Closing the Assessment Loop: Aligning Learning Goals, Learning Outcomes, Curriculum and Program Design, and Pedagogy
In 2004, the UW Geography Department began a longitudinal study of learning in the Geography major. Our 20 study subjects participated in interviews, focus groups and e-mail questions over two years. This study, known as Geog SOUL (Study of Undergraduate Learning), analyzed 1) students’ performance and perceptions of those performances in the context of existing departmental learning goals; 2) pathways that bring students to Geography and those that take them through the major; and 3) what helps students learn--as well as the obstacles or challenges to learning that they face. It also 4) triangulated between departmental learning goals, student assessment of how directly those learning goals were met or addressed in their course, and faculty assessment of actual learning outcomes. The project’s main aims were to:
• Determine if students show increasing sophistication in talking about ways they are developing as writers, researchers, problem solvers, critical thinkers, spatial and quantitative reasoners, and critical users of information technology.
• Determine if students are showing increasing sophistication in discussing such key geographic concepts as inequality, citizenship, globalization, and sustainability.
• Use faculty student portfolio reviews to determine the alignment between departmental learning goals and actual learning outcomes, and to adjust learning goals, pedagogy, or curriculum accordingly.
We were especially interested in ways students struggle to apply conceptual frameworks to actual cases; ways students perceive and use evidence to make arguments; student perception of what it means to write a “research paper”; students’ changing perceptions of “what it means to be a geographer”, and changing student attitudes toward issues of citizenship, environmental stewardship, and inequality.
Executive Summary
Final Report
For more information please contact:
Rick Roth
206-543-3246 |
