Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Introduction
The second component of the OSA contains the questions for Multicultural. The first
question asks if students took their Multicultural course as a core requirement at TTU.
The following pie chart shows that out of the 704 participants, 556 (i.e., 78.99%)
indicated that they took their Multicultural course for core curriculum credit at TTU and
148 (i.e., 21.02%) indicated that they took it elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 1 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Results
The student learning outcomes for Multicultural are:
- Demonstrate awareness and knowledge of cultural differences within one or
more distinctive sub-cultures of the United States, or
- Demonstrate awareness and knowledge of cultural differences within one or
more global societies (Outside the U.S).
Both student learning outcomes are generic enough to apply to all 7 questions on the
OSA. They are all knowledge-type questions where one correct answer exists. A copy
of the questions is shown below. For analysis purposes, the answers were coded from 1
to 4 in the order they appear on the actual instrument.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 2 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 3 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 1:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the first question for participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top). Answer 2 is the
correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose the correct
answer. However, there are also quite a few participants in both groups who chose one
of the other answers. Overall, a few more people in the “TTU” group chose the correct
answer as compared to the “Else” group (71% versus 68%). This difference is not
statistically significant. Please see attachment A for details. This means that students
who take their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU do not do better with this
question than students who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 4 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 2:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the second question for
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top).
Answer 3 is the correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose
the correct answer. There are only a few participants in both groups who chose one of
the other answers, which may make this question a poor discriminator of Multicultural
understanding. More people in the “TTU” group chose the correct answer as compared
to the “Else” group (95% versus 87%). This difference is statistically significant. Please
see attachment A for details. This means that students who take their class for
Multicultural core requirement at TTU do better with this question than students who
take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 5 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 3:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the third question for participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top). Answer 1 is the
correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose the correct
answer. There are only a few participants in both groups who chose one of the other
answers, which may make this question a poor discriminator of Multicultural
understanding. Overall, a few more people in the “Else” group chose the correct answer
as compared to the “TTU” group (95% versus 94%). This difference is not statistically
significant. Please see attachment A for details. This means that students who take their
class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU do not do better with this question than
students who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 6 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 4:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the fourth question for
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top).
Answer 4 is the correct choice. It can be seen that many in both groups chose the
correct answer. However, the majority of both groups chose one of the other answers.
Overall, a few more people in the “Else” group chose the correct answer as compared
to the “TTU” group (48% versus 46%). This difference is not statistically significant.
Please see attachment A for details. This means that students who take their class for
Multicultural core requirement at TTU do not do better with this question than students
who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 7 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 5:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the fifth question for participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top). Answer 1 is the
correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose the correct
answer. However, there are also quite a few participants in both groups who chose one
of the other answers. More people in the “TTU” group chose the correct answer as
compared to the “Else” group (76% versus 68%). This difference is statistically
significant. Please see attachment A for details. This means that students who take their
class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU do better with this question than students
who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 8 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 6:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the sixth question for participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and participants
who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top). Answer 1 is the
correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose the correct
answer. However, there are also quite a few participants in both groups who chose one
of the other answers. More people in the “TTU” group chose the correct answer as
compared to the “Else” group (76% versus 68%). This difference is statistically
significant. Please see attachment A for details. This means that students who take their
class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU do better with this question than students
who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 9 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural 7:
The chart below shows the distributions of answers to the seventh question for
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and
participants who took their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top).
Answer 2 is the correct choice. It can be seen that a large majority in both groups chose
the correct answer. However, there are also quite a few participants in both groups who
chose one of the other answers. Overall, a few more people in the “TTU” group chose
the correct answer as compared to the “Else” group (74% versus 72%). This difference
is not statistically significant. Please see attachment A for details. This means that
students who take their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU do not do better
with this question than students who take their Multicultural class elsewhere.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 10 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Multicultural Average:
The table below compares the differences between “TTU” and “Else” when the results
are averaged (e.g., if a student got 5 out of the 7 questions correct, his score will be 5/7
= .71). Students who took their course for Multicultural core requirement at Texas Tech
have a higher mean than students who took their course elsewhere. This difference is
statistically significant. This means that the “TTU” group performs better than the “Else”
group with this measure of Multicultural knowledge.
Core Elsewhere
Core Area
Multicultural
N
Core at TTU
pmean
stdev
N
mean
stdev
value
148 0.72008
0.1899
556 0.758736 0.1775 0.0207
The chart below shows the distributions of the average scores for participants who took
their class for Multicultural core requirement at TTU (bottom) and participants who took
their class for Multicultural core requirement elsewhere (top). The distributions are fairly
similar. The main difference is that the biggest group in “Else” got 5 out of 7 questions
correct while the biggest group in “TTU” got 6 out of 7 questions correct.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 11 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural The correlations between the overall averages for the Multicultural questions and total
transfer credits as well as age are both fairly low and not significant (see attachment B).
There is however a fairly strong correlation between the average score and GPA as well
as total credits earned. Both are statistically significant. While female participants have
a slightly higher average score than male participants (76% versus 74%), this difference
is not statistically significant (see attachment C).
Limitations
It is positive that students who take their multicultural course at TTU do better on this
measure of multicultural understanding than students who take their multicultural course
elsewhere. It is difficult, though, to measure multicultural understanding with seven
questions. As mentioned in the results, some of the questions were answered correctly
by a large majority of the participants in both groups and may be poor discriminators of
multicultural knowledge. It may be that this measure of multicultural understanding is a
good measure for the goals of multicultural courses taught at TTU, but not for the goals
of multicultural courses taught elsewhere. It is difficult to make comparisons without
more information about the courses taught elsewhere. It is still positive, though, that
students who take their multicultural course at TTU do better on this measure that aligns
with the TTU multicultural student learning outcomes.
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 12 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Attachments
Attachment A: Summary and Chi-Square Test for Questions 1 - 7
n = Multicultural 1 Multicultural 2 Multicultural 3 Multicultural 4 Multicultural 5 Multicultural 6 Multicultural 7 148 n = 556
Else TTU correct incorrect correct incorrect Chi‐Square Probability percent correct Else percent correct TTU Better?
100 48
393
163
0.4621
67.57%
70.68% TTU 129 19
528
28
0.0007
87.16%
94.96% TTU 140 8
520
36
0.6329
94.59%
93.53% Else 71 77
255
301
0.6474
47.97%
45.86% Else 100 48
424
132
0.0312
67.57%
76.26% TTU 100 48
421
135
0.0445
67.57%
75.72% TTU 106 42
412
144
0.5433
71.62%
74.10% TTU Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 13 of 15 no yes
no no yes
yes
no Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Attachment B: Simple Statistics and Correlations
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 14 of 15 Online Senior Assessment 2009: Multicultural Attachment C: 2-Sample T-Test for Average Score and Gender
Office of Planning and Assessment, September 2009 Page 15 of 15