Teaching - Learning Fellows,
Summer 2003 Learning Outcome Project
Overview | Course
Goals
Broad Learning Objectives | Teaching
Practices
Overview
 I
am an Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University.
I came to Western Washington from Texas where I taught for three years
in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.
I completed my Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine. I have written
on State repression of dissent during wartime, amnesty and civil liberties
movements in the United States, feminist theory, gendered and racial violence,
anti-Catholicism, Joan Jett and Xena, Warrior Princess. Despite spending
my adult life west of the Mississippi, I was born in and in and retain
a primary allegiance to the Northeast, especially in sports. I am optimistic
that most of my students take history courses because they love history
and believe that someday the Red Sox will win the World Series. When not
teaching or writing, I spend my days watching sports, Babylon 5 reruns
and playing with my dogs, Eliot and Sampson.
What my students say about me when they think I am not listening:
- She hangs upside down in her office
- Buffy could take Xena in a minute
- The Backstreet Boys have talent
- Cats are not vermin
- The Red Sox will never win the World Series
My primary reason for participating in this project was to align my
individual assignments with my course goals. I was concerned that my assignments
did not always measure the skills that they claimed they did. I began
this project as a skeptic and like many faculty members did not want assessment
imposed on me by either legislative mandate or by colleagues unfamiliar
with the humanities. I anticipated that my participation would enable
me to not only write better assignments and to translate the useful literature
on assessment to my colleagues in the humanities. By doing so, I hoped
to retain control over the learning process in my classroom and to provide
a language for my colleagues to address assessment requirements without
compromising what they do in the classroom. It was my hope that once my
colleagues were reassured that they would maintain this control that they
would be see assessment projects as an opportunity to improve their courses
rather than a threat to their pedagogy.
Ed Chatterton, Student Research Partner:
 My
name is Ed Chatterton, and I am a graduate student in History Department.
I am what many would call a "returning" student; that is a student
returning after a career in a non-academic field. My decision to participate
in this project was fueled by three distinct considerations. First, my
respect for Dr. Kennedy and a realization that anything she was involved
in would be excellent. Secondly, the opportunity to interact with teachers
and fellow students all motivated by a similar goal–the improvement
of their individual and corporate learning skills. I would be dishonest
if I did not acknowledge that the opportunity to be paid for the experience
I would gladly have purchased was also a factor.
My experience in the non-academic "real world" has convinced
me that knowledge in any particular field is often "caught"
rather than "taught." Teachers plan curriculum, syllabi and
evaluate procedures well, but much of what is actually learned does not
originate in the structured, traditional classroom paradigm. Clearly stated,
intended learning outcomes carefully crafted learning opportunities (included
lectures, labs, cooperative and collaborative learning methods and individual
student research), and realistic, innovative assessment tools are the
primary goals of this Teaching and Learning group.
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Course Goals
History 103 fulfills the General Education Requirement in the Humanities.
It introduces students to the first half of American History (Ancient
Native American societies to the Civil War) that typically enrolls anywhere
from seventy-five to one-hundred and twenty-five students. When I teach
the course in the Fall, most of these students are first-quarter freshmen,
some of whom are enrolled in a Fig cluster. Like most History courses
it has a heavy writing component as the members of the History Department
use essay exams and generally assign anywhere from five to fifteen pages
of writing in lower division courses. The course has the dual burden of
teaching students the basic content of early American history and in introducing
students to the practice of history.
When I first began including learning objectives on my syllabus, I used
as a guide a rubric developed by the History Department at California
State University at Long Beach. This rubric was the result of a project
designed to examine and articulate what first-year history students should
know. I have revised this rubric to make it specific to History 103 and
to arrange it in accordance with the Bloom’s Taxonomy of higher
learning. By using the language
of Bloom’s Taxonomy, I hope to better articulate how these objectives
moved students from basic knowledge to critical thinking.
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Broad Learning Objectives
- Place in time key historical events and actors
- Identify and evaluate multiple perspectives and approaches to historical
understanding
- Identify and Evaluate the diversity of AAmerican@ experiences
- Formulate and defend an historical argument
- Write clearly, economically and persuasively about historical problems
Comprehensive/Knowledge:
- Develop a proper foot/end note
- Locate appropriate primary sources
- Distinguish between primary and secondary sources
Analysis/Application
- Interpret different types of evidence
- Detect and appraise bias and point of view
- Draw conclusions and inferences from examined evidence
- Formulate historical questions
Synthesis/Evaluation
- Create, organize and support an historical argument in written and
oral presentation
- Assess and prioritize historical causes
Teaching Practices
These learning objectives are measured by three assignments:
- Two history papers that articulate a clear historical argument developed
from a careful analysis of primary sources
- Two to three short essay exams that require students to define key
concepts, identify and discuss the significance of key people and events
and to place those concepts and events in historical time and context
- Participation in a discussion list in which students contribute to
ongoing discussions and arguments about key historical events, their
causes and meanings.
The assignment I will focus on here is the history paper. Because of
class size, students only write two history papers of between 1000 and
1250 words. These papers are modified research essays. By modified I mean
that students do not actually locate the primary sources that they will
use in this essay in the library but are provided with a series of primary
sources in an assigned reader. They are also provided with a topic and
series of questions that their essay must address. I needed an assessment
tool that would enable me to measure the quality of their essay. I wanted
a tool that would allow me to provide students with information as to
the overall quality of their essay and one that would break the essay
down so that students could understand how well they had addressed the
various parts of historical writing. To this end, I
chose a writing rubric that would give students a visual picture of my
assessment. I have also found that the rubric leads to a more consistent
assessment of student essays as it ensures that I am articulating clear
standards
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