The Office of the Provost is currently supporting academic departments/programs through Closing the Loop on Student Learning with Program-Level Assessment grants. Proposals were solicited under one or both of the following categories:
- A General Call to all departments/programs to support the gathering and analysis of evidence of student learning connected to program-level learning goals. The intent of these grants is to help departments/programs “close the loop” on their curriculum planning and teaching by looking at student work or other evidence of student achievement across courses or an entire major, in order to make use of that evidence in decisions about improvement.
- The Student Writing Study, which is a focused campus-wide study of student writing, prompted by a widely shared concern about the ability of students to write at a high level, irrespective of their major or field. These teams of faculty from departments or programs are interested in assessing the quality of student writing in their major programs through the creation of rubrics to score and understand the quality of student papers.
Projects Funded for 2011-2012
| Department | Project Description |
| Biology | Analyze GRE Biology subject test results for past three years in order to understand what factors can explain the strengths and weaknesses in student performances on the Biology GRE, with respect to departmental learning goals. Also analyze data collected using Scientific Literature Analysis Assessment tool to assess students’ ability to read and critically interpret a scientific paper and to use the new ideas encountered in it to propose new questions and lines of research. |
| Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies | Fund institutional‐OPI assessments for advanced Russian students in M.A. program in order to gauge their language abilities in terms of oral and listening comprehension. |
| French | Conduct program-level assessment of student learning based on a curriculum-wide review. In the process will create chart of language skills that should be acquired from Beginning French up through Intensive Advanced French 2. |
| German | Sustain the second phase of a multi-year Humanities Assessment Initiative that takes as its focus uncovering what humanities learning occurs in a foreign language classroom within an integrated curriculum. |
| Government | Conduct program-level assessment of student learning through the design and implementation of an end-of-course survey for core required courses. A course sequencing effort will also be conducted. |
| History | Survey students in six sections of a core Gen Ed course. The results will be used for departmental assessment against History General Education learning goals. |
| Italian | Create a cross-curricular survey for beginning Italian students and graduating Italian students to assess the effectiveness of the department’s learning goals pertaining to writing. |
| MSB First Year Seminar Program* | Administer and analyze pre/post surveys, evaluate students’ end-of-year reflective writing piece, and increase communication among FYS faculty about goals for writing through participation in rubric-creation workshop. |
| MSFS International Relations Theory and Practice Course | Establish common learning goals, sequence, and assessments so as to promote consistency across course sections. Will include structured meetings for faculty to discuss progress and curriculum. |
| MSFS Student Learning Career Activities | Assess success at providing relevant knowledge and skills for careers by analyzing student surveys from the class of 2011. This knowledge will be used to reassess the program’s curriculum, learning goals, and other opportunities. |
| Operations & Information Management (OPIM)* | Generate a rubric for the evaluation of student writing in OPIM 258, a required course for majors and a popular elective class. |
| SFS-Qatar* | Focus on Humanities and Writing I (Soon to be the Georgetown Writing Seminar) and the English Gateway. |
| SFS Regional and Comparative Studies | Create rubrics for both faculty and students that will help them gauge whether a senior thesis is of honors quality. |
| Sociology | Analyze student learning data from pre/post surveys that the department has collected over time. Survey data will be compared with student attitudes about their learning (based on their course evaluations). |
| Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA)* | Create rubric to assess students’ final papers from gateway course and seminars, in order to determine whether learning goals were met. |
| Women’s and Gender Studies Program* | Create survey/reflection for students of all levels to take at the end of Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 semesters; will examine surveys for evidence of meeting learning goals at all levels of the program. Also, assess student learning in WGST 140 across all sections, in terms of meeting HUMW-2 objectives, as well as to see and compare each section’s progress toward learning goals and writing standards. |
*Denotes participation in the Student Writing Study