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1. How Are We Doing? Assessing Gen Ed Ten Years After |
by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor
Fall semester 2009 marks the beginning of the tenth year of the revised general education courses, after the switch from terms to semesters, and faculty and staff from across campus are assessing the offerings.
It's a hard job.
"I've been to three different general education conferences," says Brad Baltensperger, chair of the Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences and head of the University's General Education Council. "The consensus is, 'What's going on?' Nobody really knows how to assess gen ed. We can't assess a program until we know what the goals are."
The assessment problem is large enough that the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) has addressed it, producing Essential Learning Outcomes with four areas necessary to today's education:
* knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world
* intellectual and practical skills
* personal and social responsibility
* integrative and applied learning
On the Tech campus, there are areas that are easier to assess, Baltensperger says, such as whether or not students are prepared for Calculus II by their Calculus I class. In other cases, it's more complicated.
Perspectives, for example, is one of the four core courses in gen ed, along with Institutions, World Cultures and Revisions.
"We've had students write a reflection statement in Perspectives, and we try to draw conclusions from what they have taken away," he says. "What is overlooked are the socialization goals and general academic abilities like critical thinking. Critical thinking is a skill that is hard to measure."
Baltensperger and the Gen Ed Council are focusing on the four core courses, and the Revisions teachers went through some heavy assessment of their own at the end of the last school year. Under the tutelage of (now Professor Emeritus) Randy Freisinger, graduate teaching instructors looked at Revisions student portfolios that had met all of the course’s requirements.
Assessing Revisions is an excellent example of just how difficult, and important, this analysis is.
"It is somewhat easier than World Cultures, for example," Freisinger said. "That is a particularly big and unruly, if you will, offering. Revisions is at least somewhat contained."
"Revisions emphasizes the written word," says Karla Saari Kitalong, associate professor in humanities. "Writing instruction typically relies upon rhetorical theory to teach students to communicate effectively to specific audiences by incorporating evidence, thinking critically and addressing a range of purposes and contexts."
The Revisions students' portfolios were used to evaluate whether the course is achieving its primary learning objectives or outcomes, which overlap with the AACU's.
Students are expected to
* understand and experience the composing process in written, visual and oral communication.
* gain extensive practice in revising the communication.
* learn how to enhance writing with visual and oral communication.
* explore a range of written, visual and oral genres.
* address both the personal and social/collaborative dimensions of learning and communicating.
* practice rhetorical analysis and critical reasoning.
* conduct, communicate, and document research for a substantial piece of argumentative writing.
Casey Rudkin, a PhD candidate in the humanities department, was helping with the assessment of Revisions, which comprises a large academic offering at Tech: some 40 sections of 20 students each, annually.
"This is really about teaching the teachers to better teach the students," Rudkin said. And it's been ongoing in Revisions for several years. Rudkin thought that the assessment was somewhat easier to complete because the classes are all contained within one department.
And what are this year's assessment results?
"A first look suggests that, overall, the students are learning what they are supposed to learn," Kitalong says. "The vast majority of student portfolios demonstrate an understanding of what it means to write for a variety of audiences and purposes. Most students have learned to treat writing as a recursive process and to use revision techniques to improve the final deliverable."
However, Kitalong says, "This year's students were judged by the assessment team to be slightly less effective than last year's group in using research to write a persuasive argument; we will therefore be taking a closer look at how we teach this crucial aspect of written communication, as well as at how we assess it."
The Revisions assessment itself needs some tweaking.
"We need to look closely at how we teach and assess critical thinking, which is notoriously difficult to assess," Kitalong adds. "Our current portfolio system doesn't allow us to track student improvement across their Tech career, which would be useful in assessing the degree to which the learning in Revisions has any staying power. We also don't know much about what students know when they come into Revisions, because our assessment is a snapshot of what they know at the end of the course."
Another way to aid in the assessment process and help teachers to teach is through course evaluations, Baltensperger adds. Perspectives students, for example, are asked ten questions that are student-centered and more reflective. Responses show that students strongly agree that Perspectives has increased their willingness to participate in class discussion, that they are more likely to consider issues from different points of view, and that they are better able to defend their ideas using evidence and reasoning.
All this assessment can lead to some lofty goals, Baltensperger says. Student retention from the first to second year, for one, has bounced back, perhaps in part due to the emphasis on assessing how the gen ed courses are taught.
Still, Baltensperger seeks clear goals for all gen ed assessment. "We need to know the objectives," he says. "We are having, with the Gen Ed Council, a University-wide conversation. Now, we need to agree on what the goals are, and then we can determine how to measure them."
The Gen Ed Council is currently identifying and clarifying goals for each course to use as a basis for measurement. And the council itself is a fair reflection of Tech, he says: four faculty from STEM disciplines, four from the core courses, one from the Writing Center, one from distribution courses and Baltensperger.
One thought circulating, he says, is that there needs to be more writing across all the disciplines at Tech. Another idea is to phase Revisions into the first year and move World Cultures into the second year.
"We, as an institution, need to be enthusiastic about this," Baltensperger says. "We need to believe in it, to put stock in it and to believe that it makes an important difference. Any general education program is an expression of what the entire institution believes is central to a university education. Michigan Tech's General Education Program focuses on broad knowledge, intellectual habits and values, intellectual skills and critical thinking. But those are outcomes that are very difficult to evaluate." |
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2. Summer Archival Speaker Series to Feature Three Researchers |
Carol Makkonen, financial and operations manager, Van Pelt and Opie Library
An international border, an illustrious bishop and the Isle Royale Mining Company are the featured topics of the Summer Archival Speaker Series, held by the Michigan Tech Archives. The series gets under way Thursday, June 18, at 7 p.m. in the Archives Reading Room, located on the ground floor of the Van Pelt and Opie Library, with a talk by visiting scholar Peter Krats.
"Differently Similar: Comparing the Keweenaw and Nickel Belts" is an examination of the resource-rich industrial frontiers of the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan and the Sudbury Basin in Ontario. Krats, an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, will talk about the impact of the Canadian-American border on these two northern mining regions. The presentation will look at variations in company town formation, ethnicity and immigration, as well as illustrate how contrasts between the American belief in "liberty" and Canadian confidence in "good government" affected both regions.
James Seelye comes to the Archives this month to research the lives of Slovenes in the Copper Country. He will give a public talk about one of the area's most notable Slovenes, Bishop Baraga, and take a deeper look at the man behind the myth. He explores who Baraga truly was and, in the process, discovers why Baraga means so many different things to so many different people. Seelye's presentation, "The Snowshoe Priest Revisited: A Reappraisal of Frederic Baraga," is set for 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30, in Fisher 139.
Krats and Seelye are funded in part by a Michigan Tech Archives Travel Grant, which enables scholars to travel to the Archives to study its collections in greater depth. The grant is supported by the Friends of the Van Pelt Library.
In July, popular local historian Bill Haller will give an illustrated talk, "History of the Isle Royale Mine." Following unsuccessful attempts at mining in Copper Harbor and on the island of Isle Royale, the Isle Royale Mining Company relocated south of Houghton in 1852. It was one of many small mines working the "South Portage Range," including the Portage, Dodge and Huron mines. The presentation will provide an overview of the evolution of this important mining area, featuring photographs and maps showing the different mine locations, industrial buildings and underground workings. Haller will give the talk on Thursday, July 2, at 7 p.m. in Dow 641.
Michigan Tech's Archival Speakers Series highlights current research utilizing the Archives' collections. The Michigan Tech Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections hosts a wide variety of researchers and research topics ranging from genealogical investigations to book and magazine publications that engage students, staff, faculty, the local community, visitors and off-campus researchers. The presentations are free and open to the public.
For further information, contact the Michigan Tech Archives at 487-2505 or at copper@mtu.edu , or visit its website at www.lib.mtu.edu/archives . |
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3. Seminar Thursday on Applying for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship |
Graduate students interested in a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship are invited to join the Graduate School and the Vice President for Research Office for a seminar, "Applying for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship," on Thursday, June 18, from 11 a.m. to noon.
Register at www.gradschool2.mtu.edu/registration/events/ and you will receive the seminar location.
Contact Jodi Lehman ( jglehman@mtu.edu ) with questions. |
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