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Institutional Research & Assessment

Southern Utah University
Department of Language & Literature
Academic Outcomes Assessment Plan
Academic Year 2001-2002

Mission Statement:

The mission of the Department of Language and Literature is to provide a liberal education for all university students. Faculty strive to create an atmosphere of learning, free inquiry, critical thinking, creativity, and clear and honest communication in all contacts with students. In addition to offering general education courses in humanities, writing, foreign languages, and literature, the Department seeks to prepare its majors and minors for the world at large by increasing the depth of the liberal education they have gained through their general education courses. Activities of this department will:

Goal Statement:

Language & Literature provides all university students basic courses in writing, literature, and foreign languages. The Department provides its majors with a program of English, American, and world literature,; methods classes for teaching of language, composition, and literature; and a program in creative writing. Finally, the Department offers students opportunities to serve as tutors in the writing lab and to become members of national honor societies.

Intended Outcomes / Objectives:

A. Composition
1) Students will be able to adapt their writing for different purposes, audiences, and composing situations.
2) Students will be able to write for different disciplines
3) Students will demonstrate critical and analytical thinking in their writing
4) Students will be able to use the syntax and the mechanics of edited American English appropriately.

B. Literature
1) Students will demonstrate knowledge of primary texts, both canonical and noncanonical.
2) Students will demonstrate knowledge of literary history, genres, periods.
3)Students will be able to apply current critical thinking to primary texts.
4)Students will demonstrate an ability to write and speak about literature critically.
5)Students will be prepared for entrance into secondary school teaching, graduate school, or other professions where their unique skills are required.
6)Students will have the opportunity to present papers and to submit papers for publication.
7)Students will have the opportunity for collegiality among their peers and faculty.

C. Languages: Students will:
1) Demonstrate basic proficiency in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing appropriate to their language level.
2) Demonstrate a basic knowledge of the cultures and histories of the target language areas.
3) Demonstrate a basic knowledge of literature and the primary literary movements of the target language.
4) Demonstrate critical and analytical thinking in oral and written form in the target language.
5) Be prepared for entrance into graduate school, teaching, or other professions where their unique skills will be required.
6) Develop skills that will permit them to be more active participants in the world community.
7) Be able to develop a more humanistic and accepting attitude toward other people, cultures, and religions.

D. Creative writing
1) Students will have experience writing original work in several major categories: poetry, nonfiction, fiction, playwriting.
2) Students will produce polished work to submit for publication in at least one genre.
3) Students will the understand process of submitting work for publication.
4) Students will be conversant with the literary traditions out of which their own work grows, through the study of primary texts in their literature courses.
5) Students will have the opportunity to gain experience in editing and publishing an on-campus literary journal.
6) Students will be prepared for entrance into graduate school; for positions in publishing, writing, or editing; and for other areas where their unique skills are required.
7) Students will have the opportunity to take part in a community of writers, through events with invited writers, open reading, classes, and work on the literary journal.

Assessment Criteria and Activities

Entire Department:
1) A senior exit interview/survey tied to departmental goals.
2) An alumni survey, already instituted.
3) A variety of course activities will enable students to demonstrate the specific skills they have learned. Students will be assessed through class presentations; videotaping presentations, especially the secondary English education majors; preparing multimedia presentations, and the like.
4) Senior Thesis/project implemented in capstone courses.

Specific Areas:
1) Composition:
Statewide program assessment: For the past four years, representatives from the SUU composition program have participated in the State Writing Taskforce developing a "value added" assessment instrument which asks students who are entering ENGL 1010 (pretest) and those who are leaving ENGL 2010 (post-test) to write an essay in which they are asked to evaluate an argument raised in a brief reading on the basis of other alternative views. This fall, SUU composition program representatives were able to successfully argue for a change in the pilot assessment program that will allow us to do a longitudinal "study within a study" during our portion of the pilot next school year. Instead of having our 1010 and 2010 classes evaluated during the same semester, the modified pilot will ask 1010 students to write a take-home paper at the start of fall semester 2002 and our intermediate students to respond to the same essay prompt at the end of spring semester 2003. Thus, in addition to feeding our test essays into the aggregate group assessment, we'll be able to track any increases in the scores of SUU students who take both tests, according to the statistics consultant who is advising the state writing taskforce.
Students assess their own work and that of others during group discussions and workshops by comparing their performance (both in oral and written assignments) to characteristics drawn from faculty members' standards of good writing, which reflect the values asserted in the statewide assessment instrument. Instructors also use such standards in offering comments on rough drafts during student-teacher conferences. In order to allow students as much time as possible to rethink and revise their performances, most instructors encourage multiple revisions before grades are assigned.
Composition faculty members meet at the beginning of every semester to compare their ratings of sample essays in order compare their grading rubrics to the one developed as part of the statewide assessment described above. This "norming" session gives faculty members the chance to discuss the ways in which their views of papers overlap and contrast.
2) Literature: Senior level (4000) are capstone courses for English majors.
3) Languages: Junior and enior level (3000-4000) courses are capstone courses for French/German/Spanish majors and minors.
4) Creative writing: Students will turn in a senior portfolio of work to be judged by a member of the creative writing faculty. The portfolio will begin with a critical statement concerning the student's own aesthetic project and relationship to literary tradition. Following will be a collection of twenty-five pages of poetry, or fifty pages of prose or drama, or a combination of the two.

Implementation:

A. Composition: The Director of Writing/Writing Center attends statewide meetings of composition faculty. The ongoing assessment has been implemented; the last statewide meeting was in November, 2001. .
B. Literature: Literature faculty will meet to determine criteria for senior capstone courses.
C. Languages: Literature faculty will meet to determine criteria for senior capstone courses.
D. Creative writing
1) Language and Literature will devise a method to track declared majors.
2) Students will be provided with a worksheet that will advise them about what is expected in their senior portfolio and how it will demonstrate the program's objectives have been met.

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Last Update: Friday, June 06, 2003