1. Procedures for Assessing the Major Program in English

Program Goals

The English Department uses its particular expertise to fulfill UA Little Rock’s overall mission. Thus we focus on literary culture, analysis, and the English language for the following purposes (quoted or paraphrased from the Undergraduate Catalog): to develop our students’ intellect, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to serve and strengthen society, and to promote human sensitivity and cultural awareness. Through quality instruction, the department also fosters a lifelong desire to read and learn. We help students develop their knowledge and research skills to serve and improve themselves and their communities. Our students are well prepared to go on to law school, teaching, graduate school, and to enter the business world.

The educational goals we have established for our major grow out of this mission. Graduates from our program will

  1. read and be able to discuss major and exemplary literary works (which experts call a canon) that represent significant applications of literature in the English language. They should also understand the historical, psychological, cultural, and aesthetic background of the canon;
  2. read and be able to discuss important works by writers that represent diversity, especially in British and American literature (women and writers of color, for example);
  3. achieve and demonstrate a significant level of literacy, including interpreting and analyzing texts;
  4. acquire sound written and oral communication skills through the practice of writing and revising, and through studying texts. Those students who take the creative writing track will develop strong creative writing skills and be able to produce good prose and poetry, and those who minor in linguistics will show appropriate knowledge of language use, history, and grammatical analysis;
  5. develop research skills so that they can retrieve, analyze, and present data from electronic databases, libraries, and other sources, including field work, and use information ethically.

Learning Objectives:

Students should be able to

  1. identify by author, title, date, and literary movement the major and exemplary works of Western literature;
  2. establish the historical, psychological, cultural, political, and aesthetic background of selected literary works including information on authors and themes concerning race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality;
  3. work independently to interpret and analyze texts consistent with professional standards;
  4. present interpretations and analyses (and other responses) in competent written form;
  5. demonstrate that they can conduct independent research.

Methods of Assessing Learning Objectives:

Before 1999, students could fulfill the assessment requirement for the major by assembling a portfolio of papers; by writing a single essay examination; or by taking the Graduate Record Examination with scores on the section in English sent to the department. Assessment helped us to see that the second and third options did not provide a meaningful assessment instrument because they were too divorced from the students’ work throughout their major. A single essay or the GRE can furnish only a snapshot of student performance; whereas a portfolio gives multiple measures of performance.

Therefore, since 1999, the department’s major assessment tool has been the portfolio that students assemble while taking the one-credit capstone course English 4199 (Seminar in Career Perspectives). This is offered at least once a semester during the regular academic year. We adopted this course because we needed to communicate more effectively with students about assessment. English 4199 is a required course for declared majors from 1999 on and is strongly recommended even for those who declared earlier (almost none of whom remain now).

The Portfolio:

  1. a) We adopted the portfolio method because it lets us review students’ work on a variety of assignments over several semesters completed for different instructors. Traditional English majors submit six papers: two research papers, two response papers, and two papers of their choice. Students taking the creative writing track or minoring in creative writing submit four critical papers and make up the balance with creative writing assignments. Where possible, the students are asked to submit the instructor’s original guidelines/requirements for each paper. The portfolio method requires a mainly qualitative assessment, which is an appropriate approach to evaluate interpretive, analytical, written, and research skills. By amending the portfolio scoring sheet in 2002, we tried to quantify the results more. The portfolio also allows us to review students’ functional knowledge of names and dates; political, historical, and cultural backgrounds; professional terminology; and correct documentation in the field of English. And it allows us to compare the relative performance of graduating classes over time.
  2. Each semester, the instructor of the capstone course collects the portfolios and gives them to the Assessment Committee. Advisers and faculty teaching upper-level English courses alert students to the portfolio assessment requirements by including a written reminder on syllabi and by reminding them verbally. Thus students know that they should save papers on disk so that they can use them later when assembling the portfolio. The portfolios themselves are put together during English 4199 after class discussion about how best the portfolios might reflect students’ knowledge, critical thinking about and interpretation of literature, research, and communication skills. Preparing the portfolio also provides the students with a final product and a sense of closure as they approach graduation.
  3. Writing the self-assessment reflective letters gives students ownership of their own learning experiences and exhibits their metacognitive skill.

Procedures and Criteria:

  1. Two Assessment Committee members score each portfolio according to criteria on a worksheet (see attachment #3, scoring sheet for portfolios), and a third member settles discrepancies. For each item, readers enter a numerical rating as well as a brief verbal assessment. This accords with Prof. White’s recommendations for scoring.
  2. The department possesses several procedures for maintaining reliability in assessing the portfolios. Since 1999, Assessment Committee members have been elected on one- and two-year staggered terms to provide continuity. The fact that half the department has served on the Assessment Committee and half has taught English 4199 reflects our commitment to assessment. For validity, the department relies on the substantial amount of literature citing the portfolio method as particularly appropriate for assessing English programs.

2. Latest Findings and Use of These Findings

2a) Analysis and Interpretation of Findings/Results:

The portfolios:

Twenty students completed portfolios in the 2004 capstone courses. In their comments on the self-assessment form, which are part of a named portfolio but which are not graded and so allow students freedom and honesty in their comments, students indicated satisfaction with their advisers, with other faculty, and with the program. Students were very complimentary about the department in general, and several thought the advising in particular was excellent.

The Assessment Committee members involved in scoring the 2004 portfolios provided averages for each portfolio and for each question. As attachment #3 shows, ratings were 4.5-5 (Exceptional), 3.5-4.4 (Superior), 2.5-3.4 (Competent), 2.4-1.5 (Marginal), and 1.4 and lower (Unsatisfactory). For traditional English majors, averages were taken for questions 1-7; for the students with an emphasis or minor in creative writing, averages were taken for questions 1-8. There were no linguistics minors so question #9 was not scored.

In 2004, better scores overall are evident from students producing a creative writing portfolio because we now require only creative writing minors and those taking English with a creative writing emphasis to hand in such a portfolio. Also, as specified earlier, the creative writing students now must include four critical papers, the current two plus a research paper and a position or reading paper (see attachment #1 which has the new wording). For the portfolios of other English majors, the scoring on most questions showed a slight improvement from last year. We were happy to see this year more students in the superior range (10) and fewer in the marginal range (1) than last year (7 and 4, respectively), even though 22 students completed portfolios in 2003 versus only 20 in 2004.

2b.) Strengths and Weaknesses of Assessment Progress:

  • Our assessment program for the major continues to be strengthened by focusing on the portfolio method alone as part of English 4199, but we keep on refining data collection and evaluation.
  • Our assessment program for the minor in Secondary Education involves the course English 4202, Teaching Literature in the Secondary Schools (crosslisted and team-taught with Rhetoric and Writing’s 4202, Teaching Writing in the Secondary Schools), which now requires an electronic portfolio and other NCTE specifications, which we may adapt and adopt in English 4199 for regular English majors too.