Archived Assessment Report
| Program | History AA Degree |
| Assessment Reporter | [email protected] |
| Theme | Practicing Community |
| Review Year | 2024-2025 - Midpoint Report |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Focus Area |
|---|---|
| 7. Produce communication appropriate to audience, situation, venue, and/or context | --Students' ability to produce communication appropriate to audience, situation, venue, and/or context Earlier assessments we conducted in Spring 2022 and Spring 2023 were too fussy and wordy, hampering both student and instructor engagement. We based this on feedback/performance from students, as well as feedback from instructors. We have therefore devised the following hypothesis for our assessment of Practicing Community Gen Ed learning outcomes and History AA program outcome: Simplifying/streamlining the assessment (less fussy/more clear instructions, fewer learning outcomes to measure) will: --increase student and instructor engagement --increase students' comprehension/performance in regard to each SLO --allow for more accurate measurement of student success |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population or Courses Assessed | Hypothetical Analysis/Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7. Produce communication appropriate to audience, situation, venue, and/or context | Students will imagine they are writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, drawing on 2 secondary sources; or 1 primary and 1 secondary. Students could write about a current issue in a letter that might be targeted for a newspaper like the Albuquerque Journal; for example, regarding an environmental issue embedded in the history of racial/cultural inequities). Or, students could imagine they're writing a letter to the editor about something that has occurred in the past as if they themselves are in it | All Spring 2024 History courses that are included in the State Gen Ed roster: HIST 1103 - Intro to Historical Study HIST 1110 - U.S. History I HIST 1120 - U.S. History II HIST 1150 - Western Civ I HIST 1160 - Western Civ II HIST 1170 - Survey of Early Latin America HIST 2110 - History of New Mexico HIST 2510 - Uses of History | Having a "real world" task such as students imagining they are writing a letter to a newspaper editor will increase engagement for both students and instructors. Simplifying/streamlining instructions will also increase student/instructor engagement. At the same time, clear instructions with examples about how to incorporate key concepts in intercultural reasoning, sustainability, and appropriate communication will strengthen students' ability to evaluate and meet the learning outcomes in question with an average score of 2 or better in each case. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Summary of Results | Reflection on Focus Area | Intepretation of Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7. Produce communication appropriate to audience, situation, venue, and/or context | Averaged scores - all classes Total students 305. Students' ability to produce communication appropriate to audience, situation, venue, and/or context 2.5 | This focus area, Practicing Community, is particularly relevant to History courses, as intercultural reasoning and sustainability are major themes in all of our classes. It was therefore not much of a stretch for us to incorporate this assessment into our Spring 2024 assignments. We were pleased by the interest that many students manifested in this assignment. We believe that this helps to prove at least part of our hypothesis - that a "real world" task such as writing a letter to the editor increases student - and instructor - engagement. It was indeed pleasantly surprising to have such a strong and enthusiastic response from History instructors across the board. Also, an analysis of our collected data demonstrated that we were quite consistent in the way that each of us scored the assignment, which is helpful in interpreting results. | We are pleased that our results yielded scores of 2 or better, as we had predicted. In fact, these results are quite high, at 2.8, 2.6, and 2.5. This seems to indicate that perhaps we could challenge students a bit more in the next round for Spring 2025. This could be because we did not ask students to self-reflect on the assignment in terms of the key concepts to be assessed. We did ask for a clear letter to the editor that incorporated themes of intercultural reasoning/competence, sustainability, and communication appropriate for a newspaper audience. We also asked for thorough citation of sources at the end of the assignment. However, a self-reflection component would have allowed students to think more deeply about the learning outcomes being assessed, and to demonstrate their ability to identify and evaluate these outcomes, and their relevance for making connections between past and present. We believe that identifying key concepts in intercultural reasoning/competence and sustainability of both the natural and human worlds are crucial to our current-day world, and that the ability to evaluate these concepts in a historical context can be inavaluable as students navigate the world today. We therefore feel that adding a self-reflection component to such an assessment would have challenged students to think more deeply about how these concepts apply to their own lives and to current-day issues. |
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Description of Assessment Tool | Population of Courses Assessed |
|---|
| Learning Outcome (or Gen Ed Essential Skill) | Summary of Second Round Results | Intepretation of Results, Pre- and Post-Change | Follow up questions, possible next steps |
|---|
Describe any change in student achievement observed as part of this assessment process, and what led to those changes.
Describe long-term changes in the program(s) that the assessment process led to, and what motivated those changes?
What did you learn about the teaching and learning of "Practicing Community" in your programs?
Describe any external factors affecting the program or affecting assessment of the program.