Department/Program Women's Studies
CSU Northridge
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Contact Information:
Roberta Madison
Tel: (818)-677-2969
Fax: (818) 677-3977
Email: roberta.madison@csun.edu
Revised Outcomes Assessment Plan
November 5, 1997
1. Goals
Offer wide range of course offerings.
Underscore diversity in gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, culture, etc.
Provide a background for advanced degrees in Women's Studies
2. Measurable Objectives
Critically examine cultural assumptions about how gender, in interplay with ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation, constructs identity.
Describe women's contributions to the production of different knowledges and ways of knowing.
Demonstrate ability to critically analyze systems of domination constraining women's lives in ways that lay groundwork for constructive social change.
Identify how feminist analysis both contributes to the understanding of women and challenges the boundaries or concepts of traditional disciplines.
Be able to evaluate and choose appropriately between Women's Studies graduate degree programs.
3. How will objectives be measured?
Capstone course WS 400 provides the forum for measuring these objectives. Students in this class will develop a portfolio and/or self-study. Students will reflect on how the experience of taking required and elective Women's Studies courses contributed incrementally and cumulatively to their understanding of the discipline.
Complete a research project that demonstrates and builds on their previous core and elective course work in Women's Studies, as well as the perspective of their major.
Either submit a list of electives or complete an exit survey, to be developed, to evaluate how effective the distribution of elective courses is in giving students a broad, yet focused understanding of Women's Studies.
Participate in an advertisement program, to be developed, which will provide direction for either continuing in graduate studies or relating the Women's Studies minor to a professional career.
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DATE: | June 18, 1997
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TO: | Roberta Madison
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FROM: | Julia Watson
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RE: | Evaluation of Pilot Project for
Outcomes Assessment
in Women's Studies
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You and I developed, on behalf of the Women's Studies minor, an assessment plan that we felt would be comprehensive, use measurable outcomes, and be easy to implement. In WS 400 this past spring I conducted a pilot implementation. of the plan, and want to report to you on my findings. If I had to sum up in 25 words, I would say that the WS assessment plan is an excellent instrument for a major in a long-standing department, but seems to extensive and detailed for a new department that currently only has a minor. I suggest that a brief and streamlined plan be drawn up, and that recommendations be sought from national experts on the extent to which assessment can successfully be undertaken in an interdisciplinary minor, where students typically have a minimal common experience.
In WS 400, the senior seminar, Spring 1997, I assigned a research paper and a portfolio of student work in the Women's Studies minor as a required assignment for all students in the course. Together the projects were to total 20 word-processed pages (plus attachments and bibliography), and students were required to submit a draft outline in advance for the research paper. (All students were either WS minors who are required to take the course or WS-concentrations in related fields, such as Liberal Studies and Journalism, who take the course as a way of completing the capstone course requirement and the senior research paper they must submit.) For the portfolio narrative I asked students to write a narrative describing the significant content of the courses they had taken; and to evaluate how each had contributed to learning about the discipline of Women's Studies; this part had to be at least 1000 words.
As often happens in WS courses, what began as an inquiry became an extensive exploration for many of the students, most of who were seniors, on what they had learned and how they had grown during their university years. Many also reflected on how they had changed as women, particularly in becoming more assertive, acquiring greater self-esteem, and becoming conscious of areas of pervasive sexism in everyday life. In every way the assignment thus became a consciousness-raising experience. For most students this was a positive and powerful capstone to their university experience (though they were surprised to encounter it in the minor rather than their majors); one seemed largely indifferent and one was unhappy about this kind of assignment.
Key issues that emerged were:
Should the portfolio be graded? (I made it graded work so students would do it seriously, but gave high grades for serious effort. Some students were anxious about having the work graded, as they had difficulty reconstructing their past academic lives.
The portfolio assignment assumed they would have past access to past syllabi, papers, books and notes for WS courses. Most students no longer had their papers and only a few had syllabi. Since they take courses over many years there is no easy way to provide syllabi for courses taught by a wide range of instructors. Students suggested that syllabi be put on a departmental home page on the WWWeb--an excellent suggestion but one that hasnŐt yet been implemented due to lack of support staff.
A narrative format for the portfolio is easier for experienced and good writers and can be a real challenge to students who have not done self-reflective writing. (I think giving them such a challenge in the senior year is fine, but some were unused to this kind of assignment.)
Many students complained about their lack of training in either doing extended self- study narratives or in developing and writing a research paper. Indeed much of the seminar was devoted to a multi-stage developmental process with the paper, and students at times had high levels of frustration about finding adequate research materials in the library and on-line. Training in doing research papers before the capstone course seems important.
Students had few courses in common, other than the two core courses required for the minor before the senior seminar (one more has been added). Thus they did not have much basis for a common experience, as WS courses are drawn from departments all over the university. From the point of view of the department, the large number of courses outside the department that can count toward the minor, an unusual situation, means that assessment of anything other than core courses may be statistically insignificant and better seen as the responsibility of other department. Thus it may not make sense to do extensive assessment for a wide-ranging minor.
There has been no opportunity for a committee of departmental faculty to evaluate the responses (on file--typically five to 10 pages per student plus attachments), because until Fall '97 there was only one faculty member. It seems important that the new faculty together draw up a modest and workable revision of the assessment plan and consider the kinds of student response that they can easily administer and read.
