Instructional Planning Yearly Update
Date ______11/22/2012___________________
Department ____Philosophy_________________
Division ______HASS___________________
Goals and Recommendations from Program Plan
List the top five Goals and Recommendations from the last Program Plan and indicate whether they have been met?
Goals / Recommendations from six-year plan In progress
Goal Met
Comments
(identify source
of funding)
To increase student access and success by
decreasing the student/instructor ratio
No
No
To increase student success by providing diverse
in-class student experiences
A little
No
A little
No
No
No
To increase student success by enhancing access,
encouraging participation in learning communities
and stimulating communication by offering hybrid
distance format extensions to on campus courses
through “Blackboard” or other comparable
technology
Restoration of 30 TU’s from Goal 1 would
necessitate hiring one additional contract
member
New Goals and Recommendations
Goal/Recommendation
If anything, our classes are larger than ever. However, we
have offered Honors Ethics this Fall 2012 semester and plan to
do so again in the Fall of 2014, we have also reinstated the
History of Philosophy series this Fall 2012 semester.
Latin American Philosophy has been launched in Curricunet
and the plan is to alternate it with Philo. 14 – Non-Western
Philosophical Traditions beginning in the Spring of 2014. The
department will discuss launching Aesthetics – but it is unclear
which of our core courses could be used to alternate with it
since there are no new units in the offing. We are still moving
a bit backwards on this goal as we are not scheduling Philo. 15
or 16 in order to maximize units in the more critical classes
necessary for matriculation.
We’ve lost any hope of reinstating our guest lecturer budget
thus enriching those classes such as Philo. 14 & 15. However
nearly all the faculty in the department have web pages and are
much more effectively exploiting digital media to enhance the
students’ experiences.
In the current economic climate, there is no hope of attaining
this goal.
List any new goals and recommendations identified by the department
Cost
Explanation/Evidence of Need
O:\Instruction Office\Program Planning\Annual Updates\Annual Plans Rcvd Fall 12\HASS\Philo Annual Update fall2012.doc
SLO Assessment: List SLO assessments, dialogues, and priorities identified as a result of your assessment below. Attach Departmental
Assessment Analysis Forms completed in the last two semesters. (See Revolving Wheel of Assessment for recommended schedule).
Core Competency, Course
SLO, or CTE Program SLO
Assessed. Example: all course
SLOs for English 1A, 1B and 2
SLO: Critically evaluate
arguments– for all Philo.
courses
Date of meeting where
analysis / dialogue took
place. Example: Department
Meeting 8/27/10
Department Meeting
8/23/2012
Core Competency: Global
Awareness– for all Philo.
courses
Department Meeting
8/23/2012
Core Competency: Personal
Responsibility and
Professional Development –
for all Philo. courses
Department Meeting
2/3/2012
Priorities identified for program as a result of assessment. Example:
Develop strategies for teaching research and documentation skills; share
rubrics for research papers; provide more instructional support outside of
class.
We found that students have a great deal of difficulty identifying core
philosophical/moral issues and finding the conclusions and premises in
arguments offered. They correspondingly have difficulty in developing
arguments to support any thesis advanced. In order to correct these
challenges, new assignments are being tested that lead students to identify
the central issue(s) of a case study, develop a list of research questions that
could lead to becoming more informed about a case, then propose and
defend a position regarding this case and finally articulate counterconsiderations to their thesis and respond to those counter-considerations.
These assignments are replacing conventional paper assignments and
because each component is separated with distinct point value, it has
encouraged students to become more aware of what is involved in the
critical thinking process. Overall, both the quality of the work and thus
their scores have improved thus far. More data will be collected.
We decided to write and launch the new course description for Latin
American Philosophy with the hopes of teaching it in the Spring of 2014.
Since there are no new units forthcoming, we decided to alternate this new
course with our very popular Non-Western Philosophical traditions in order
to broaden our coverage of world philosophy and particularly with the idea
of meeting the task of a Hispanic Serving Institution.
We discussed the problem of students understanding of their progress in
class. All of us are currently working to improve transparency in grading,
providing more frequent updates and embedding student progress into the
daily presentation. This can be done without more appeals to resources.
O:\Instruction Office\Program Planning\Annual Updates\Annual Plans Rcvd Fall 12\HASS\Philo Annual Update fall2012.doc