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Office of Undergraduate Studies New York, NY 10031
GENERAL EDUCATION (W) PERSPECTIVE ASSESSMENT REPORT
Date of report: / June 2013Course: / USSO
Materials used, n: / 24 papers
Rubric/Scoring standard used: / Gen Ed rubrics for writing, critical thinking and info. literacy
Date of assessment: / June 4-11, 2013
Assessment Team
Members: / Anton Masterovoy and Harry Stein
Coordination / Oversight: / Joshua Wilner, Senior Faculty Advisor for Undergraduate Education
Ana Vasović, Coordinator for General Education
WRITING SKILLS
Writing – average scores *Thesis / Structure and Organization / Evidence and Development / Mechanics and Style
3.08 / 2.94 / 3.12 / 2.86
Strengths:
Taking into consideration that this is a class taken mostly by Freshmen and Sophomores, the writing skills are quite high. Most students are able to write a cohesive thesis statement, organize their writing fairly logically, use evidence, and use English correctly. Students know how to construct a thesis or argument guiding their paper. They only occasionally give flesh to the thesis bones, but their following sentences have an origin and a purpose.
Weaknesses/Concerns:
The weakest organizational feature is the absence of a concise and strong conclusion which echoes the thesis. Fortunately, students do not spend time summarizing what they have already stated. They understand that a conclusion is tied to the thesis and not the entire body of their work. There is some room for improvement in connecting individual paragraphs to the point of the whole paper. In addition, students rarely use evidence in a priority scale of primary through tertiary. Their evidence is not subjected to dissection in which they determine cause and effect, comparison or contrast or main ideas and details.
Other comments:
Many of the assignments were not designed to require the student to formulate an adequate thesis statement.
CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS
Critical thinking – average scores *Explanation of issues / Evidence / Context & Assumptions / Student's Position / Conclusions
3.17 / 3.12 / 2.97 / 2.96 / 2.88
Strengths:
Many students appear to be able to begin approaching documents critically. They sense and realize what the author is discussing, but they do not place the author in historiographical context. This is an unrealistic skill at this early stage in their education, especially for non-history majors. Arguments have contexts and assumptions which surround them and rarely, if ever, do students read as if a person is speaking to them. They use evidence as supporting information.
Weaknesses/Concerns:
Students don’t know enough to determine the validity of the information. They often mistake logic for truth, but they know that assertions require supporting attribution. They do not recognize an author's credibility as well as they might. They don’t realize that some authors are experts and others simply write about topics in a general way.
Other comments:
Many of the assignments did not ask the student to apply critical thinking skills effectively leading to a lot of summarization and description.
INFORMATION LITERACY SKILLS
Information Literacy – average scores *Understand info needs/ search efficiently / Evaluate info sources / Articulates Credibility of sources / Use info ethically
N/A / N/A / 3.27 / 3.22
Strengths:
Students know how to "find" information. When asked to do so, most students seem to be aware of the basic ways to document information and cite it reasonably well.
Weaknesses/Concerns:
Source documentation is often very inconsistent – it seems that the students don’t understand WHY documentation is necessary. A number of papers were essentially not assessable due to plagiarism. In a few other cases, though the student did not plagiarize and actually wrote a good paper, the instructions not to use outside sources were ignored. In some cases students were unable to evaluate or give credit to sources.
Other comments:
Most of these assignments were not research papers so many of the assessment skills from the rubric did not apply.
PERSPECIVE SPECIFIC INFORMATION
Perspective category: US Society
Learning outcome assessed: Identify and apply the fundamental concepts and methods of history exploring the U.S. experience in its diversity.Average Score: 3.36 (D=1, C=2, B+3, A=4)
Strengths:
The actual comprehension of material appears to be good. Students show an understanding of how different immigrant streams entered the country, used the land and resources, and aligned their productive system with legal and political beliefs and institutions. The perspective of diversity is stressed throughout the course as well as the perspective of economic ideological stability. Students showed their understanding of this diversity and continuity over time through their essays by critically assessing the role of the corporation and the democratic welfare state. In other assignments students learned not only about the role of Frederick Douglas in the history of nineteenth-century America but also how to locate him in his time and place through critical analysis of Douglas’ autobiographies.
Weaknesses/Concerns:
In assignments that asked for a review of an article pertaining to Africa-American history, although students were able to learn more about the subject, they were largely unable to analyze this material critically and ethically.
Some students mistook the concept of the “welfare state” with “welfare,” the colloquial name given to public assistance programs.
Other comments:
Instructors have to be extremely careful in how they formulate the wording of each assignment. Ideally, they should indicate the learning goals of each assignment. It would be good to first ask students to critically analyze simpler primary or secondary sources before asking them to review a complex and highly-specialized historical article.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
· Communicate with instructors about the goals / learning outcomes of General Education
· Share rubrics information with instructors
· Provide instructors with the research paper checklist to be shared with students
· Arrange for collaboration between the department and WAC fellows
To be done by the department:
· Reinforce communication with instructors about the goals / learning outcomes of General Education
· Assign responsibility to one person to assure that critical writing occurs according to departmental guidelines, numbers of papers, words etc.
· Provide training for instructors especially focusing on effective writing assignments
· Share samples of good writing assignments within the department and across departments
To be done by instructors:
· Develop assignments that ask for critical analysis
· While assignments rooted in summarization are necessary to accumulate the skills of good critical writing, those assignments must be combined with critical analysis.
· Dedicate class time giving a tutorial on the general nature of critical writing, the thesis statement, & the introductory paragraph
· Assignments should explain to students how to formulate and defend a particular thesis statement. It would help if the assignments are formulated in a way to guide students to do so, perhaps by supplying a thesis to defend or refute. Assignments should detail what the introductory paragraph should look like
· Limit the use of direct quotations
· Instructors should push students, likely through the assignment itself, to examine the complexities of the documents, their historicism and subjectivity
· Identify students with ESL issues and direct them to the Writing center for tutoring and support
Other comments:
In each plagiarized paper, the assignment asked the student to essentially summarize a document, whether primary or secondary. The instructor needs to be very rigorous in “policing” student writing and teaching students to summarize well. This may also be remedied by creating assignments that force the writer to summarize a large piece of writing in a drastically reduced space, for instance, summarizing the main point of an article in one or two paragraphs.
* Scale 1-4 reflects the ability range from the beginning level to the accomplished level – it is meant as a “college span” scale; it is expected that the majority of freshmen would not be at the “accomplished” end of the scale.
1 - beginning
2- developing
3 - competent
4 – accomplished
3