College Annual Assessment Reporting Form
2008-2009
College: ___________________________
Submitted by: ______________________
Due: December 1, 2009
S&BS – Geography Department
Ron Davidson
Sept. 30, 2009
1. Program Assessment and College Strategic Planning Goals
Department or
Program
Which department/program assessment activities furthered
strategic planning goals of the College?
Geography
Geography 150 (World Geography) online pre- and post-tests
Relevant College
Strategic Planning
Goal
SLO 1.1: Students
recognize, recall and
identify facts and ideas
constituent of the core
content knowledge of
physical geography.
SLO 1.2: Students
recognize, recall and
identify facts and ideas
constituent of the core
content knowledge of
human geography.
Geography 490 (Capstone paper and oral presentation)
assessment
SLO 2.2: Student
demonstrates ability to
construct a literature
review.
SLO 4.3: Student
communicates
effectively using maps,
tables, charts or other
graphics.
SLO 4.4: Student
communicates
effectively using
numbers, statistics.
College Annual Assessment Reporting Form
2008-2009
College: ___________________________
Submitted by: ______________________
Due: December 1, 2009
2. College Assessment Activities
Please provide an overview of college-level assessment planning, studies, findings or subsequent
changes, which align with university Fundamental Learning Competencies, for 2008-09.
This year we used the same assessment instruments as in 07-08 to assess the same SLOs we did in 0708, for the purpose of identifying consistent trends. The following findings are notable:
1. The literature review continues to be the greatest single challenge for students in our Capstone
course, with average scores hovering around 3.0 out of 5.0 as assessed with our rubric. It should be
noted, however, the mediocre overall average conceals wide variation in student performance. A few
students produce outstanding literature reviews, and a few abysmal ones, with most students clumping
in the mediocre range. Dr. Laity (the regular instructor of Geography 490) has addressed the issue by
writing a comprehensive student guide for the class, complete with a paper template and instructions
on doing the literature review and the other components of the paper. She has also implemented a
more stringent policy on deadlines for the various steps of the research process. In addition, we have
adjusted our program to improve the overall performance in literature reviews by addressing the issue
in two other classes, Geography 300 and 404JA. (Geography 300, The Geographer’s Craft, is constantly
adjusted in piecemeal ways as our assessment data gets produced.) Geography 404 JA, a cultural field
methods course, has been re-designed to emphasize the necessity of weaving field observations to
concepts derived from the literature.
2. The second greatest consistent challenge for our students is composing text that is well-organized
and scholarly in tone. The variation among papers is again extremely wide, with papers typically scoring
either very high or very low but relatively few in between. We surveyed the department faculty to find
out what they have seen to be the typical strengths and weaknesses of their students, and their
responses correlate with the 490 assessment finding that writing remains a significant challenge.
According to these faculty responses the problem may not lie solely in the students’ writing skills, but
also in their ability to interpret data. (“Graphs where two quantities are related or inversely related
produce comments like ‘the lines are higher’ and other meaningless comments; words like ‘increases’,
‘increase proportionally’, ‘vary together’, ‘appear to be correlated or related’, ‘oscillate’, ‘peak’ etc.
seem to be completely absent. They have no idea how to describe a graph – let alone interpret it.”) In
many cases, however, the simple mechanics of writing (apart from interpreting) also seem poor. At
present this issue is being addressed by individual faculty members in their courses.
3. There has been a marked upswing in several areas we have assessed, most notably in data quality and
College Annual Assessment Reporting Form
2008-2009
College: ___________________________
Submitted by: ______________________
Due: December 1, 2009
disposition. However, we are cautious in accepting the “good news” since we only have 2 consecutive
years’ worth of data on these and it is possible that we simply had an exceptionally good group of
seniors last year.
4. Our geography 150 online pre- and post-tests have revealed that students enter the university with
poor knowledge of basic world geography, and make modest improvements in the class. (The typical
section scores about 12% higher on the post-test than on the pre-test.) There are many sections of
Geography 150, and several of the instructors are part-timers. For this reason it is difficult to make
adjustments to the course. However, we are in the process of creating an online bank of effective
Geography 150 activities that all instructors can (and may eventually be required to) use. We are also in
the process of modifying the 150 tests because they have until now been online. We plan in future
semesters to embed the post-test questions in the final exam (if the instructors will play along),
believing that this will produce a more accurate reflection of student knowledge.
5. We abandoned our efforts to have students build online portfolios through LiveText, due to low
student interest in using the program. We are working toward choosing a free online service that may
get a higher participation rate among students.