Program: Art History (MA), Art (MFA)
Degree: Master's
Date: Fri Oct 14, 2011 - 10:56:11 am
1) Below are your program student learning outcomes (SLOs). Please update as needed.
Our department has five degree programs: the BA in studio art, the BA in art history, the BFA (a pre-professional studio art degree), the MFA (a terminal degree for studio artists) and the MA in art history. Each of these programs has developed five SLOs organized around five themes which are shared across programs. The result is a matrix of 25 program-level SLOs, which is downloadable in PDF format on our departmental website at http://www.hawaii.edu/art/students/resources/PDFs/2008assess_matrix-1.pdf .
2) Your program's SLOs are published as follows. Please update as needed.
Department Website URL: http://www.hawaii.edu/art/students/resources/PDFs/2008assess_matrix-1.pdf
Student Handbook. URL, if available online: Information Sheet, Flyer, or Brochure URL, if available online: UHM Catalog. Page Number: Course Syllabi. URL, if available online: NA Other: Other: 3) Below is the link(s) to your program's curriculum map(s). If we do not have your curriculum map, please upload it as a PDF.
- File (03/16/2020)
4) For your program, the percentage of courses that have course SLOs explicitly stated on the syllabus, a website, or other publicly available document is as follows. Please update as needed.
0% 1-50% 51-80% 81-99%
100%5) For the period June 1, 2010 to September 30, 2011: State the assessment question(s) and/or assessment goals. Include the SLOs that were targeted, if applicable.
Our department’s protocol for assessment evaluates the work of graduating students in each of our five degree programs. In each annual round of assessment, we evaluate the work of students in a single degree program, based on the five program SLOs (per degree program) listed in item 1 above. This year’s assessment targeted the MFA program, for which the SLOs are:
1. Technique/Practice: Demonstrate mastery of advanced skills and knowledge of an art medium or media.
2. Creativity/Originality: Demonstrate the mastery of an original, individual approach to and philosophy of art.
3. Knowledge/History: Demonstrate an advanced understanding and appreciation of the art-historical contexts which formed our present approach to the visual arts.
4. Communication/Analysis/Critique: Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyze the merits of art works and establish an individual sense of aesthetic judgment and standards, and show the ability to position one’s own creative process within the history of art.
5. Professional Skills: Organize and hold a successful solo exhibition of original work, conduct a successful oral defense of the exhibition, and write a thesis paper analyzing and supporting the exhibition.
The program wanted to find out what proportion of our graduating MFA students are meeting or exceeding these five goals at the point of graduation.
6) State the type(s) of evidence gathered to answer the assessment question and/or meet the assessment goals that were given in Question #5.
All graduating MFA students were required to submit a portfolio consisting of their thesis paper, a CV, an artist’s statement and 20 images of their recent artwork.
7) State how many persons submitted evidence that was evaluated. If applicable, please include the sampling technique used.
3 graduating MFA students were required to submit portfolios this year, although we had some difficulty with the collection procedure we’d set up and as a result are still collecting them (see item 12 below). This is partly the result of students who planned to graduate in Spring extending their graduation into the Summer term. Since the MFA program graduates such a small number of students each year, there are likely to be only a handful of portfolios collected per year. The assessment of such a small number of portfolios cannot be statistically significant. It was therefore agreed that the assessment of MFA portfolios would go forward this year as a test of our evaluation procedure, but that the results of this year’s assessment would not be taken as a definitive evaluation of the program. We will collect portfolios from all graduating MFA students from now on, such that in five years when we next assess the MFA program, there will be enough portfolios to make the procedure meaningful.
8) Who interpreted or analyzed the evidence that was collected? (Check all that apply.)
Course instructor(s) Faculty committee Ad hoc faculty group Department chairperson Persons or organization outside the university Faculty advisor Advisors (in student support services) Students (graduate or undergraduate) Dean/Director Other: 9) How did they evaluate, analyze, or interpret the evidence? (Check all that apply.)
Used a rubric or scoring guide Scored exams/tests/quizzes Used professional judgment (no rubric or scoring guide used) Compiled survey results Used qualitative methods on interview, focus group, open-ended response data External organization/person analyzed data (e.g., external organization administered and scored the nursing licensing exam) Other: 10) For the assessment question(s) and/or assessment goal(s) stated in Question #5:
Summarize the actual results.
The evaluation of the MFA portfolios is still ongoing. Because the portfolios are collected from graduating students, they only become available during finals week of Spring Semester and, in the case of MFAs, sometimes not until the summer. The actual evaluation work then takes place during the fall semester.
The BFA portfolios collected last year were evaluated by a faculty committee as described above and in last year’s assessment report, using a scoring rubric. Please see the BA/BFA report for the results of that evaluation.
11) State how the program used the results or plans to use the results. Please be specific.
We presented the results of the BFA assessment to the faculty in a meeting at the end of the fall semester. Please see BA/BFA report for more detailed information about our discussion.
12) Beyond the results, were there additional conclusions or discoveries?
This can include insights about assessment procedures, teaching and learning, program aspects and so on.
Some evaluators who worked on the BFA portfolios felt that they couldn’t evaluate all SLOs based on the materials submitted. The committee felt that in part this was because we didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the instrument; but there is also reason to think that the portfolios as currently submitted do not cover all areas of student learning. In general, SLOs 3-5, but especially #4, seem to refer to things that we expect studio art students to do verbally but not in writing. The faculty discussion on how to evaluate these SLOs better next time is still ongoing. In addition, we see the need to institute better procedures for collecting graduation portfolios from MFA and MA students, given how difficult it was to do so this round.