The Instructional Program Review
Narrative Report (HUMANITIES)
College: College of Alameda
Discipline, Department or Program: Humanities
Date: 3-1-2010
Members of the Instructional Program Review Team: Lead Faculty, Dr. Dylan Eret;
Chair, Carlotta Campbell; Dean, Maurice Jones
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2. Narrative Description of the Discipline, Department or Program:
The Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that involves the study of local and global forms in the creative arts and sciences. The main objective of studying Humanities at the College of Alameda is to explore the aesthetics of everyday life from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. As a form of general education, the Humanities encourages students to examine emerging cultural forms of play, creativity, and innovation so that they learn to become more deeply engaged in their own lives and with the world-at-large. Using engaging lessons, fun lectures, games, discussions, workshops, and multi-sensory projects, College of Alameda Humanities course explore such exciting topics as performance, drama, the visual arts, language, literature, poetics, semiotics, film, media, popular culture, folklore, underground movements, storytelling, humor, games, music, dance, foodways, fashion, tourism, technology, ecology, world religions, and environmental studies.
The Department offers an A.A. degree in Humanities, and several courses that meet IGETC and CSU breadth requirements for transfer to UC and CSUs: Humanities 1 – Introduction to Humanities, Humanities 2 – Human Values, Humanities 3 – Future Studies, Humanities 13A and 13B – Myth, Symbol and Folklore, Humanities 15 – Popular Culture, and Humanities 40 – Religions of the World. Given the interdisciplinary and integrative quality of the Humanities, and the fact that we grant the most degrees in the Applied Arts & Sciences division, our courses are essential to fulfilling College of Alameda’s General Education requirements and training students for a wide range of future goals, from transferring to a four-year college, enrolling in professional school, continuing lifelong learning, and improving self-understanding.
We have recently created new courses to reflect changing forms of media, technology, and forms of cultural innovation through courses such as Humanities 15: Popular Culture (Dylan Eret). Exploring the range of human experiences from the everyday to the extraordinary, our vision for the Humanities is to continually create courses that are practical and meaningful to students’ everyday lives in the twenty-first century.
An A.A. degree in the Humanities can be applied to a range of careers in education, the arts, communications, mass communications/media, journalism, the sciences, business, medicine, nursing, law, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, social work, tourism, grass-roots and non-profit organizations.
Enrollment Data (DEMOGRAPHICS: 2007-2009)
HUMAN / ASIAN / 48 / 21.5% / 92 / 32.2% / 112 / 34.3% / 79 / 29.4%AFRICAN AMERICAN / 48 / 21.5% / 65 / 22.7% / 87 / 26.6% / 76 / 28.3%
FILIPINO / 17 / 7.6% / 16 / 5.6% / 12 / 3.7% / 8 / 3.0%
HISPANIC/LATINO / 19 / 8.5% / 36 / 12.6% / 23 / 7.0% / 27 / 10.0%
NATIVE AMERICAN / 0 / 0.0% / 1 / 0.3% / 1 / 0.3% / 4 / 1.5%
OTHER NON WHITE / 5 / 2.2% / 10 / 3.5% / 13 / 4.0% / 11 / 4.1%
WHITE NON HISPANIC / 66 / 29.6% / 52 / 18.2% / 62 / 19.0% / 45 / 16.7%
UNKNOWN / 20 / 9.0% / 14 / 4.9% / 17 / 5.2% / 19 / 7.1%
Total / 223 / 286 / 327 / 269
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3. Curriculum:
· For mathematics, English and ESL programs, how many courses are offered one or more levels below transfer courses? N/A
· Is the curriculum current and effective? Have course outlines been updated within the last three years? If not, what plans are in place to remedy this?
· Yes, the curriculum is current and effective. All courses have been updated through the Curriculum Committee in Spring 2008.
· Has your department conducted a curriculum review of course outlines? If not, what are the plans to remedy this?
· Yes, the department has already conducted a curriculum review of course outlines in Spring 2008.
· What are the department’s plans for curriculum improvement (i.e., courses to be developed, updated, enhanced, or deactivated)? Have prerequisites, co-requisites, and advisories been validated? Is the date of validation on the course outline?
· Our faculty ensure that our courses meet the high standards of any college or university-level course. We also critically allow students to APPLY their knowledge in meaningful ways to their everyday lives (e.g., other courses, home life, creative pursuits, work settings, etc.). We accomplish this by creating engaging student projects, fun class activities, and several writing assignments.
· All course outlines have been validated.
· What steps has the department taken to incorporate student learning outcomes in the curriculum? Are outcomes set for each course? If not, which courses do not have outcomes?
· All SLOs have been incorporated into each course.
· Describe the efforts to develop outcomes at the program level. In which ways do these outcomes align with the institutional outcomes?
· We have mapped SLOs (Student Learning Outcomes) to PLOs (Program Learning Outcomes) and ILOs (Institutional Learning Outcomes).Our PLOs are graphically posted below and are listed on our program website.
· Recommendations and priorities.
· We will continue designing new courses and working on pedagogy to meet the needs of the changing student body.
Courses below transfer: None
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4. Instruction:
· Describe effective and innovative strategies used by faculty to involve students in the learning process. How has new technology been used by the department to improve student learning?
· To resist the narrow focus of most educational programs, our Humanities courses try to strike a delicate balance between cultural breadth and depth. We always take the time to listen compassionately to the stories each student tells about their lives. We tend to disperse authority and expertise throughout the classroom by drawing from the creative ideas and values of the students themselves. We often re-arrange the classroom setting to make learning more fun and group-oriented. With newer media technologies taking hold, we also tinker with new ways to give students a more powerful “voice” by re-defining the meaning of cultural literacy and mediated knowledge through visual, verbal, and kinesthetic means (currently by creating course websites with blogs, images, texts, slideshows, and resource links). We implement project-based forms of intellectual inquiry inside and outside the classroom – understanding that learning often flourishes when we are able to play and focus with others in an interdisciplinary manner.
· While reflecting on various cultural practices, we expect students to gain a more experiential understanding of changing artistic tastes and emerging sacred spaces found among diverse groups around the world. In particular, we encourage students to discover forms of art and religion right in their own neighborhoods: street corners, school buildings, movie theaters, local parks, clothing stores, popular clubs, shopping centers, food markets, comedy shows, graphic novels, underground music scenes, video-game worlds, and local churches. From everyday conversation to extraordinary experience, students are thus expected to tell honest stories and give accurate depictions about various forms of expression they may or may not have encountered before. Our ultimate goal during this process is to empower students as they learn to engage with what is most familiar or strange to them. Education, then, becomes an experiential process of bearing witness to being human in all of its creative and destructive forms – from the trivial to the transcendent.
· Sample creative activities and assignments include: collecting oral histories, requiring oral presentations, inviting guest artists, musicians, and actors, publishing chapbooks, conducting fieldwork within the community, fun note-taking techniques within the classroom in groups (using index cards and body movement), using advanced forms of PowerPoint with interactive lectures (especially by integrating short sound, music, and video clips), creating multiple shifts during the class to retain student interest, assigning randomized discussion groups, and using a variety of learning games, improvisational ice-breakers, positive forms of humor, and trust-building work.
· Despite limited resources, our faculty are constantly integrating new forms of technology inside and outside the classroom by using LCD projectors and speakers; managing online blogs, assignments, and lecture slides; and allowing students to use technology in various projects (e.g., audio recording devices, photo/video documentaries, online chapbooks and portfolios, etc.)
· How does the department maintain the integrity and consistency of academic standards within the discipline?
· To maintain integrity and standards within the discipline, our faculty ensure that students clearly understand the grading, attendance, and academic policies for our courses. For example, students can always access this information online (individual grades and assignment due dates, blogs, resources links, etc.). In addition, we do our best to create a safe classroom that is conducive to the learning process by stating general rules and guidelines throughout the course (e.g., no cellphone use, disrespectful behavior, etc.). If any problems arise, we always work with students individually or seek help from colleagues to resolve any potential conflicts.
· Discuss the enrollment trends of your department. What is the student demand for specific courses? How do you know? What do you think are the salient trends affecting enrollments?
· As is evident from the data, student enrollment in Humanities courses has significantly increased. We believe that having a full-time instructor for the past two years has definitely generated more student interest in the Humanities (particularly through courses that center around the experiences of play, performance, storytelling, media, and popular culture).
· Are courses scheduled in a manner that meets student needs and demand? How do you know?
· Yes, courses offered during prime-time morning hours (9AM, 10AM, 12PM) have consistently filled up with students.
· Recommendations and priorities.
· Although our program has become more successful in many ways, we would recommend teaching significantly more courses that are longer in length (75 minutes), since students have more time to engage in various activities and process information. (This flexible scheduling has been implemented at other district colleges.)
· We would like to introduce brief teacher training or lesson study workshops to give faculty a space to exchange resources and improve pedagogy.
· We intend to create more hybrid and online courses for more variety and student options. (This is planned for Fall 2010.)
Courses by time of day
Term / Subject / Catalog / Section / Description / AVE ENR / TIMEFALL 2009 / HUMAN / 1 / A1 / INTRO TO HUMANTIIES / 53 / 9-950AM, MWF
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 1 / A2 / INTRO TO HUMANTIIES / 53 / 8-920,TTH
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 1 / A5 / INTRO TO HUMANTIIES / 53 / 12-1250PM, MWF
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 1 / A4 / INTRO TO HUMANTIIES / 53 / 6-9PM, TH
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 2 / A1 / HUMAN VALUES / 55 / 1-220PM,TTH
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 13A / A1 / MYTH, SYMBOL, FOLKLORE / 52 / 10-1050AM, MWF
FALL 2009 / HUMAN / 15 / A1 / POPULAR CULTURE / 38 / 11-1220PM, TTH
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5. Student Success:
· Describe student success, retention and program completion (degrees, certificates, persistence rates) trends in the department. What initiatives can the department take to improve retention and completion rates?
· To improve student retention, we will continue to use class time to create more workshops to complete a range of assignments. The following activities have worked fairly well in the last few years: fun review games for quizzes, improv games, mindmapping new ideas, and the peer editing process. For students that are not doing well, or on the verge of dropping, withdrawing, or failing the course, we plan to create an early-alert system (online and in-person, after class) for at least one course to notify students who are missing key materials, performed poorly on quizzes/assignments, or have missed a certain number of classes. In addition, we plan to focus on retention via ethnicity – especially African-American males – since, in my experience so far, some of these students tend to get “lost” in the system or do not get the attention they need to succeed in a college environment. In addition, we plan to improve our curriculum to address the life concerns and cultural backgrounds of our students. Given that students have responded well to course materials on language, media, music, and religion, we intend to expand these units more within our introduction courses in Humanities, and develop my courses in Popular Culture and World Religions. We have talked to the Dean about the increasing Arabic populations at the COA campus, a population that would possibly desire a course that explores their cultural traditions in the context of American culture.
· What are the key needs of students that affect their learning? What services are needed for these students to improve their learning? Describe the department’s efforts to access these services. What are your department’s instructional support needs?
· It is evident that students need to work more often in smaller groups inside and outside the classroom, and meet individually with instructors and support staff on a continued basis to improve their college experience. Our faculty do their best help students access these resources; however, given the large size of some classes, limited support services, full-time faculty, students can easily get “lost” in the system, when they really need more help. Our department evidently needs more resources or funding for instructional support to help create more student small-group workshops outside of class, study groups, learning communities, mentoring programs, clubs, etc.
· Describe the department’s effort to assess student learning at the course level. Describe the efforts to assess student learning at the program level. In which ways has the department used student learning assessment results for improvement?
· Our program uses SLOs for all courses. We have begun to assess SLOs by creating surveys throughout the courses (especially during quizzes, by focusing on certain questions and qualitative data such memorable topics, room for improvement, etc.), and frequent pre-and-post forms of qualitative assessment during specific weekly class topics.