Annual Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Report

Annual Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Report For 2000-2001

English Department

I. Assessment Procedures

English department faculty primarily assess student learning by observing their performance on papers, exams, quizzes, and journal entries. In our classes, a heavy emphasis is put on discussion among class members, and instructors evaluate student learning and its development by listening, participating and directing such discussions. Tutorial students are evaluated weekly in hour-long, one-on-one conferences with their tutor. Creative writing students are evaluated through regular peer critiquing in their relatively small classes. All writing students, from freshman composition to advanced creative writing, have individual conferences with their instructors outside of class that evaluate manuscripts and suggest improvements. English Education students are evaluated by high-school teachers and an Ohio University instructor when they “student teach” for a quarter in actual high school classes around the state.

Other assessment procedures include:

1. Every section of every English course is evaluated by its students, and after grades are submitted instructors consult these evaluations, often making adjustments based on them. Student evaluations are both verbal and statistical. A copy of our current evaluation form is appended to this report.

2. The department also asks a sample number of graduating seniors to respond to an exit questionnaire and take part in exit interviews concerning their experience in the major. In June of 2000, 20 graduating seniors were interviewed. In June of 2001, 13 graduating seniors were interviewed.

3. Institutional Research provides the department with the results of placement surveys among the department’s graduates and with results of a survey of alumni five years after graduation on satisfaction with their major.

4. Admission to graduate school is a valid indication of successful learning demonstrated to external evaluators. Employment in a secondary school teaching position is another indicator, as is the employment records of our other graduates. The department’s annual newsletter often elicits alumni feedback about current occupations and successes and sometimes about the relevance or rewards of educational experience in the English department. II. Achievement of Departmental Objectives for Students

The department’s mission statement reads that students should:

1)learn the history, forms, theory, and practice associated with the production and reading of written texts, especially those presenting artistic and imaginative evocations of human experience; and 2) develop an expertise for responding to such texts. These aims inevitably incorporate description of and debate about the cultural, social, economic, philosophical and political contexts implicit in the texts, thereby exposing students to a variety of such contexts, both historical and contemporary. They also mandate some knowledge about the nature and history of language, and the continual development and exercise among students of their ability to formulate and articulate their own engagement with life and literature.

The primary indicator of achievement of these objectives is found in course grades, the evaluation by instructors of how well their students learned the materials and perspectives of the course and how well they articulated their understanding.

A. Achievement of Departmental Objectives for Undergraduate Students: Examination of the responses of 20 graduating seniors in June 2000 indicate that 35% consider expanding their experience with a variety of texts and 45% consider improvement in their writing the most valuable effect of the major. These are the most consistent answers to questions about student satisfaction and learning achievement and they match comfortably with the department’s instructional objectives.

On the exit questionnaire, in response to the question, “Are you glad you majored in English?” seven evaluated their experience with a 1 (the highest rating), six with a 2, four with a 3 and only one with a 4. No one indicated a 5. We may conclude then that seniors viewed their academic experience to be meaningful and useful.

The responses of the graduating seniors in June 2001 was even more overwhelming. The 13 students unanimously concluded that they were “glad [they] majored in English.” Similarly positive conclusions related to the students’ development of a more informed “world view” and understanding better “other people’s perspectives.” This is consistent with our articulated aim of exposing students to a variety of cultural, economic, philosophical and political positions. Students also noted that their teachers “pay attention to teaching evaluations” and that teachers “used wonderful methods of teaching.”

A number of students also raised serious concerns related to writing courses and career advising. They expressed a need for the department to provide more technical writing courses, or to include more “professional” writing content in our advanced writing courses. We will take up our response to this concern in the next section of the report.

Finally, the career goals of our graduating seniors are diverse and impressive. Three students plan to seek Ph.Ds in English and then teach at the college level; three plan to enroll in law school; and one each plan to work in the Peace Corps and in the publishing field.

B. Achievement of Departmental Objectives for Graduate Students: We have traditionally measured our graduate program by our graduates’ success in being accepted into more advanced graduate programs, their placement in careers in the field, their publications and other public dissemination of their work, and their satisfaction with our program as a preparation for their careers.

Of the four doctoral students who graduated from our program in 2000-2001, two now have tenure-track positions at state universities and two have post-doctoral fellowships. Our three ABD students who hope to finish this year have full or part-time lectureships in English departments. Of our thirteen M.A. graduates in 2000-2001, four have gone on to Ph.D. programs, one is in an MFA program, one has gone on to a second master’s in TESOL, and one is in Teacher Corps, while four others have been hired for full-time lectureships.

In addition, our graduate students delivered 21 conference papers in 2000-2001 and published in numerous scholarly and creative journals. All of our graduating doctoral students in 2000-2001 had published work before receiving their degrees.

The excellence of our continuing as well as our incoming graduate students is further demonstrated by the fact that this year one of our advanced doctoral students was the winner of the prestigious Claude Kantner Fellowship, and three of our entering doctoral students were awarded University Doctoral Fellowships.

III. Changes to Procedures or Curriculum Based on Assessment

A. Undergraduate: Many exit interviews and questionnaires received from graduating seniors from the class of 2001 asked for introductory courses focusing on theory and general literary history. These responses corroborate responses from earlier classes, and therefore the Undergraduate Committee has developed a revised curriculum which has been presented to the faculty for discussion. If the faculty vote to confirm proposals, the revised curriculum will provide beginning English majors with survey courses providing a sense of the history of English and American literature, a course in elementary literary theory and criticism, as well as a course devoted to developing students’ skills as writers and researchers in literary studies.

Student concerns about the lack of professional writing courses in the department’s curriculum became the focus of discussion for two quarters in the department’s Composition Committee. The Committee recommended the department contact the Council of Writing Program Administrators to enlist their help to assess our courses’ content, and to give suggestions about how we may improve these courses. To this end, we will bring in outside consultants, recommended by the Council, who will review our writing curriculum and submit a formal evaluation and set of suggestions. Career advising, particularly pre-law, continues to pose a problem, and one for which we do not have a ready resolution since we do not have a member of the faculty particularly suited to provide advising for students who seek a career in law.

B. Graduate: In response to ongoing dialogue with our current and former graduate students and through assessment of their needs and accomplishments, we have continually changed and updated our programs. In 2000-2001 we increased the rigor of our core requirements in our Ph.D. concentration in composition and rhetoric in response in part to our students’ expressed need for more specific kinds of professional preparation. In addition, based on student needs and on nationwide assessment of time-to- finish in English doctoral programs, in 2000-2001, with the help of the Office of Graduate Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences, we increased our normative Ph.D. period from four to five years, created three post-doctoral fellowships for our finishing students, increased the amount of doctoral stipends, and received permission to use super stipend funds for the recruitment of outstanding doctoral candidates.

On the basis of a study of the source of our graduate inquiries in the last two years as well as based on a nationwide study which showed the importance of the departmental website as a recruiting tool, in 2000-2001 we applied for and received a grant to upgrade our website, which is now uniform, coherent, graphically attractive, and contains full web pages (including photos) for all faculty as well as streamlined information on our graduate program and graduate student accomplishments.

Our assessment document for next year will include an analysis of the response to and results of all of the new procedures and changes we have instituted this year.

IV. Changes in Department’s Assessment Goals

None are planned.

Kenneth Daley Chair September 17, 2001