Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Report Fall 2019

Closing the Loop 2018-2019

The Department of Languages and Literatures did not perform assessment in AY 2018-2019 because members of the Assessment Committee were engaged in developing new assessment protocol.  

New Assessment Protocol 

Beginning in Fall 2019, the Department of Languages and Literatures will phase in new assessment protocol that is aligned with the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages.

The assessment methodology in place from 2014-2018 were adapted from the 2012 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, but the rubrics used often produced inflated results and they were cumbersome because a numeric score was entered for each individual student.

In an effort to streamline the process, the Assessment Committee is requesting that instructors submit a report that provides a global assessment of the entire class, including whether or not there is any correlation between level of students' success gaining specific knowledge assessed and their relative level of success in the course as a whole. In addition, instructors will briefly reflect on how they taught the specific knowledge assessed and what students did or did not respond to in the teaching of the specific knowledge assessed.

To facilitate this process the Assessment Committee is creating the following:

• shortened rubrics that focus on whether students are "meeting standards", "approaching standards" or "developing"   
• sample tasks that can be modified for use in assessment
• GoogleForms survey where all material will be submitted

Phase 1: Assessing Cultural Knowledge

The first phase involves assessing cultural knowledge, which had not be done in the past. These are the reasons we must assess cultural knowledge:

• Cultural knowledge comprises roughly 35% our Program Learning Outcomes
• Cultural knowledge aligns with the Critical Thinking, Communication, Diversity and Pluralism, and Global Awareness and Engagement GLOBE Learning Outcomes
• We are following ACTFL 5 C’s goal areas to create standards for learning languages (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities), and culture is the common link between all five areas
• We aim to go beyond learning culture in order to develop intercultural communication
• Teaching cultural knowledge focus on a broad variety of tasks, including speaking, writing, lexical variations, general cultural understanding, pragmatics of language, comparing cultures
• Culture is often an aspect of our courses that excites and intrigues students, and it’s something that--anecdotally--students tend to retain for a long time
• Gaining cultural knowledge in our classes allows students to make important cross-curriculum connections with, say, their Political Science or History classes   

The Assessment Committee has created a rubric for assessing cultural knowledge through task-based activities, and we have created several cultural assessment tasks that can be modified for use in instructors' own classes. 

Submitting the Results

 Instructors will be asked to submit their assessment results by the end of the semester via GoogleForms survey. Instructors will upload one example each of student work that is "meeting standards", "approaching standards" and "developing."

Fall 2019 will be the first semester instructors submit results. We will assess cultural knowledge in Spring 2020 as well, while we also develop our next facet of assessment. 

Have you made, or are you considering, any program changes in light of results from your previous round of assessment?  If so, please describe the changes below.

Please see top of page for explanation of new assessment protocol.