DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
STUDENT OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT PLAN
(Reviewed 2010)
I. PREAMBLE:
In constructing this plan, we--the faculty in the Department of History at UNI--have
considered the experience of student outcomes assessment in a number of History
departments at other universities. These often seem to us problematic. Many History
departments that have written about their experiences with student outcomes assessment
have described assessment procedures which measure only student recall of factual
information. Not surprisingly, student performance on such fact-based exams has been
abysmal. For example, at one Big Ten university, History seniors did not perform
significantly better than freshman in remembering facts. While we believe that the
accumulation of a factual knowledge base is very desirable, we believe that the study of
History should lead to the development of analytical skills that are ultimately more
important. In what follows, we have attempted to suggest a method to assess qualitatively
what, for want of a better phrase, can be termed historical thinking--rather than the mere
memorizing of historical details.
II. HISTORICAL OUTCOMES AND COMPETENCIES:
A.
Principal Goals:
The academic study of History by students at the University of Northern Iowa, just as
at any institution of higher learning, involves exposure to many different academic
courses and a wide variety of instructional approaches. It would be virtually
impossible to offer an exhaustive catalog of all the goals (i.e. “outcomes or
competencies”) that we--as twenty-five individual UNI historians--have for our
students. However, a baseline hierarchy of expectations to which we, as practicing
historians, can agree may be referred to as “the stages of historical consciousness.”
(Conal Furay and Michael Salevouris, The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical
Guide (Harlan Davidson: Arlington Heights, IL, 1988))
At the most elementary stage students see History as fact. The typical Stage I student
perceives History as a group of facts culled from lectures and books and regurgitated
on tests.
Slightly more advanced students see History as causal sequence. The Stage II
student recognizes that History provides a way of grouping events in a sequence,
acknowledging that some events not only precede other events in time but in some
way cause later events to
occur.
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The Stage III student sees History as complexity. This student is often overwhelmed
by the intricacies, anomalies, and difficult-to-explain facets of History. He/she
recognizes that complexity leads historians to focus on certain aspects of the puzzle
that is the past and to downplay others. Such a student also learns about the relative
nature of historical generalizations.
The most advanced, or Stage IV student, finally comes to understand that,
fundamentally, History is interpretation. This student learns that written History is a
product of the historians who write it, influenced by the angle of vision (i.e. bias) of
the individual historical interpreter and also heavily influenced by the availability or
unavailability of original historical sources. The Stage IV student has come to terms
with the reality that individual historians approach primary sources with different
questions, different personalities, different value systems, and, occasionally, different
political agendas. To appreciate that History is interpretation requires a sophisticated
thinking, which we hope will be achieved by a majority of our graduates.
While each of these levels of understanding has some merit, it is our hope that UNI
students majoring in History will ascend this hierarchy of historical consciousness
during the time they study with us. Some students may reach the fourth stage even
before completing their History majors; others will never reach it. One of the major
goals of our student outcomes assessment plan is to gauge the relative levels of our
students in the sequence of stages of historical consciousness.
B.
Other Goals:
Besides addressing the degrees of historical consciousness of our students, we also
wish to ascertain the perceptions of History majors regarding the following: the overall
quality of the UNI History offerings; the organization and logic of the two major
programs in History (Liberal Arts and Teacher Education); and the relevance of the
History major to individual career goals.
III. PROCEDURES:
A.
Sample Group:
In order to meet the goals noted above, we intend to collect papers and extract survey
information from a sample of our majors. The sample will consist of sophomores in
960:010, “Introduction to the Study of History,” and graduating seniors in 960:192, the
Junior/Senior Seminar. The “Introduction” course is required of all majors in History
and is usually taken shortly after the declaration of the major. Sampling sophomores
from 960:010 will allow us to “capture” students close to when they begin the History
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major. Sampling seniors in 960:192, the seminar required of all majors, will enable us
also to collect relevant data as students prepare to graduate.
The collection of papers will afford a basis for analyzing qualitatively the level of
historical consciousness of our students. Questionnaires will have two principal
purposes: 1) to discover student career goals; and 2) to ascertain student perceptions
regarding the quality and relevance of the UNI major in History to these career goals.
B.
Student Outcomes Assessment Committee:
The Department of History will create a Student Outcomes Assessment Committee
(SOAC) to read and evaluate the research papers of the sampled students. The
committee will be composed of three members of the Department: the Department
head, the chair of the Department's Curriculum Committee, and a third member of the
departmental faculty. Each year the SOAC will evaluate student papers and report the
relative levels of historical consciousness of students in the sample group. As this data
is collected over time, it will be possible to assess the development of our students as
well as to offer global appraisals of the sophistication of student historical thinking.
C.
Evaluation Procedures:
As part of its yearly assessment of student outcomes, the three members of the SOAC
will read the papers from 960:010 and 960:192, ranking each paper as to its place on
the continuum--from History as Fact through History as Causal Sequence, and History
as Complexity to History as Interpretation. A statistical breakdown of the findings for
each set of papers will be obtained. A scoring grid to be used by the SOAC will be
created. The SOAC will take note of any development in the historical consciousness
of students between 960:010 and 960:192. The SOAC will also take note of
information and suggestions provided by the questionnaires administered in 960:010
and 960:192.
IV. REPORTING RESULTS OF ASSESSMENTS:
A.
Report to the Department:
The SOAC will report its findings to the Department each spring semester in narrative
and (where possible) in statistical form. Student confidentiality will be respected by
the SOAC; no student names will appear in the annual reports. The Department of
History will receive the report of the SOAC and, if deemed appropriate, act on the
recommendations of the SOAC regarding the History curriculum as well as the
outcomes assessment procedure itself.
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B.
Other Reporting:
The yearly reports will be available to University administrators and bodies concerned
with student outcomes assessments, as well as appropriate groups external to UNI.
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