March 13, 2006
Dear Department Chairs,
The Academic Affairs Committee, including Dean Cornwell, has reviewed the learning goals submitted by the 29 departments/programs. We are impressed with the depth and thoughtfulness of the statements and find much to be learned from the diversity of approaches. We appreciate the considerable efforts of many department chairs and departments in completing these department learning goals statements and expect that as the revision process continues all departmental faculty will be engaged in the next steps in this process. The next step in this very public process is to revise each departmental statement and we request the help of your departmental colleagues as follows:
Learning Goals Revisions
In light of our review of the first round of submissions, we ask that you work with your colleagues in your department or program to revise the statement of your learning goals according to the guidelines below. We expect that the formulation of these departmental statements will ultimately be useful in how we faculty approach our central university mission of teaching students. These goals statements should also be useful in departmental planning of curriculum and staffing, evaluation of student progress, and implementation of new programs and pedagogy. We are required periodically to review how we assess student learning at the university so these goals statements will be used as part of the process of future Middle-States accreditation reviews. Finally, we hope that the next generation of students will be more involved in setting its own learning goals and further hope that these departmental statements can facilitate better student participation. Please forward your revisions to the Dean by April 14th.
1. Please re-center these goals statements around students clearly situated in them as the subjects and agents of learning.. What should students in your program be able to know and do?
2. Please limit the statement to two to three pages (approximately 750 words maximum). These goals statements will inform future program descriptions in the University Catalog. Many details of departmental programs are already found there.
3. If appropriate, briefly address any differences in learning goals for majors, minors, and students enrolled in courses that satisfy distribution/diversity credit in your department. Is there a qualitative difference in the learning goals you set, or is the difference more a matter of scope and depth of understanding? You might also consider how your goals differ in 100, 200, 300, and 400 level courses.
4. Although not all learning goals are measurable, however, some are, and consequently we hope that the statement of those learning goals is made with an eye towards future assessment plans.
5. An overall template for the goals statement might follow the following outline: A. Aims of the program/discipline (very brief) B. Specific Learning Goals 1. Knowledge of the discipline – what should students who study the field know? 2. Methodology of the discipline – what skills of inquiry and expression should students who study the discipline be able to demonstrate? 3. Habits of mind or intellectual skills – what analytical skills or approaches are appropriate and desirable?
Methods of Assessment
The next stage in the process after revision of department/program learning goals is to develop methods of assessment. Please begin to prepare a draft of a plan for how you might go about evaluating the extent to which students in your program or department are realizing the learning goals as you have articulated them. For instance, will you adopt a portfolio approach with your program? Will you develop a methodology for assessing the work produced by seniors in your program’s SYEs? What role will students play in assessing their own learning within your program? We recognize that it is very difficult to assess some learning goals, and that multiple methods may be required within and between programs, as appropriate to different fields of inquiry. In addition, we encourage departments to give consideration to resources provided by your scholarly socieities.
Please forward your draft methodology to the Dean by April 28th.
Academic Affairs Committee
