Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan
for
General Education Goals: Collaboration
Marti Singer, Mary
Lamb, and Mary Hocks
Department of
English,
I.
Description
of Outcomes:
Collaboration is defined by the following outcomes:
a. Ability to review, respond to and discuss ideas and written documents with peers in order to produce a final product.
b. Ability to work in a team and negotiate ideas and processes that
produce a collective group project.
II. How
ENGL 1102 Contributes to Collaboration Goal
The vast majority of our students take ENGL 1102 as a required part of Area A in the Core curriculum. This course uses a social construction approach to learning and developing advanced skills in argumentation, composition and writing style. Our assumption is that writing is a social process through which we all arrive at new ideas and express those ideas in written communication. All 1102 courses use a collaborative pedagogy where students work regularly in small groups of two or three to respond to and improve drafts of each person’s writing. This essential part of the social process of writing provides an actual audience for one’s writing. In addition, students work in groups of 4 or more to produce a collaborative project, paper or oral presentation which requires teamwork and negotiation skills for drafting, revising and producing a final document. This class devotes significant time to teaching and assessing both of these types of collaboration.
II.
Assessment
Methods
a. This summer’s pilot will use 4 English 1102 sections to field-test a common set of assignments and standards for:
i. setting up peer review procedures, goals and processes
ii. creating general parameters and guidelines for team projects and goals for a final document and presentation;
iii. providing guidelines for students’ self-assessment of collaborative work;
b. In the fall semester, we will incorporate at least 25% of English 1102 sections (approx. 650 random students) with the procedures and assessment methods that come out of the summer pilot.
III.
Data
Collection and Analysis Procedures
a. The data will include peers review responses and corresponding student papers; group evaluation forms and corresponding team projects; and a midterm and final self-evaluation from students and instructors.
b. Instructors will write a descriptive analysis of results from this formative assessment and will provide several representative examples from the data.
c. The program director and associate director will compile a summative assessment based on data collected from teaching portfolios, which include a learning outcomes grid.
IV.
Using
the Results for Feedback and Improvement
a. All assessment results will be discussed in the annual August training workshop and in professional development sessions in which all 1102 instructors participate throughout the year.
b. Teaching portfolios are required of all instructors and are reviewed each spring so that changes can be made to course outcomes before the August training.
c. The Lower Division studies, a standing departmental faculty committee, will also review these results and use them to offer new policies and procedures for the 1102 course.
d. Through these processes for analyzing assessment results, we will review our program and our instruction, and make changes to the outcomes and curriculum on a regular basis.