2014-2015 Annual Program Assessment Report
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College: Humanities
Department: Gender & Women’s Studies
Program: Undergraduate
Assessment liaison: Breny Mendoza
1. Please check off whichever is applicable:
A. ________ Measured student work.
B. ____X_____Analyzed results of measurement.
C. ________ Applied results of analysis to program review/curriculum/review/revision.
2. Overview of Annual Assessment Project
Option B
This academic year assessment focused on the review of online and hybrid courses.
The faculty in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies have been early
adopters of online teaching at California State University, Northridge. Over time,
online and hybrid versions of most of our GE courses have become widespread in
our department. While online courses were assessed in similar ways to regular faceto-face courses, there was no process to assess online courses on their own terms
until now. Although it had not begun such a process, the Department has already
introduced practices or regulations to enhance student learning that are unique to
our Department, and are a result of our accumulated experience with online
teaching. For example, the Gender and Women’s Studies department requires that
online courses have at least one third synchronous activities in all online courses,
such as Live Chats, to encourage interaction between instructors and students.
Given that discussion and critical enquiry is so crucial to our field, we have ensured
that the quality of a live, discussion-oriented classroom is not lost in the online
format. As more recent research has shown that hybrid courses are pedagogically
preferred for student learning, we also have been moving progressively toward
hybrid courses.
We assessed five online and/or hybrid courses (GWS 100 Introduction to Gender &
Women’s Studies, GWS 300 Women as Agents of Change, and GWS 350 Intersections
of Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality) taught by five of our core faculty. A careful
examination of the syllabi, SLOs, the course webpage design, student’s work, and
instruction materials was done. The faculty teaching these courses were also
interviewed to get a closer view of the experience of the course as well as their own
assessments of online teaching and learning. Assessment was qualitative and
focused on the quality of teaching and student’s work. The following research
questions guided the assessment process: Are we changing the content of our
courses with the use of technology in online/hybrid courses? Are there changes in
course requirements between online, hybrid and regular face-to-face courses? Are
online students learning at the same pace as students in regular courses?
It is important to note that there are no set guidelines at CSUN for assessment of
online courses. Assessment of online courses at CSUN as well as in other universities
that I researched often limit assessment to the format or design of the course
webpage, but not the ways the content of courses may become modified as a result
of their online format or how online teaching may affect student learning. This
preliminary assessment of online teaching and learning in the GWS department
does not purport to remedy these limitations. It also does not pretend to fully
answer the research questions abovementioned or address in great depth how
online teaching is affecting our teaching or student learning. It does, however, want
to go a bit further than just a surface analysis of the course webpage as well as
identify some of the most important trends that are observable in a preliminary
assessment.
Conclusions
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There is a great disparity among the faculty regarding course web design as
well as course delivery that depends on the level of competency with online
teaching. While some of our faculty have exemplary course designs, following
all the best practices of online teaching to engage students, others have more
rudimentary course set ups. This may be attributed to the fact that perhaps
not all faculty have received proper training or have the same level of
experience or expertise with online teaching.
Syllabi were well designed by all faculty, including good course descriptions
that provided a good picture of the content of the course, course objectives,
and pertinent SLOs, but in some cases the course webpage design did not
reflect the content of the syllabus. A minimalist approach was preferred in
many cases that made the course webpage difficult to comprehend or
navigate for the reviewer and it must be assumed also for the students.
Not all student work was accessible electronically in all courses as some
faculty still graded hard copies or do not use Moodle for grading.
Some faculty are able to use a variety of software for online teaching that
helped students not only navigate the course with great ease, but also to
experiment with alternative ways of learning with the use of blogs, selfsnapshots, conceptual glossaries etc.
The delivery of online courses varied across the board. Some faculty
members provided power point lectures every week accompanied by other
activities such as forums, quick internet researches, and Live Chats, but most
did not provide power point lectures. In the weeks that students do not have
Live Chats or in-class sessions students are left to their own devices to
understand the material. Some faculty used discussion forums every week
while other spaced them out throughout the semester.
Some faculty used knowledge surveys at the beginning and end of the course
to assess student learning.
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While all courses met the writing requirements prescribed by the university,
the number of pages required in formal research papers has gone down
slightly over time. Nonetheless, faculty believe that this lower page count on
formal writing assignments was compensated by online students doing more
writing than students in face-to-face courses because of the writing involved
in forums, blogs etc. Multiple-choice tests are also becoming standard in
many cases, perhaps due to software availability.
Because of the nature of online teaching conceptual thinking may become
more difficult to learn as discussion forums, multiple-choice testing and
shorter term papers are slowly becoming the norm.
This assessment made visible the need to revisit the content sequence and
chunking of information that each course must deliver. Approximately ten
years ago, our department had conducted an assessment of all our GE and
core courses, and delineated concepts, materials, information that must be
covered by each particular course. Over time, and with changes in the field
and our own SLOs, it is apparent that we should revisit those course
differentials and update them.
Online courses tend to be left out of class evaluations and peer reviews. But
as a result of this assessment, we are now in the process of designing
evaluation forms specific for online and hybrid courses.
Recommendations
 Create incentives and requirements for faculty to attend online
instruction courses so that all students can benefit equally from the
advantages of online learning. Internal workshops in which more
experienced faculty teach the less experienced are also desirable.
 Have a retreat in which we discuss the findings of this preliminary
assessment and revisit general course requirements in terms of
conceptual frameworks that should be taught in lower and upper division
courses.
 Create more opportunities for faculty to evaluate the curriculum, our
pedagogies, and the impact of online teaching in our ways of delivering
content.
 Carry out opinion surveys for faculty and students regarding their
experiences of online teaching and learning.
 Set a minimum of online courses that are to be evaluated per year, per
faculty.
 Revisit the five year plan to expand assessment of online and hybrid
courses.
3. Preview of planned assessment activities for next year.
This year a new assessment liaison will carry out the task of assessment. She will
revisit the five-year plan with the help of the previous liaison to continue with
assessment of online courses and other changes that may emerge from this revision.
This will be presented in the next faculty meeting for discussion and approval.