Summary of Learning Goals and Desired Outcomes
Presented at the Conference by
SFSU and Cal Poly Pomona

In spring 1999, the Department of History will begin its new assessment program by assessing student success in achieving the following learning goals and outcomes:

Learning Goals

1. History students will have a broad knowledge and understanding of political, social, cultural, and economic institutions and values in various times and places.

2. History students will have an understanding of historical theory that will enable them to analyze and interpret historical evidence.

3. History students will be able to research historical issues and communicate their findings in a professional manner.

Desired Learning Outcomes

Undergraduate Major

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key aspects of the history of the United States, Europe, and at least one other world region (Asia, Africa, or Latin America).

2. Demonstrate the ability to analyze and interpret historical evidence from secondary sources about a historical issue.

3. Demonstrate the ability to research and write a historical paper based at least partly on primary sources.

Graduate Students

1. Demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of key aspects of the history of two fields selected from the following: United States, Latin America, East Asia, Europe prior to 1500, Europe after 1500, Gender and History.

2. Demonstrate an auxiliary skill appropriate to the student’s major field of emphasis, such as the ability to read historical documents in a foreign language or the competency to apply statistics to a subject of historical study.

3. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyze and interpret historical evidence.

4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to research and write a historical paper based on primary sources.

 

From Cal Poly Pomona

Objectives

Informed by the goals expressed in our Mission Statement, our department’s graduates will leave Cal Poly with these skills and abilities.

• Have a general understanding of past events, actors, and the societies in which they appeared, be able to identify them and appreciate their significance in the past and today.

• Recognize how different individuals, groups, organizations, societies, cultures, countries and nations have interacted in the past and how those interactions have affected history.

• Study and gain understanding of how historians of the past and the present explain what shaped the past, and identify and explain what differences exist in the work of these historians.

• Develop an appreciation of themselves and of other peoples and cultures through the study of the past in local, regional, national, international and global contexts.

• Learn to evaluate and critique the work of historians as well as the narratives of past events produced by participants and observers.

• Learn and then practice the formal styles of argumentation, writing and presentation that professional historians use in their work.

• Learn by doing: Through presentations in class and in conferences, by writing lesson plans, through membership in university and honors organizations, and through the production of newsletters and internet-based information sites.

• These, in turn, will help students in whatever field or occupation they pursue by developing these skills and abilities.

• Appreciate and evaluate the quality of arguments and the evidence that supports them, which in turn will help them separate more convincing arguments and evidence from weaker arguments and evidence.

• Choose a topic of interest, design a program of research, conduct the needed investigation through a reading of secondary (history texts) and primary (historical sources) texts and other materials, produce a formal essay that reports their conclusions and present their findings in a seminar.

• Study independently and prepare arguments, supported by evidence that they have gathered, that address issues of concern.

• Develop a sense of personal ethics, responsibility and accountability, and reflect upon and refine their sense of self as individuals, as members of communities, and as citizens.

• Gain awareness of their own connection to regional, national, global, and historical communities that helped define and continue to shape their own lives.