Overview of Assessment Activities 2019-20 (cf. Option A ...



2019-2020 Annual Program Assessment Report GuidePlease submit your report to your department chair or program coordinator, the Associate Dean and Dean of your College, and to james.solomon@csun.edu, Director of the Office of Academic Assessment and Program Review, by September 30, 2020. You may, but are not required to, submit a separate report for each program, including graduate degree programs, which conducted assessment activities, or you may combine programs in a single report. Please include this form with your report in the same file and identify your department/program in the file name. Please do not change the date on the form, and be sure to check that your report is ADA accessible.College: HumanitiesDepartment: Linguistics/TESLProgram: MA in TESL and MA in LinguisticsAssessment liaison: Tineke ScholtenPlease check off whichever is applicable:A. ____x____ Measured student work within program major/options.B. ____x____ Analyzed results of measurement within program major/options.C. ________ Applied results of analysis to program review/curriculum/review/revision major/options.D. _________ Participated in the 2019-20 assessment of General Education Section D: Social Sciences and U.S. History and Government student learning outcomes Overview of Annual Assessment Project(s). On a separate sheet, provide a brief overview of this year’s assessment activities, including:an explanation for why your department chose the assessment activities (measurement, analysis, application, or GE assessment) that it enactedif your department implemented assessment option A, identify which program SLOs were assessed (please identify the SLOs in full), in which classes and/or contexts, what assessment instruments were used and the methodology employed, the resulting scores, and the relation between this year’s measure of student work and that of past years: (include as an appendix any and all relevant materials that you wish to include)if your department implemented assessment option B, identify what conclusions were drawn from the analysis of measured results, what changes to the program were planned in response, and the relation between this year’s analyses and past and future assessment activitiesif your department implemented option C, identify the program modifications that were adopted, and the relation between program modifications and past and future assessment activitiesif your program implemented option D, exclusively or simultaneously with options A, B, and/or C, identify the GE learning outcomes assessed, the assessment instruments and methodology employed, and the resulting scoresin what way(s) your assessment activities may reflect the university’s commitment to diversity in all its dimensions but especially with respect to underrepresented groupsany other assessment-related information you wish to include: e.g. SLO revision (especially to ensure continuing alignment between program course offerings and both program and university student learning outcomes) and the creation or modification of new assessment instrumentsPreview of planned assessment activities for 2020-21. Include a brief description as reflective of a continuous program of ongoing assessment.Overview of Assessment Activities 2019-20 (cf. Option A) for MA in LinguisticsIn accordance with assessment goals outlined in the department’s annual assessment report of the previous academic year, the department assessed the extent to which students in the MA in Linguistics program are meeting the SLOs of the MA program with data from their culminating experience. As part of their culminating experience, students are required to write a research paper and present their findings during a poster session. Students are assigned a committee consisting of a chair and two additional readers who are selected based on their areas of expertise. While the chair works closely with the student as they complete their research paper, the readers primarily function as quality control towards the end of the process. For the purpose of assessment, the two readers for each paper were therefore asked to rate a student’s paper. Since linguistics is a field with many subspecialties, the additional members of the committee were considered best suited to assess a student’s performance. The data were collected from nine graduating students’ work in Spring of 2020 and rated with help of a rubric (see below) that closely aligns with the SLOs of the MA in Linguistics:Graduates of the MA in Linguistics will:Demonstrate a solid knowledge of linguistic theory in the areas of phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and sociolinguistics.Demonstrate advanced knowledge in at least three major subfields of linguistics.Describe the relevance of linguistics to a range of professional settings and to general issues at large.Read, analyze, and critically evaluate linguistic research, demonstrating a high level of critical thinking and problem solving about linguistic issues.Demonstrate the ability to conduct original research or apply current linguistic theories to new sets of data, analyze data, and draw appropriate conclusions. As the results below demonstrate, average ratings were fairly high for this group of students, surpassing the benchmark of 3.0:Student Learning OutcomeRating (1,2,3 or 4) Demonstrates a solid knowledge of linguistic theory in some of the following areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and sociolinguistics.3.35Demonstrates advanced knowledge in one major subfield of linguistics.3.53Describes the relevance of linguistics to a range of professional settings and to general issues at large.3.56Is able to read, analyze, and critically evaluate linguistic research, demonstrating a high level of critical thinking and problem solving about linguistic issues3.47Demonstrates the ability to conduct original research or apply current linguistic theories to new sets of data, analyze data, and draw appropriate conclusions. 3.53It should be noted that Interexaminer reliability was high with mostly identical ratings and no rating differences of more than one point.Overview of Assessment Activities 2019-20 (cf. Option A) for MA in TESLWhen evaluating the assessment results from the academic year 2018-19, the TESL faculty noted that while the students’ culminating experiences in the form of portfolios provided valuable data in regards to most of the MA-TESL program’s SLOs, it did not provide the necessary data to measure how well students are actually able to apply their knowledge of linguistics and TESL when creating lesson plans and proposing curricula. This outcome is expressed in the MA-TESL SLO #3: Students will be able to demonstrates an understanding of how theories of language structure and theories of language in context and pedagogy can be applied in teaching language. To assess SLO3, the TESL-faculty therefore executed a pilot study to assess teaching efficacy in the classroom.Two members of the TESL faculty rated teaching demos of four MA TESL students who graduated in Spring 2020 from four different LING 555 (practicum) classes) with a rubric that was tailored to the SLO. The overall number of demos was limited because students graduating this spring were not able to upload actual demos due to COVID 19. Students were rated based on how effectively they applied theories of language and theories of L2 language pedagogy in their lesson plans. The results were overall fairly high with an average rating of 3.2.Evaluation of Assessment Procedure and Results (cf. Option B)The department discussed these findings during the first faculty meeting of the 2020-21 academic year. The discussion addressed whether (1) the assessment methods for MA-LING and MA-TESL provided us with a good understanding of students’ abilities and (2) whether there were specific weaknesses or strengths that a qualitative assessment revealed and that needed addressing.As far as assessment of the MA in Linguistics is concerned, the faculty noted that the quality of students’ graduate projects varied widely. It was also observed that the emphasis on quantitative data analysis in LING 566 (Research Methods) that the MA in Linguistics students are taking as part of their core requirement seems to be paying off, as students appear to be better prepared to apply statistical measures to the data they collect when compared to previous years.Regarding the MA in TESL, the faculty found the method piloted for assessing SLO3 a useful one and worthy of replication with the following addendum: the teaching demos did not provide access to the objectives and lesson plans that were associated with the lesson. A future assessment should ensure that those are included in the assessment data, so that faculty will be able to relate the stated objectives to their implementation.Assessment Activities and the University’s Commitment to DiversityThe Linguistics/TESL Department strives to provide a comprehensive and well-thought-out curriculum that strongly emphasizes independent and critical thinking. Moreover, the Linguistics/TESL Department faculty requires that its students closely examine commonly held beliefs about language use and language acquisition that directly affect societal opinions about the merits of (typically economically disadvantaged) groups of language users. To meet the SLOs for the MAs in TESL and Linguistics, a thorough appreciation and understanding of diversity in the context of language variation and acquisition is required. That issue has especially come to the forefront in the context of the renewed, and necessary attention to overt and implicit structural and individual discrimination that students of color face. The department is committed to examining how it may have inadvertently contributed to this status quo and what it can do to send a message of true inclusivity in its course offerings as well as in the way it manages the classroom environment. Preview of Planned Assessment Activities for 2020-21No assessment activities are planned for this year as the College of Humanities intends to replace all departmental assessment activities with a college-wide assessment of students’ critical thinking skills this academic year. ................
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