignment was incorporated into final exam discussion sessions for spring 2015 and resulted in some improvement in competency ratings for both criteria (+6% for both compared to 2103). Given this improvement in competency scores, developing ratings decreased for both integration and significance (-7% and -2% respectively). Beginning scores remained stable for integration and ratings for significance decreased (-4%) compared to 2013. Additional assignments incorporated for spring 2015 appear to have improved ratings for most students. These strategies will continue to be employed (and tweaked) to promote even greater improvement on assessment criteria. The two instruments (term papers and final exam essays) still seem to be appropriate for assessment of Diversity of Perspectives and Experiences goals, and it should also be noted that the general education assessment for spring 2015 is consistent with overall student performance in the course.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 79 of 84 SOC 400

Periodically, sociology faculty consider the extent to which courses are meeting student learning outcomes, including alignment with general education goals. In fall 2015, (Assurance of Learning Day) sociology faculty reviewed the “curriculum map” to assess whether courses were meeting student learning outcomes as well as our overall strategic goals.

Term Papers: The previous assessment (2013) indicated that while the majority of students were competent or developing on perspectives, methods, clarity of expression, and comprehension, there was still room for improvement with respect to competency on all criteria. For spring 2015, it was determined that for the term paper it may be helpful to go back to requiring a mid-semester assignment to promote better incorporation of scholarly/research material, and greater depth and breadth on all criteria. After the previous assessment (2013), students were required to complete structured abstracts to accomplish these objectives (completed prior to writing the final paper). It appears that this strategy was effective. For spring 2015, competent ratings for perspectives and methods increased by 23% and 11% respectively compared to scores on this criterion for spring 2013. Competent scores also improved for methods and clarity of expression (+7% and +10% respectively). Final Exam Essays: From the previous assessment (spring 2013), it was determined that improvements on integration and significance might be accomplished by requiring students to come prepared (for discussion sessions) with specific written questions to help them 1) integrate material from both sides of the issue debates, and 2) demonstrate the significance of considering various positions on controversial issues. This assignment was incorporated into final exam discussion sessions and resulted in some improvement on these criteria. For spring 2015, there was a slight decrease in competent ratings for integration (-3%), but a considerable increase in developing scores (+19%), and a decrease in students scoring at the beginning level (-14%) on this criterion. There was also improvement on the significance criterion, with an 8% increase in students scoring competent or developing, and a noticeable decrease in beginning scores (-14%). Additional assignments incorporated for spring 2015 appear to have improved ratings for most students. These strategies will continue to be employed to promote even greater improvement on assessment criteria. The overall assessment is that SOC 400 appears to be meeting expectations for the “Diversity of Perspectives and Experiences” goals and the two instruments (term papers and final exam essays) still seem to be appropriate for this assessment. In addition, it should be noted that the general education assessment for spring 2015 is also consistent with overall student performance in the course.

SPA 101

Since SPA 101 is a foundation class, we are always discussing and evaluating with the whole Spanish faculty, the best way to use assessment data in meaningful ways that allow the students to be productive and to integrate the four components of the learning process: speaking, listening, reading and writing. The data was shared with other faculty in Spanish and will undergo a further analysis in the 2016 Assurance of Learning Day.

As a faculty we look for coherence, and continuity not only in our 4 first basic courses but in all different sections and levels. Speaking is what student want to accomplish the most as soon as possible, so we empathize speaking throughout different techniques such as, short readings on

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 80 of 84 cultural topics, short oral reports, developing of simple dialogues on giving situations, interacting with Spanish native speakers from our program etc. The cultural component is one of the most important part of the class, so immediately after the students acquire a more effective comprehensive skill, we increase this part of the course giving students assignments that address themes in the diversity rubric, which if the foundation for the students to start developing a critical perspective about different cultures and people.

We have been learning from all these proactive activities we implement in our classes, and we are moving step by step toward a cumulative project, which in the immediate future will allow us to correct mistakes, and to implement new teaching techniques and strategies and to create new assignments which will help the students to master the Spanish language in a positive and real environment. All these activities, inside and outside class, help us to identify week areas or learning situations so we can implement the appropriate pedagogical remedies.

This data is showing us that, if used appropriately and consistently, the communicative methodology, not only allows the student to use the target language in simple situations, but to develop interests to continue studying the language and self confidence when speaking. However, the gaps and problems students have in the process shows us too that we need to readjust our teaching techniques, and to develop new kind of assignments frequently since students come to our classes form different cultural backgrounds where there is not a strong culture of learning foreign languages. It also shows us that it is important to make the students to understand that to come to class every day, to do the assignments, and to study every day the target language is the key to success. So we need to start developing some new techniques and strategies for motivation and to show the student the importance of studying languages in the modern society. So we can conclude that more work needs to be done on speaking to get the students at a higher proficiency level in that area. Next semester, the Spanish faculty are planning to unify criteria concerning to teaching techniques, explore new methodologies, and to use more on line resources that allow us to construct a rubric to fulfill those gaps we are facing in the learning process.

Since the GE assessment help us to identify the main reason to understand why some students perform poorly, we started revising our syllabi to include more dynamic modules not only on speaking but also on reading and writing techniques, comprehension, association, question interpretation. We also plan to standardize all important test and evaluation activities, as we already did with the final exam, so we can be sure that we are teaching the same material and implementing the same teaching techniques.

The Spanish curriculum was designed to be student-centered and organized around activities that promote active participation and learning. The data collected reinforces the correlation between language acquisition and cultural competency.

SPA 102

The additional evaluation via the GE assessment creates a control against the rest of the material covered in the entire course, testing skills in reading, writing listening and culture skills (the oral evaluation is separate). The performance on the GE sections did not always line up with performance

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 81 of 84 on the total exam, or the course as a whole. The results were shared with relevant faculty, the SPA coordinator and the departmental chair via email, as soon as the evaluation was completed.

Poor performance on the GE assessment derailed only the students who performed poorly in other areas of the content. Nevertheless, the syllabus was revised to include more dynamic modules on reading comprehension, association, and question interpretation. As all of the basic courses are conversational in nature, the emphasis has been on speaking and listening and culture skills, and this resulted in students' better performance in the oral and listening components of the assessment.

SPA 201

This data is shared regularly with faculty in the Spanish program and then discussed during program meetings. Throughout the entire school year, the faculty work together to implement assessment as a regular basis for intermediate and elementary-level courses, as well, in order to help students not only to improve their language skills related to those assessment categories; but also to enhance their learning capabilities for developing their critical and creative thinking. Furthermore, the data will undergo a further analysis in the 2016 Assurance of Learning Day. The Spanish faculty rotate teaching all Gen Ed courses so the analysis and subsequent decision making is done as a collective unit in order to make changes to that best serve the students.

The data were analyzed as a method to focus on the activities intended to raise their performance quality. Also, embedded into the questions for assessment, students can show their growth as individual as the LC&H Dept. encourages that all our languages courses emphasize important cultural aspects, such as diversity awareness, multicultural integration, and service learning to the community. Moreover, the collected data reinforces the correlation between language acquisition and cultural competency. As we revise our curriculum to reflect best practices, including the selection of a new textbook for the 201-202 sequence, we will continue to focus on activities that enhance the language acquisition process through culture.

SPA 202

The data were shared with other faculty in Spanish and will undergo a further analysis in the 2016 Assurance of Learning Day. The Spanish faculty rotate teaching all Gen Ed courses so the analysis and subsequent decision making is done as a collective unit in order to make changes to that best serve the students. The data reflect that the majority of the students meet expectations with the critical analysis related to cultural awareness and diversity. The students find it more of a challenge to articulate their opinions in writing with clarity and precision since they are using a second language, which is to be expected.

The Spanish curriculum was designed to be student-centered and organized around activities that promote active participation and learning. The data collected reinforces the correlation between language acquisition and cultural competency. As we revise our curriculum to reflect best practices, including the selection of a new textbook for the 201-202 sequence, we will continue to focus on activities that enhance the acquisition process through culture. We will also include more activities that are writing intensive to give students the opportunity to improve their skills.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 82 of 84 SPA 205

SPA 205 (a combination of SPA 201 and 202 in the same semester) is a 6-hour, accelerated course, designed to move students more quickly through the basic and intermediate courses. As so much material is covered in a short time, the additional evaluation via the GE assessment creates a control against the rest of the material covered in the entire course, testing skills in reading, writing listening and culture skills (the oral evaluation is separate). The performance on the GE sections did not always line up with performance on the total exam, or the course as a whole. However, it was interesting to note that while poor listening and reading abilities were more or less even among students in the Beginning and Developing categories, among the Accomplished and Competent, listening skills were generally better than those for Reading comprehension. The results were shared with relevant faculty, the SPA coordinator and the departmental chair via email, as soon as the evaluation was completed.

SPA 205 has not been offered since Spring 2015, due to low enrollment. Poor performance on the GE assessment derailed only the students who performed poorly in other areas of the content. Nevertheless, the syllabus was revised to include more dynamic modules on reading comprehension, association, and question interpretation. The improvement process continues via a search for a new textbook for SPA 201/202, and thus, SPA 205. As all of the basic courses are conversational in nature, the emphasis has been on speaking and listening and culture skills, and this resulted in students' better performance in the oral and listening components of the assessment. As some of the same issues arose in the elementary courses such as SPA 102, the relevant content methodology have been redesigned for that course.

VTS 200

Faculty who participated in this assessment were given data during the collection phase (they completed the initial / Scoring Guides that were turned into the department). Faculty were asked to provide a narrative of their experiences / with the assessment and provide feedback on any changes that need to be made. Faculty were asked to continue to provide feedback about the process as they worked through their spring 2016 courses.

Participating faculty were asked to give a narrative of their feelings about the assessment and analyze the data to / determine if updates or edits needed to be made to improve student learning. Since this was the first round for this / particular assessment, some points that were used to edit the assessment for spring 2016 include: * Changing the Source Quiz format from unlimited attempts on Blackboard to 3 attempts so that students are seeking information versus "gaming the system" and just providing multiple guesses to research questions. * adding a disclaimer/statement to the course discussion prompts for those who are military veterans reiterating that, regardless of past experience, there is ALWAYS something NEW to learn and that those experiences, while valuable, do not constitute "I didn't learn anything new" answers. * Instructors felt that discussion board prompt feedback needed to be enhanced so that students could use that feedback to deepen their understanding of the topic and help prepare them more for the term paper that pulled from the content in those posts. * At least one instructor feels that the format of the term paper does not allow for as much DEEP thinking and critical analysis of the topic as a standard research paper would allow. * An "exceeds expectations" category will need to be added to the scoring rubrics so that we can

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 83 of 84 account for those students who are going above and beyond what is expected from the assignment. They are currently combined with the "Meets Expectations" category. * Faculty suggest the possibility of MOVING the placement of the term paper out of the same time frame as another larger writing assignment to attempt to have students focus more specifically ON the term paper assignment. * Faculty feel that since this particular group of students are online only students, that their general preparation for course work related to writing/research may be lacking on a larger scale. Faculty suggest more feedback during the writing process to attempt to balance this lack of preparation.

WGS 201

I have not yet shared the data with the faculty who teach the course, but I plan to do so immediately and will remind the faculty again before the fall semester starts. / / When I shared the 2015 assessment results with this year's instructors in August, I followed the recommendations to require a research-informed paper, and I shared the GE 6 Rubric and the WGS terminology list. / / I will similarly share these results with this year's instructors and remark on the need to incorporate more instruction and directions in integration of different perspectives and in clarity of expression. I will encourage the instructors to keep giving similar or even more emphasis on issues of diversity, marginalization, and complexity of experience related to gender, sex, and sexuality. / / Total of papers scoring a 2 or higher in each category followed by the percentage change from 2015: / Perspectives: 94% (+22%) / Methods: 83% (+2%) / Integration: 61% (-32%) / Clarity of Expression: 72% (-21%) / Comprehension: 77% (+17%) / Significance: 67% (+7%)

Based on comparisons between the 2015 and 2016 assessment results, I can vividly see that our WGS 201 students improved in the areas of Perspectives, Methods, Comprehension, and Significance. These areas of improvement indicate that our WGS 201 classes are effectively conveying the diversity and complexity of gender, sex, and sexuality in a more effective manner than in the past. The areas where the scores have gone down are in Integration and Clarity of Expression, but these relate more to the essays' stylistics and control of written language.

General Education Assessment Report Fall 2014- Spring 2016 Page 84 of 84