Report of the LAC Assessment Subcommittee: James Robinson, Laura Terlip

Our task is to examine how the role of the Liberal Arts Core Category 1, Core Competencies, in the context of the First Year Experience might be assessed.

I] Category 1: Core Competencies encompasses the following courses:

A. Reading and Writing (3 hours required)

620:005 College Writing and Research – 3 hrs. Recommended for students who have ACT English and Reading scores of 18-26; students who have ACT English scores of 17 or less are advised to take 620:002 first. Emphasis on critical reading and the writing of a variety of texts with attention to audience, purpose, and rhetorical strategies. Attention to integrating research materials with students' critical and personal insights. Satisfies the Liberal Arts Core writing and reading requirement. No credit if prior credit in 620:015 or 620:034. Prerequisite: UNI's high school English admissions requirement.

620:015 Craft of Academic Writing – 3 hrs. Strategies of scholarly research and writing: devising research problems, finding and evaluating credible sources, writing and revising convincing academic arguments. Satisfies the Liberal Arts Core writing and reading requirement. Prerequisite: combined ACT English and Reading scores of 54 or above or 620:005 or consent of department.

620:034 Critical Writing About Literature – 3 hrs. Study of techniques of various literary forms including poetry, drama, and fiction. Attention to processes and purposes of critical and scholarly writing and to documentation. Introductory course for English Department majors and minors. Prerequisite: combined ACT English and Reading scores of 54 or above, or 620:005.

B. Speaking and Listening (3 hours required)

48C:001 Oral Communication – 3 hrs. Development of speaking and listening skills by studying the process and theory of communication and by applying communication principles to various speaking situations.

C. Quantitative Techniques and Understanding (3 hours required)

800:023 Mathematics in Decision Making – 3 hrs. Selection of mathematical topics and their applications with an emphasis on mathematical reasoning. Topics include probability and statistics.

800:060 Calculus I – 4 hrs. The derivatives and integrals of elementary functions and their applications. Prerequisite: 800:046, or 800:043 and 800:044, or equivalent.

800:064 Introductory Statistics for Life Sciences – 3 hrs

Descriptive statistics, basic probability concepts, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, correlation and regression, elementary concepts of survival analysis. No credit for students with credit in 800:072. (Variable)

800:072 Introduction to Statistical Methods – 3 hrs. Descriptive statistics including correlation and curve fitting. Intuitive treatment of probability and inferential statistics including estimations and hypothesis testing. No credit for students with credit in 800:064. Students with credit in 800:172 should not enroll in 800:072.

800:092 Introduction to Mathematical Modeling – 3 hrs. Components of mathematical modeling. Formulation, interpretation, and testing of models. Prerequisite: four years of college preparatory mathematics, or 800:046, or 800:043 and 800:044.

810:025 Computational Modeling and Simulation – 3 hrs. Explores computational approaches to solving complex problems using computational tools and dynamic and discrete simulations. Topics include problem representation, modeling, simulation, & model/simulation validation, with applications in the sciences, social sciences, and business.

D. Personal Wellness

440:010 Personal Wellness – 3 hrs. Concepts of exercise science, nutrition, stress management, contemporary threats, and decision making. Assessment, application, and participation in lifetime fitness and skill activities.

II] The purposes of the Core Competencies are stated as follows:

An understanding of and competence in the processes by which messages are generated, transmitted, received, and used is basic to any advanced civilization. Every active member of any society needs to acquire and transmit information. How effectively that information is communicated and understood is a major determinant of the level at which members of society can participate in dealing with the great issues which confront that society and the level of achievement to which that society can reasonably aspire.

Two areas of communication are of primary significance: 1) written and oral communications and 2) quantitative communications which include probability and statistics. If humans are to live responsibly and joyfully, fulfilling their promise as individuals and as citizens and leaders in a democratic society, they must develop these abilities. The higher the level to which undergraduates develop these abilities, the greater is the likelihood of their being lifelong students who are not dependent on information they collect in college.

The development of abilities in written and oral communications must be based upon critical thinking and logical reasoning. Students must have the opportunity to develop further their thinking, reasoning, writing, speaking, reading, and listening skills through practice and performance which is subjected to frequent and individual evaluation. They need to develop the ability to prepare messages for varied audiences, with varying pur-poses in a variety of contexts. As consumers of communication, they need to develop their abilities to interpret, analyze, evaluate, and enjoy messages they receive.

The quantitative communications area should develop students' ability to use and understand numerical data and make them aware of the ways in which numerical data increasingly make accessible levels of knowledge which were previously unobtainable. Students should also develop an alertness for the misuse, manipulation, and multiple interpretations of numerical data. The concepts of degree of risk, distribution, uncertainty, orders of magnitude, rates of change, and confidence levels and acceptability should be included in the competencies to be achieved by students.

Students should develop understanding and appreciation of personal wellness as a lifestyle, consciously chosen, in which one takes advantage of the opportunities to maximize holistic health. Personal wellness focuses on bringing actions into closer harmony with underlying values, needs and interests.

Through experiences which integrate knowledge, values, feelings and skills, students should examine factors affecting their own personal wellness and quality of life. These experiences should include: (a) an assessment component to evaluate and monitor present status; (b) a knowledge component which systematically examines exercise science, nutrition, motor behavior, stress and leisure; and (c) a laboratory component which provides a variety of activity experiences. It is essential that from these experiences students develop the knowledge necessary for making informed decisions about a positive lifestyle, the skills necessary to implement these decisions, and an awareness of the resources and services available to facilitate the pursuit of attainable levels of wellness. Found at http://www.uni.edu/vpaa/lac/purposecategory.shtml

III] The LAC Committee has already committed itself to a process of on-going review of the LAC categories and Category 1 is scheduled to be reviewed in 2010-11

This review process involves the following:

Purposes of the Review: 1. To inform the Liberal Arts Core Committee of the program's operation. 2. To promote collective adherence to the philosophy of the Liberal Arts Core. 3. To identify areas of concern and propose solutions. 4. To review student outcomes assessment plans and data and make recommendations. Procedures for the Review: 1. A review of each area will occur approximately once every six years or as mandated by the LAC Committee. 2. A Category Review Team will be appointed by the appropriate collegiate dean(s) from those faculty closely associated with the category by March 1. 3. The Category Review Team will participate in meetings with the Student Outcomes Assessment Subcommittee of the LAC Committee by March 31st to discuss the review process and student outcomes assessment planning. 4. A member of the LAC Committee will be assigned as a liaison to the Review Team to communi- cate the responsibilities of the Review Team, provide references (e.g., catalog statements, examples of past reviews, published statements of goals for the category, etc.), and facilitate meeting deadlines.

5. Required Category Review Team Procedures: Review and revise, if necessary, category goals, outcomes and competencies. Review and revise, if necessary, category descriptions and statements for syllabi. Review and revise, if necessary, student outcomes assessment plan. Analyze student outcomes assessment data. Conduct faculty and student analyses of courses. Conduct an analysis of enrollment data. Submit final report to the LAC Committee and the appropriate College Dean(s) by May 1. 6. Category Review Report Content: Statement of the category and subcategory goals, outcomes and competencies. Discussion of the extent to which the goals of the category have been met and continue to be relevant to the goals of the Liberal Arts Core. Analysis of the category description and course syllabi statements. Analysis of the student outcomes assessment plan and data. Analysis of an enrollment record according to courses, credit hours, student profiles, class size, percentage of credit hours taught by tenure/tenure tack faculty. Completion of a Liberal Arts Core Course Form by the Category Review Team in consultation with relevant faculty and administrators for each course in the review area. An executive summary of the review area including successes, challenges and specific recommendations. These recommendations may include such things as improving consistency within the review area, staffing, facilities, equipment, meeting student needs, areas of on-going concerns, etc. 7. As a result of the review, the LAC Committee will make recommendations to the University Faculty Senate and appropriate University administrators in order to enhance and support the review areas and the entire Liberal Arts Core. Such recommendations will be made in consultation with interested persons. The Committee will furnish the Senate with a copy of the final review along with the LAC Committee Review Summary. http://www.uni.edu/vpaa/lac/review.shtml as modified by 02 September 08

LAC Category Review Questions

1. Does the catalog description reflect the course as it is currently delivered? Are changes in the catalog description or course content needed? If so, identify needed changes. 2. In what ways does this course serve the purposes of this category? 3. Since the last category review, have changes in the relative emphasis of content areas been made? If so, identify the changes. 4. If multiple sections are offered, how is comparability of content and grading across sections assessed and insured? 5. What are the primary instructional methods used in the course? What type(s) of student activities are included in the course? 6. In what ways does this course help students develop the Liberal Arts Core proficiencies? 7. How is student achievement of the course objectives assessed? 8. What are considered to be the major strengths of the course? What are the major weaknesses? What, if any, changes are needed? 9. Additional faculty, head, and/or dean concerns or comments.

IV] Our Recommendations Concerning Assessment and Improvement in LAC

We found that the LAC already has a process of assessment in place in which each LAC category is assessed every six years. We anticipate that first-year students would be taking LAC courses primarily in Category 1 but what we recommend here can be used more broadly.

01] We can build upon and refine this LAC process in several ways. First, we can clarify the objectives of each category. Second, we can devise assessments of the experience of first year students in the LAC courses which would be measure how well the objectives or purposes of each course are being met and how these courses might be improved. Third, we would do this on a yearly basis and use the results directly in an on-going guide to improvement. Finally, we recommend a much wider distribution of the results of these assessments as well as the over-all assessments of each category carried out by the University LAC Committee.

02] We recommend some sort of end-of-senior-year assessment of first-year courses that reveals to what degree these courses have been effective over time. As feasible, this assessment of first year courses might be extended to alumni.

03] We recommend forming faculty coordination structures for each of the courses in LAC Category 1 and other relevant courses. These coordinating committees, while respecting the freedom of each faculty member to shape their own sections, nevertheless will foster sharing and mutual support among them. More specifically, these faculty are expected both to contribute to the assessment process and to discuss and implement improvements in their individual courses. A possible model of such a coordinating committee may be presently found in the already existing Humanities Coordinating Committee.

We also have a recommendation which bears on the LAC first-year experience but relates to assessment and improvement in a more indirect way.

04] Our first-year students need a Liberal Arts Core Handbook including at the very least 1] the ratio- nale for the Liberal Arts Core; 2] an over-view of the entire LAC (not simply a list of relevant courses); and 3] a more detailed look at the Category 1, Core Competencies.

Simply directing students to the LAC portion of the UNI web-site is not fully adequate since the students need an introduction to LAC that is simple and straight-forward. The present LAC philosophy, purposes and supporting literature needs to be critically examined for their use of overly academic phraseology. As one example out of many, in the Core Competencies Statement of Purpose we find: “Students should also develop an alertness for the misuse, manipulation, and multiple interpretations of numerical data.” This might be better phrased as “Students should become alert to the fact that numerical data may be misused or manipulated, and is subject to many different interpretations.”

One member of the sub-committee, James Robinson, found a discussion of the Liberal Arts Core by Professor Bill Koch to be a particularly effective starting point, to be suitably revised and refined, for introducing students as to why the LAC is both necessary and valuable. Professor Koch’s essay has been attached as an appendix.

Below is something I wrote originally with parents in mind but I have revised it so that first year students might find it helpful too. (BK 2/19/09)

1A Student Guide to the Liberal Arts Education They Will Experience

By Dr. Bill Koch

Department of English Language and Literature

University of Northern Iowa

Dear Students,

You are about to embark on a new level of education that will have a major impact on your lives, not only as productive citizens of our country, but as persons. You will change in large ways and in ways small. This guide intends to explain the reasons behind that dynamic, but also to help you participate more fully in your education.

First let us examine the term Liberal in the name we give to our General Education studies--- Liberal Arts Core.

The term is not meant to be taken in its political sense, but in its historical sense. The liberal arts are meant to liberate the developing mind from the imperfect and incomplete understanding that people have of themselves, of their society and culture, of their place in society and in history. The goal of the liberal arts core is lofty, and many students don’t embrace its objectives, but those who do take their liberal arts core courses seriously find that they have become better people for it.

The process is imperfect, fraught with dangers; it does involve much self-examination and in some instances the rejection of values and beliefs highly prized by parents. But when students realize that what is often being examined is not the value itself but their understanding of that value, then they feel less intimidated and more likely to let the process take its course.

It is important to remember that as kids just out of high school, 18 or 19 years old, your level of understanding life, of understanding of key values and beliefs, is not as advanced as that of adults (who, hopefully, have a grasp of life’s complexities). A liberal arts education offers students the tools and dynamics to liberate their minds from their partial understanding and liberates their minds FOR a mature, wise level of interaction with the world they will live in and adjust to after college.

Perhaps you aren’t sure what I mean by Levels of Understanding. I get this phrase from the educational philosopher Kieran Egan, who wants us to think about education from a developmental point of view. He suggests that we characterize the stages or levels of education with words that refer to the student’s relationship with knowledge being conveyed in the educational environment.

So, for example, the very first relationship a person has with knowledge is what he or she gleans from his or her body. Think of an infant slowly understanding that he or she is an entity separate from the mother or father who feeds it. The infant learns that the unpleasant sensation within comes from the stomach’s lack of food. Just recently I enjoyed watching a four month infant staring in awe at his hand. My impression was that he saw the hand distinctly, but not the rest of the arm to realize the hand was connected to his body! So the first level of understanding, suggests Egan, is “somatic.”

Formal education, beginning with preschool and kindergarten, can be seen as a progression through these levels of understanding: mythic, romantic, philosophical, ironic. These last two terms refer to the level of thinking and understanding that a Liberal Arts Education invites the students to develop. (For a full discussion of the earlier levels of understanding, see the references at the end of this chapter.) The courses in the Liberal Arts Core can be used to develop this level of philosophical and ironic understanding (what I call PIU for shorthand).

Before I go further, I will clarify what is meant by a “philosophical” level of understanding and thinking, and an “ironic” level of understanding.

A philosophical viewpoint is not meant to lead your student to be a professional philosopher, but to realize (at least) the power and the limits of language and any human system of symbolization (Verbal language, art, mathematics, etc.). Furthermore, the student comes to see that human institutions are in fundamental ways social constructions as well as attempts to articulate and codify universal standards of behavior and belief. The goal isn’t to make everything relative and pluralistic (though the student must consider the validity of these concepts) but to get a more realist assessment of the social and cultural realities that shaped the student to this point and which the student can now shape in college and after he and she graduates.

In our time of the early 21st century, I would suggest that an essential outcome of a philosophical level of understanding and thinking is to develop a historical consciousness which makes the student realize the context of our times (which we often think is the best or worst of time ever, but which is actually in between) and that he or she can become an agent of social and historic change.

Now that is a lofty aspiration, and filled with potholes of hubris and blind-spots. That is why Egan suggests that the student also develop an Ironic point of view to complement the philosophical one. An ironic viewpoint suggests two things—that no matter how serious our statements are taken and change the world, we must realize that these changes are still provisional and dependent on the status quo remaining the same. And things are always changing. So an ironic view keeps us vigilant to new realities that demand attention so our social and personal equilibrium can be maintained.

Secondly, because a philosophical view reveals the power and the limits of words, we can embed an ironic view within our statements to create language that reveals more than what the literal words and phrases mean. Egan puts it this way: “Irony is a general strategy for putting into language meanings that the literal forms of language cannot contain” (Educated 171). A student who is developing a philosophical level of understanding would be sensitive to this use of irony. The goal is not to make them smug and clever, but realize their limitations as well as their potential within those limits.

The combination of philosophical and ironic levels of understanding gives a stu-dent a freedom and power as well as a sense of limits. Limits might seem to contradict the power of freedom, but one need only remember that someone who excels in any human activity, from sports to music, must submit to long hours of practice (limiting one’s freedom) before he achieves excellence—often accompanied or caused by a sense of true freedom— in his field. Hence college student need to understand that the courses of the Liberal Arts Core and even those of the Major are meant to develop in them a level of understanding appropriate for mature and responsible personal and social living. A philosophical and ironic understanding (PIU) increases their chances of becoming responsible.

I mentioned that a key awareness of PIU is the nature of words and language. I would like to explain that idea a bit. Students enter college not realizing the importance of language in their intellectual growth. Indeed, some philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer believe that it was language that transformed a species with consciousness into one with self-consciousness. Language sparked self-reflection, thinking, self-awareness. My wording assumes the acceptance of an evolutionary hypotheses about the origins of life. That is why I noted my assumption and accept that not all people accept it. But the scene in Genesis 2 of Adam “naming” the animals also suggests the importance of language to self-conscious-ness, being aware of one’s surroundings and understanding one’s place in it.

But that issue aside, something even more important and less controversial must be understood—the metaphorical nature of language. Indeed, Susanne Langer notes, “Metaphor is the law of language.”

Basically, a metaphor is the use of a familiar word to explain something that is unfamiliar. Also, that metaphor, because it offers a concrete image, has secondary features that can be applied to the explanation of the unfamiliar concept. Take, for instance, my attempt to explain the nature and importance of words. Here’s a metaphor to suggest the function and importance and limits of words (and language in general):

Science is a spotlight that reveals and helps us understand parts of reality. Here I use the image of spotlights to explain the usefulness of science. This metaphor is not as odd as you might think.

So let us look at the implications of this metaphor of science as a spotlight. First, science increases our understanding of a physical object because its tests can “illuminate” aspects of it we may not have been aware of. Science can shine a light on things in our experiences which our common sense doesn’t detect. For example, until we had some theories and tested them, we thought the sun traveled across the earth’s sky. But our tests demonstrated that our earth revolves on its axis, making it appear to our eyes that the sun moves.

But the sciences have their weaknesses. The beam of light from science only illuminates the physical world. It is like science’s spotlight is hanging from the rafters of a dark stage and illuminates only part of the stage, part of life. Based on this image, we can conjecture that there are things about life thriving outside that dome of light that science produces. Science, since it only illuminates physical things, cannot illuminate these non-physical aspects of reality that we sense. What will illuminate those aspects? As a tentative answer, I will claim that Art is a spotlight that we need to turn on in our lives, as well as public service. Those are spotlights as powerful as science in helping us be mature adults in civilization.

So, to recap up to this point, students begin to develop their philosophical and ironic level of understanding when they understand the metaphorical nature of language. Your college years constitute that developmental stage in a your life when you are ready to advance your level of understanding from child to young adult. Though you may be going to a state university, or are non- religious, still the words of St. Paul are applicable: when I was a child I thought like a child, spoke like a child, reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish things aside.

You will get an intense experience of liberation when they realize you are transitioning from a child’s type of reasoning to an adult type.

Indeed, it is noteworthy that St. Paul mentions reasoning as something that must be changed in adulthood, for reasoning—rational thinking—has always been the hall-mark of a liberal arts education. Now, rational thinking, like words, has its power but it also has its limits and weaknesses. I would like to examine those weaknesses, in the light (notice the metaphor?) of our discussion of metaphor.

Did you notice that you learned something about the nature and function of science when I explained the metaphorical nature of language? You gained some know-ledge through an explanation that did not utilize what many students assume is the only place to go to find “true” knowledge—a scientific, empirical study or statistic.

This assumption that the only knowledge worth knowing comes from quantitative studies has hampered college students in their attempts to acquire a philosophical and ironic level of understanding. This assumption is the result of Western society’s privileging of science and its positivistic methodology for the past 400 years. Now our science has done many wonderful things, things of a theoretical nature, such as proving that the solar system has the sun at its center, to the practical—all of our wonderful technological machinery.

But this mindset has produced a one-sidedness in our intellectual understanding, and our age needs to recover a balance, regain an appreciation for the non-scientific methodology of learning knowledge. The knowledge gained through metaphorical analysis of life is probably more important in our era—the early 21st century, than the advance of scientific knowledge. At the very least, we need to appreciate the value of knowledge gained through what is basically philosophical inquiry. But the level of philosophy required need be no more abstract than what I’ve asked you to understand. It hasn’t been that hard, has it?!

I think you realize the pervasiveness of metaphor in our language, how any explanation is probably successful because of its felicitous and judicious use of metaphor to make abstract realities visually concrete in the mind’s eye.

Now, imagine this—once you, the student, realize that good knowledge can be produced when someone uses a controlling metaphor to describe an abstract reality, then you the student can create your own metaphors to explain your own experience of or thoughts on an abstract reality. You are a knowledge maker because you are a metaphor maker. And the knowledge and words and thoughts we most need these days are rooted in this qualitative, humanistic (spiritual and religious perhaps) non- quantitative methodology.

Consider your faculty to also be metaphor makers. Alfred North Whitehead said that univer- sities function as a place where young and old unite in the imaginative acquisition of knowledge. The word metaphor implies imaginative. Faculty are also students, attempting to explore their understanding imaginatively, and they seek your input, though you need to use the methods of Liberation Education, some of which I’ve just tried to explain. The result is the students (tenured or other) submit to the disciplines of Liberal Education for the purpose of, as Whitehead writes, “constructing an intellectual vision of a new world and the satisfying purposes for making the vision real.”

Now, this is the situation—you student come to the university with a set of assumptions about life, about education, about yourselves as learners. You probably have not thought at all about metaphor and qualitative knowledge. You enter a classroom with assumptions that are at odds with what faculty assume, assumptions I’ve tried to articulate above.

As for myself, I try to convey these academic assumptions to my students in the CWR classes I teach, stressing that this particular class, because it deals with college reading and writing, provides information and methods that can be used in ALL of their courses until they graduate. By then, they should realize that what they have trained in themselves (basically a PIU) will be of great value when they must get a job and be a productive citizen in our society and culture, as well as in their business. Indeed, I hope they realize, as Carl Jung has said, “Money-making [... is] nothing but plain nature —not culture. Culture lies beyond the purpose of nature. [...] Culture [is] the meaning and purpose of the second half of life” (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 109-10).

The acquirement of a cultured soul is the hoped for outcome of a Liberal Arts Education. Most students come to college assuming their degree is most important because it (not always) leads to a good job. Soon, though, I hope they realize that their job is only a small part of their life, and that the culture they develop in themselves, and that they help nurture in their social spheres, that culture is what the LAE intends to nurture and develop in them.

That really is the point of taking a wide range of courses in the Liberal Arts Core —to sample the cultural achievements and failures of our species for these past few thou-sand years (not a long time really), and to then sense the historical moment they live in and to sense their role as social agent of historic change here at the beginning of the 21st century, the 3rd millennium AD. And to understand that they will know what their social role is and that they will gain confidence to act in the public square by developing that knowledge within themselves through metaphor. Metaphor, I’ve come to realize, is the dynamo that organizes our feelings, which gives us the energy and inspiration to act in the public square. I hope I’ve conveyed a bit of what I mean by the power of metaphor.

All of these concepts and assumptions about the purpose and goals of a Liberal Arts Education may surprise you, but what I’ve said fulfills what the UNI course catalog says: “Major goals in the programs leading to [. . .] degrees,” the University of Northern Iowa Catalog says, “are the advancement of humane learning and the preparation of all students to cope intelligently, effectively and reasonably with the complex and changing conditions of life in modern society” (41).

Furthermore, besides providing the student with “substantial content,” the Liberal Arts Core seeks to develop skills in students such as “rigorous methodology and an active engagement with the societal, ethical and practical implications of our learning” (49), skills that can be applied to any discipline or career.

I’ve tried to outline some of the details of this rigorous methodology, especially its foundation in verbal language, and our imaginative use of words. I would claim that students who examine their words this way will be able to invent practical remedies for problems we find in the “complex and changing conditions of life in modern society.” This is especially true of our economic situation. I think that after we examine our words imaginatively, our best practical ideas to resurrect the economy will appear, since our ideas are conveyed with and through words.

Liberal Education, then produces much more than any student (tenured or other) thought was likely. But we discover that liberation isn’t just freedom to choose, but freedom to led the genius of Life work through us. In your first year of college, you should know this insight and experience it through your academic work.