Weber State University
|
|
History DepartmentResults of Assessment 2006-2007 (submitted 02/15/08) The Department’s exit interview has proven effective in gauging the sense of students relative to the clarity of instructional and programmatic objectives. Students have been able to identify remarkably well issues in the Department’s plan for the development of competent history graduates. For example, graduating seniors have described with surprising acuity some redundancy as well as gaps in their studies. The Department has already begun to respond to the issues they raised. Most significantly, the Department recently eliminated its sophomore seminar, remaking it as an upper-division elective, partly in reaction to student feedback in exit interviews. Seniors had raised concerns about the two seminars they were taking, one as sophomores and the other during their last semester. The Department has identified the following student learning outcomes for the history program:
As the chart below indicates, the Department has come to rely heavily on the Senior Seminar as its principal assessment tool. Capstone papers written in the Seminar undergo intense scrutiny both collectively and individually. Each student thesis undergoes a critique both by the professor directing the Seminar and a second faculty member who is particularly familiar with the subject. Faculty discuss and analyze weaknesses in the papers and direct efforts to prepare students better in upper-division courses. Despite the difficulties inherent in assessment of liberal arts curricula, the Department remains confident that its efforts in this direction are effective and satisfy institutional demands.
Papers produced in the Senior Seminar have been quite effective in demonstrating ways in which the curricular and programmatic requirements succeed and fail in their efforts to craft competent and knowledgeable historians. Unlike some disciplines (such as business and nursing) where there are quantified sets of constructs and data streams that can be tested with a national standards exam, history deals with much more elusive bodies of information and skills. There is simply no way to test baccalaureate students on the subject of history, due to the infinite size of the data base and the fluid nature of such ideas as critical thinking, which might appear in one effective form in one student and in a completely different but effective form in another. For example, the Graduate Record Examination’s advanced exam for history has failed to impress most graduate schools, because of its hit-and-miss results and its often contradictory indications relative to undergraduate GPA, faculty recommendations, and the verbal and analytical sections of the examination. Consequently, many history graduate programs do not require it or consider it as they screen candidates for admission. This underscores the difficulty the discipline faces in terms of crafting some comprehensive exit examination process. So, in the end, the senior theses provide admittedly too subjective instruments for outcomes assessment, but they are considerably superior to objective pre- and post-examinations that may work well in less literary and intellectually expansive disciplines. The Department is committed to work assiduously in light of these difficulties to improve its outcomes assessment. A recent addition to the Department’s repertoire of assessment tools is the PRAXIS examination History Teaching Majors and Social Science Composite Teaching Majors must pass in order to qualify for a teaching certification. The Department has noted an unacceptable low pass rate on this exam in the past year and has put into place an active program under the direction of Dr. Vikki J. Vickers to address both the deficiencies in the Department’s effort to prepare prospective teachers in their history content area and the test-specific problems students encounter when taking this exam. In addition to this, the Department has participated with Economics and Political Science in an ongoing assessment of American Institutions courses. A 12-question quiz and a 6-question survey seek to measure both basic knowledge through a sampling of concepts the departments have agreed ought to be common to most students successfully completing an AI course in either of the three departments. Collecting and analyzing the results of these instruments are ongoing and at this time very preliminary.Mission Statement / Student Learning Outcomes / Curriculum Grid / Assessment Plan / Contact Person |
| ||||
