Submitted Fall, 2003
During the spring semester of 2003, the Department of History began implementation of its new assessment plan. For this semester, the plan consisted of three parts: the assessment exam, evaluation of senior seminar papers, and focus group discussions. According to our plan, the department should also send out a survey to all history and social science majors two years after their graduation. Since the graduates from 2000-2001 had already been included in a survey sent out for the department's Five Year Academic Program Review this year, the department decided not to send out surveys this year. We will do so for the first time in the spring 2004.
Objectives
Our assessment plans evaluated designated student learning objectives in the areas of knowledge, skills, and values.
Use of Results
Because this assessment data is based on only one semester, and because the department feels that the assessment plan itself needs improvement, it has decided to make no program modifications at this time.
Assessment of the Assessment Plan
While the Department of History is justifiably pleased at these early assessment results in many categories, it is also clear that our assessment plan needs additional work before it can adequately evaluate the success of our students in achieving the designated learning objectives. Mainly, the Department believes that the current assessment plan is too complex and includes too many learning objectives, making it difficult for our measurement tools to adequately address them all. Moreover, many of the responses begin to seem repetitive and do not, in fact, help us to see if we are fulfilling our goals. Once we have streamlined our learning objectives, we may also need to rework our measurement tools to ensure that they serve to evaluate each objective. The Department will address these issues at its next meeting on Sept. 16.
Results by Measure