Course Assessment. Course name: History 141, Latin American History I: Independence to the Present Section: F24, 25 students Spring 2016

Transcription

1 Course Assessment Course name: History 141, Latin American History I: Independence to the Present Section: F24, 25 students Spring 2016 Student Learning Outcomes: 1. Students will critically evaluate historical evidence. 2. Students will identify and explain the cause and effect relationships between major events in Latin American History. 3. Students will identify and evaluate the major social, cultural, political, and economic causes and effects major events in Latin American History. 4. Students will communicate effectively through writing. Explanation of Learning Outcomes: 1. Students will critically evaluate historical evidence. - Student will understand the difference between a primary and secondary source - Student will be able to identify different perspectives - Student will understand how historical subjects situation, identity, and circumstances affected their perspectives 2. Students will identify and explain the cause and effect relationships between major events in Latin American History. - Student can differentiate the factors that caused an event from the effects of that event - Student can identify multiple causes for an event as well as multiple effects that resulted from that event. - Student can isolate factors that were unrelated to the specific event under consideration 3. Students will identify and evaluate the major social, cultural, political, and economic causes and effects major events in Latin American History. - Students can trace cultural, political, and economic changes over time - Student can trace major changes in society caused by major historical events - Student can trace continuity across time despite major historical changes 4. Effective Writing: Student Communicates effectively through reading, writing, listening and speaking - Student writes clearly - Student uses evidence to make an argument - Student has a thesis statement

2 - Essay is well-organized These student learning outcomes are aligned with the following General Education Objectives of the college: General Education Outcomes: 1. Communicate effectively through reading, writing, listening and speaking 2. Use analytical reasoning to identify issues or problems and evaluate evidence in order to make informed decisions 3. Use historical or social sciences perspectives to examine formation of ideas, human behavior, social institutions, or social processes. These student learning outcomes are also aligned with the following Curriculum Specific Objectives of the history department: Curriculum specific Objectives: 1. Differentiate and make informed decisions about issues based on multiple value systems by comparing various civilizations and their differences and common traits in the historical process 2. Develop judgment and understanding about human being s relationship to the social, cultural and natural facets of their total environment. Description of Assignments which will Assess skill levels: Three Low-stakes assignments: There are two to three variations on each assignment. See appendixes A, B, C for samples. 1) Paraphrase key passages from a document written by Simón Bolívar - This assignment takes an antiquated document and asks students to put the main point in their own words. In doing so they hopefully clarify the documents meaning. - Learning Outcome addressed: communicate effectively through reading, writing, listening and speaking 2. Determine the author s point of view through an examination of a passage from Esteban Echeverría s El Matadero. - This assignment takes a highly-cynical literary document and asks the students to identify the political background of the author - Learning Outcome addressed: Use historical or social sciences perspectives to examine formation of ideas, human behavior, social institutions, or social processes. Determine whether the portrayal of Porfirio Díaz in James Creelman s Hero of the Americas is accurate.

3 - This assignment takes an interview with Díaz and asks students to reflect upon the quality of the portrayal. - Learning Outcome addressed: Use analytical reasoning to identify issues or problems and evaluate evidence in order to make informed decisions High-stakes assignment: READ THE PRIMARY SOURCES FOR CHAPTER 8 IN DAWSON'S Latin America: From Independence to the Present In two to three typed pages, 12 point font, double spaced, no more than one inch margins, answer the following prompt Which of these texts produces the most compelling rendering of the Cuban Revolution? How do they differ in their outlook on the Cuban revolution? How would you position the idealism of Che s letter in La Marcha vis a vis the changing attitudes of later decades as reflected in Senal Paz s work? Why do you believe they had these different viewpoints? This will be graded according to a rubric. The rubric is available under course documents. (Rubric corresponds with student learning outcomes listed above. See Appendix D.) Explanation of satisfactory completion of assignment Students will have satisfactorily completed the assignment when they turn in all the items listed above. The low-stakes assignments will be administered in class, and the highstakes assignment will be completed out of class, typed up on a computer with a keyboard, and turned in. List of tools to measure student performance The low-stakes assignment was graded using a check, check-plus, check-minus system. Their proficiency in meeting the assignment s objective is measured against the learning outcome being both formulated and evaluated. For instance, in assignment one, if a student expertly paraphrases Simón Bolívar s words s/he will earn a check plus as they have aptly demonstrated their ability to communicate the document s meaning effectively. A check, on the other hand, means that the student met the outcome adequately. Finally, a check-minus means that the student did not satisfactorily meet the objective of the assignment. The final, high-stakes, summative assignment is intended to give a snapshot of student performance in a particular skill set at the end of the semester. It can then be compared with the formative, low-stakes assignments, but it will also be a helpful tool for assessing student learning. This assignment will be graded on a rubric with three domains, each representing the student learning outcome being assessed. Student performance will then be evaulated related to how well they met the final assignment s four objectives.

4 Explanation of Evidence gathered - Low-Stakes assignments: Low stakes assignments were measured on a scale of The assignments set out to evaluate three tasks related to general education outcomes. In the first exercise, (appendix A), the students paraphrased a paragraph. In the second exercise (appendix B) students identified the author s point of view. In the third exercise, students evaluated evidence from a primary document (appendix C). A score was assigned according to how well the student performed in each task: 10 was inadequate, 20 was adequate, and 30 was excellent. (A check minus equals 10, a check equals 20, and a check plus equals 30) - High-Stakes assignment: (Appendix D) The high stakes assignment set out to measure a number of student learning outcomes that writing-intensive history classes can address. The rubric used to measure their performance had four different domains corresponding to the different outcomes: identify different perspectives, explain cause and effect, trace change across time, and write effectively. The students received a score of from one to four to access their skill level. The attached rubric (Appendix D) explains the method of evaluation. - Excel Spreadsheet (Appendix E) Excel Spreadsheet collects together data and averages it to access student skill levels at the classroom level. (The high stakes assignment is translated from 1-4 on the rubric to 0-30 in columns G, H, I, and J so that the numbers correspond with the assessments of the low-stakes assignments. In columns G, H,I, and J a 1 on the rubric equals a 00 on the spreadsheet, a 2 equals a 10, a 3 equals a 20, and a 4 equals a 30.) Assessment Results The pool assessed (a class of 25 students, six or seven of whom dropped out during the course of the semester) is extremely small. Nevertheless, the assessments suggest that students are stronger in some skill levels than others. Students seemed to have especially excelled in the low-stakes assignment that measured how well they could evaluate evidence. They also did surprisingly well evaluating historical change across time. Perhaps they did well in these two areas because they were evaluated later in the semester. They may also have been applying newly-learned skills. Essay exams and in-class discussions and lectures focused in part upon on how to provide valuable evidence and how to evaluate change across time making a historical argument. The student s ability to evaluate different perspectives was the only skill I evaluated twice and there seems to have been some improvement. Of course, how well the students performed in late-

5 semester work may also have been contingent upon the fact that several weaker students withdrew from the class or stopped coming about half way through the semester. Effective writing and communication was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the area where students performed the worst. In the future I intend to dedicate a couple of days in class to writing outlines, learning to use spellcheck, learning to access the web for grammar and word choice help, and writing a proper introduction and conclusion which outlines and then sum up the papers argument. I might also introduce a new category of assessment: research. This area would be geared towards building assignments that help students gather relevant examples from reliable sources. I think that giving the students more opportunities to revise along lines I suggest to them might help them with their writing as well.