Arts, Humanities & Languages

In Spring 2008, the English Department began assessment of student writing for the University’s Foundations Requirement in Written Communication, which must be fulfilled by all UHM undergraduates. Assessment of FW was to be based on four SLOs devised by the UHM Foundations Board, and approved by the UHM General Education Committee in Fall 2007. As presently articulated, the four SLOs are the following: 1: Compose a text to achieve a specific purpose and respond adeptly to an identifiable audience. 2: Provide evidence of effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading a text in order to produce finished prose. 3: Compose a text that makes use of source material that is relevant and reliable and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide. 4: Compose writing that expresses the writer's viewpoint and is supplemented by outside sources. In Spring 2008, relevant student writing (208 essays) was gathered from the four courses that satisfy the FW requirement: English 100 (Composition I—which makes up about 90 % of FW sections), English 100A (Composition I for Honors students), English 190 (Composition I for transfer students), and ELI 100 (Expository Writing: A Guided Approach—for students whose first language is not English) for assessment of SLO #1, and a report on levels of student success was generated for a Spring 2008 English Department Colloquium and discussion. In Spring 2009, 80 essays were randomly selected from papers submitted by FW instructors that were to be assessed for level of achievement in meeting SLO#3 (Information Literacy): “Students will be able to compose a text that makes use of source material that is relevant and credible and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide.” A team of six faculty scorers read the papers, with two raters scoring them independently along a 4-point scale according to the following traits: (1) making use of source material, (2) relevancy of sources, (3) credibility of sources, (4) style integration. Overall, student preparation for future writing tasks involving outside sources was measured as follows: “well-prepared” (6%), “prepared” (48%), “partially prepared” (26%), “not prepared” (21%). About 84% of students were at least partially prepared to make use of relevant and credible sources, but only about 65% were at least partially prepared to meet information literacy expectations in their future writing (“adherence to citation rules”). A full report on the results of this SLO Assessment, which has been drafted by the Review Team, will be disseminated to English and E.L.I. faculty and will be discussed at an English Department meeting on December 3.Meanwhile, assessment of SLO#4 and SLO#2 is anticipated in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, respectively. A rubric for assessing SLO#4 will be discussed at the December 3 meeting and further discussion of student achievement of this Student Learning Outcome, as well as SLO#3, will follow at a January 21 meeting. Additionally, all Spring 2010 English 100, 100A, and 190 instructors have been directed to include all four SLOs on their Spring 2009 syllabi, with the expectation that classroom activities and paper assignments will engage students in achieving these four Student Learning Outcomes.

Written Communication Assessment Projects

In Spring 2008, the English Department began assessment of student writing for the University’s Foundations Requirement in Written …

Capstone Signature Assignment Development in a History BA Program

The Department of History has been engaged in assessment work of our undergraduate major, identifying how we can …

Development of a Signature Assignment in Filipino Cultural Courses

This project presents a signature assignment for Indo-Pacific culture courses to assess the students’ cultural competency by discussing …

Oral Communication for Language Teachers: Assessment Rubric Development

Scholarship on language teacher education emphasizes teaching language skills. Yet preservice language teachers must learn more than grammar …

Kumu, Kuleana, Kaona: Assessing Multiple Viewpoints

The faculty of Hawaiian Studies (HWST) developed a blended assessment plan for our undergraduate program over the past …

Creating a Rubric of Critical Thinking for Writing Intensive Courses

This poster reports an ongoing project collaborated by a team of Chinese faculty who teach writing intensive (WI) …

Assessment across the Disciplines: Increasing Faculty Engagement in Assessment

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the English, Hawaiian and Foreign Languages, Speech and Communication disciplines in the Language …

In the Spring of 2008, all students in Foundations in Writing (FW) courses were asked to select and submit the piece of writing that best exemplified the following Student Learning Outcome: “Students will be able to compose a text that seeks to achieve a specific purpose and responds adeptly to an identifiable audience.” Students were also asked to compose a 30-minute in-class reflection on their essay’s purpose and audience as a means of assessing students’ meta-cognitive understandings of their essay’s rhetorical situation. Employing a stratified-random sampling design, 208 (or 50%) of the essays submitted by first-year students were selected for scoring across the five FW course types: English 100 Mentored, English 100 Non-Mentored, English 101 Lab, English 100A, and English Language Institute 100. Given the wide variety of essay prompts, scorers assumed the intended audience to be a critically-informed reader. Essays were scored independently by two raters along a 4-point scale according to the following primary analytic traits: 1) content, 2) organization, 3) language and style, and 4) mechanics. In a separate session, in-class reflective essays were scored holistically on a 4-point scale. Overall, students scored at the “prepared” or “well prepared” levels at the following rates: content (72%), organization (57%), language and style (74%), mechanics (68%), and reflective pieces (48%). Students in mentored sections out-performed their non-mentored counterparts in all categories, scoring significantly higher on content, organization, and reflective pieces. Results point to potential areas for programmatic improvement and also indicate that the Writing Mentors Program is improving the quality of writing for first-year students.

How Well are First-Year Students Composing? Assessing the Foundations in Written Communication Program

In the Spring of 2008, all students in Foundations in Writing (FW) courses were asked to select and …

Several studies have revealed that successful mentoring affects college student retention. Also, research on attrition shows that the first year is a critical stage in students' decisions to persist or leave college. Nora & Crisp have recently identified four essential elements to mentoring: psychological/emotional support; support for setting goals and choosing a career path; academic subject knowledge support aimed at advancing a student's knowledge relevant to their chosen field; and specification of a role model. In the 2007-2008 Academic Year, over 400 first-year students in English 100 at UHM were mentored by MA or PhD students in English, and analysis of their standardized end-of-term evaluations revealed that students identified each of the elements above in varying degrees, with “academic subject support knowledge” identified 79% of the time and with at least one of these elements identified 85% of the time. These results suggest that mentoring when delivered as part of a course holds great potential for boosting student retention at UHM.

Assessing Mentoring in First Year Composition: A Tool to Boost Retention?

Several studies have revealed that successful mentoring affects college student retention. Also, research on attrition shows that the …

The Department of Linguistics Comprehensive Exam consists of two Qualifying Papers. In recent years the QPs have fallen out of step with trends in the field, resulting in students struggling to pass. We describe our actions to overhaul our Comprehensive Exams, including clarifying procedures, realigning SLOs, and developing better rubrics.

Overhauling the comprehensive exam in the Department of Linguistics: First steps

The Department of Linguistics Comprehensive Exam consists of two Qualifying Papers. In recent years the QPs have fallen …

SLS 150 is an introductory course mainly for first-year (freshman) students with a strong interest in second language learning. A series of innovative and rigorous classroom assessment strategies have been piloted in this class. Lessons learned from this internal exercise will be extended to the full suite of the new SLS BA program and its progress with program assessment as we move forward to the five year provisional status review.

Classroom Assessment – Implications for Program Assessment

SLS 150 (Learning Languages and Communicating in a Globalized World) is an introductory course mainly for first-year (freshman) …

This study was intrigued by the needs to assess oral performance more systematically and to motivate students to take assessment more seriously. The participants of the study were students and faculty of Korean Language Flagship Center (KLFC) MA program in the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. There was a brief criterion for oral assessment in the program, but it was not enough to meet the aforementioned needs. Therefore, the researcher with the help of faculty in the program and center developed a detailed rubric, Flagship Rubric. Utilizing assessment evidences such as video recordings and student feedback sheets, development phases were as follows: 1) rough version, 2) revision, 3) pilot test, 4) second revision, and 5) ‘Flagship Rubric.’ The poster session will show this process and the product, and how it will be incorporated in the program with a dissemination plan.

Flagship Rubric for Oral Performance

This study was intrigued by the needs to assess oral performance more systematically and to motivate students to …

This poster is going to present how faculty in the Academy for Creative Media undergraduate program utilized an efficient and collaborative process of rubrics development for program assessment that led to program improvement. The Academy for Creative Media undergraduate program has three tracks: Cinematic Digital Production, Critical Studies, and Animation. After developing program SLOs and the curriculum map, the faculty felt the need to develop rubrics for each track to evaluate student learning products. Accordingly, the faculty broke up into sub-groups using examples of exemplary student work from each track to discuss the reasons these works were excellent. These ideas helped the faculty develop descriptions of excellent work for each track’s rubric. The faculty from the Animation and Critical Studies tracks also developed descriptors of other levels of work (e.g., good, average, poor). The process took three department meetings’ time with one hour each.

Collaborative Rubric Development for Program Improvement

This poster is going to present how faculty in the Academy for Creative Media undergraduate program utilized an …

The mission of the instruction program in FDM is to provide students with appropriate knowledge and skills for career positions in apparel and fashion-related industries; to promote understanding of the effects of global social, economic, and political issues on apparel and fashion-related industries and on modes of dress; to foster appreciation of the role of dress and appearance as these reflect and shape individual behavior, social and economic exchange and cultural conditions; to nurture intellectual growth and creativity, and to support the mission of the College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources by fostering student acquisition of problem-solving, analytic, and communication skills. The assessment of FDM program will evaluate FDM graduate of the FDM program demonstrate knowledge and skills in the fashion and/or textile industry. All faculty members are evaluating graduates’ final presentations and portfolios. A 5-scale was used to evaluate students’ oral and portfolio from all seven goals and ten student learning outcomes in their final semester.

The Assessment of Fashion Design Merchandising Program

The mission of the instruction program in FDM is to provide students with appropriate knowledge and skills for …

The Filipino program has engaged in assessment activities in the past but these efforts are limited and uncoordinated. Student learning outcomes are assessed by individual faculty in their courses but assessment tools are not standardized within the Filipino program. These assessments do not follow a specific and unified plan at the program (or departmental) level. There is also a need to move from indirect assessment (exit surveys) to direct assessment of our student learning outcomes. We also need an assessment plan at the program level that supports current assessment activities done at the classroom level. These results will be used to improve teaching strategies and assignments, and to propose/implement curriculum changes, as needed. The Filipino Program Assessment Project's main goals are (1) to confirm and/or tweak the program’s student learning outcomes, (2) to review and reformat the curriculum map, and (3) to create and implement a signature assignment for 300-400 level courses and use this as evidence for direct assessment. The poster will present the process and results of the assessment project as well as reflections on strategies that helped to accomplish our goals.

Filipino Program Assessment Project

The Filipino program has engaged in assessment activities in the past but these efforts are limited and uncoordinated. …

Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has 6 teaching faculty and 20 majors enrolled each semester, including 85% underserved students. Writing and critical thinking skills are very important to us. In May 2014 faculty collected student course assignments and evaluated them collaboratively using a rough rubric. The results showed that 50% students were not meeting our expectations. Subsequently, we revised SLO4 and explored external learning opportunities (e.g., Eng 100, Writing Center, our own writing intensive courses) and discovered that they are not sufficient in helping students to achieve our expectations. As a result, we developed the Yeah, WRITE! program to enhance disciplinary writing across the curriculum. The program consists of a series of in-class workshops built around reading and note-taking skills, citation, information literacy, and stages of the writing processes for various genres. Further, we used students work to develop and refine an evaluation rubric and aligned the Yeah, WRITE curriculum with the rubric. We also implemented writing intensive designations in all major core courses. Preliminary data showed that the program is successful: students were happy to learn diverse approaches to the writing process; grateful for handouts and models useful for other classes; relieved to have tools to address writer’s block. We plan to systematically assess SLO 4 every two years to monitor the effect of the new program. The poster shares the program curriculum, strategies to engage faculty, and invite collaboration with campus committees in refining and utilizing the Yeah, WRITE! program.

Yeah, WRITE! New Disciplinary Writing Curriculum As Outcome of Assessment Cycle

Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has 6 teaching faculty and 20 majors enrolled …

Given the complex nature of the requirements for the 6 degree programs offered by the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), the issue of student and advisor concern over the accessibility of accurate information regarding these requirements is addressed. This poster describes the strategies and effort taken by the EALL graduate chair and faculty to merge the 6 graduate programs into two: one MA and one Ph.D. program in EALL through powerful program assessment processes: consolidating student learning outcomes (SLOs) and unifying curricula through curriculum mapping (CM) activity. The poster first highlights the enormous challenges in the merge process: consolidating 13 sets of SLOs and unifying 13 sets of courses/degree requirements while leveraging diverse input and preferences of graduate faculty. SLOs consolidation and CM development process are then detailed along with how faculty were aided in seeing the big program picture and focusing on program commonality instead of individual differences. Faculty engagement strategies, such as meeting with senior faculty individually, SLO content analysis, research of peer institution, and developing mock products first are provided. With the unified degree programs and revised assessment tools, EALL is becoming a unified department sharing common educational goals across different languages and tracks.

Merging graduate degree programs with the Program Assessment tool set

Given the complex nature of the requirements for the 6 degree programs offered by the department of East …