ASSESSMENT RECORD

FOR

______English_____________ _Bachelor of Arts______

(Instructional Degree Program) (Degree Level)

____2005-6________ _______ October 18, 2006______

(Assessment Period Covered) (Date Submitted)

Submitted by: __________Kurt Haas____________

Expanded Statement of Institutional Purpose Linkage:

Institutional Mission Reference: Mesa State College’s legislative charter states that the college offer liberal arts and science programs as well as limited professional programs. The English major, with its three emphases, fulfills Mesa State College’s mission in both these areas.

College/University Goal(s) Supported: The English degree meets goals outlined in the Academic Master Plan: to offer programs that uniquely serve the needs of the region, to continue to provide a broad liberal arts based education, and to revise existing programs to meet the needs of students. The English program serves all Mesa State College students through required general education composition and literature courses. The program also serves a good number of majors who aspire to graduate school, teaching, or professional careers.

Intended Educational (Student) Outcomes:

1. Students in the English program will express themselves effectively in written form.

2. Students in the English program will demonstrate strong content area and pedagogical knowledge.

3. Students in the English program will demonstrate critical thinking skills.

Form B-Linkage Page

NOTE: There should be one form C for each intended outcome on form B. Intended outcome should be restated in the box immediately below and the intended outcome number entered in the blank spaces.

Intended Student Outcome:

1. Students in the English program will express themselves effectively in written form.

First Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: Eighty percent of students in English 492 Seminar in Writing will produce work deemed “publishable” by a committee of our writing faculty.

Summary of Data Collected: 11 of 12 projects were deemed publishable in some sense.

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program: This is certainly an acceptable rate. The writing faculty is currently considering whether to mandate a sort of publication in the form of a public reading as part of the writing concentration.

Second Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: As a requirement for English 494, the capstone English course, students will turn in a writing portfolio containing an extended research paper and a paper written for a lower-division class. Portfolios will be appraised, using the five question rubric created by the Senior Seminar Committee in 2000. The Department goal for this criterion is 90% scoring Satisfactory or Strong.

Summary of Data Collected: 30 of 31 total students had improved in at least 3 of the 5 categories on the rubric. Most had improved in 5 of 5.

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program: It might be useful next year to focus the study on a particular rubric item, to see, for instance, how well they’ve improved in guiding their readership through an argument in particular. (In other words, we need to look at the rubric and determine whether we can detail it to provide more useful information.)

Form C-Educational Outcome Report Page

NOTE: There should be one form C for each intended outcome on form B. Intended outcome should be restated in the box immediately below and the intended outcome number entered in the blank spaces.

Intended Student Outcome:

2. Students in the English program will demonstrate strong content area and pedagogical knowledge.

First Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: Students in the English literature emphasis will complete the MFAT for British and American Literature. The average of the scale score mean for these students should be 150 or higher.

Summary of Data Collected: This data is not available this year.

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program:

Second Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: Seventy-five percent of our Secondary Education emphasis students will pass the PRAXIS exam on their first attempt.

Summary of Data Collected:100% of our students passed the test this year.

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program: This is fantastic news, really. We’re proud of our curriculum and teaching in general and we’re glad that the educational instrument for content aligns with what we believe is important.

Form C-Educational Outcome Report Page

NOTE: There should be one form C for each intended outcome on form B. Intended outcome should be restated in the box immediately below and the intended outcome number entered in the blank spaces.

Intended Student Outcome:

3. Students in the English program will demonstrate critical thinking skills.

First Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: Students taking the Senior Exit Survey of the English major will strongly agree or agree that the department performed well in teaching “an understanding of language and its functions” (the major vehicle for critical thinking in our discipline) as indicated by questions 10-12 on the survey. Success will be defined as an agreement rate of 85% or better.

Summary of Data Collected: 92% of the indicated questions were scored as agree or strongly agree.

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program: We believe the aggregate skills and dispositions provided by our curriculum and the strength of our teaching inevitably lead to improvements in critical thinking. Our students seem to believe so as well. However, we are going to move this one to a direct measure (our introductory literature surveys have assessments that attempt to measure content-specific critical thinking) next year and attempt to draw more specific conclusions about how much and why critical thinking occurs in our courses.

Second Means of Assessment for Outcome Identified Above:

Means of Program Assessment and Criteria for Success: Critical essays written as assignments for English 111 and 112 will be randomly selected and appraised by the Department Writing Committee. Success will be defined as 80% of the essays scoring Satisfactory or Strong on the newly created rubric question asking whether the essay demonstrates critical thinking.

Summary of Data Collected: We redesigned the rubric a bit (attached), so the standard we started with above is not strictly applicable. The median scores for critical thinking in the papers collected were 3.0 in both ENGL 111 and ENGL 112 (the averages were extremely close to that as well). In our new rubric system, 3.0 was designated “acceptable.”

Use of Results to Improve Instructional Program: Our faculty discussions have been uncertain what to make of this data. We are comfortable that the information is a good indicator of what we believe about our students’ writing since it’s a large sampling across many sections. Many faculty believe “acceptable,” given the academic preparation of many of our 111 and 112 students, is likely a pretty good improvement from where they started. On the other hand, the rubric gives us lots of room to move up the ladder. We will use the opportunity provided by this assessment focus to 1) have a department seminar on critical thinking 2) develop a web-page focused on critical thinking and collecting exercises and 3) having a sort of “lore-sharing” meeting to discuss pedagogical strategies for teaching critical thinking. In the long term, this may make us better able to instruct in this area in both lower-division and upper-division courses.

Form C-Educational Outcome Report Page