General Education Annual Course Assessment Form
(due September 1)
Course Number/Title _RelS/Anth 122 Magic, Science & Religion__ GE Area ______V______
Results reported for AY __2010-11_ # of sections ___2/semester___ # of instructors__2___
Course Coordinator: ___Mira Z. Amiras__ email: __mira.amiras@me.com________________
Department Chair:
Chris Jochim
College:
Humanities
Instructions: Each year, the department will prepare a brief (two page maximum) report that
documents the assessment of the course during the year. This report will be electronically
submitted by the department chair to the Office of Undergraduate Studies with an electronic
copy to the home college by September 1 of the following academic year.
Part 1
To be completed by the course coordinator:
(1) What SLO(s) were assessed for the course during the AY? No. 2
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 2 Students shall be able to identify the historic context of ideas and
cultural traditions outside the U.S. and how they have influence American culture.
Part II of the course addresses this learning objective, and especially the second
required reading for the course. Here, specific case studies will be considered in their
pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial manifestations, where appropriate. Examples
of the shift of movements from outside the U.S. to inside the U.S. will be included.
(2) What were the results of the assessment of this course? What were the lessons
learned from the assessment?
Goal: Some of the questions we address regarding SLO 2: Why do religious movements
and/or scientific paradigm shifts emerge? How, when, and why do they turn
political? In what ways are movements responses to colonial or post-colonial
conditions and/or oppressions? What makes emerging movements effective (or
defective)? Under what conditions do new movements fail? SLO 2 allows us to
address what turns out to be some of the more significant current events of our time.
Diagnostic and Baseline/Formative Assessment: Initial discussion, surveys and written
work demonstrate that the student baseline tend to consider their own spiritual,
political, and/or scientific understanding and practices to be ‘true’ or ‘natural’
previous to taking the course. They are also, for the most part, woefully ignorant of
the roots of social movements around the globe. (Why is there an ‘Arab Spring’ and
a domino effect of radical change in the Middle East today, for example). They also
come into the course thinking that many non-Western approaches are just plain not as
good as ours (or theirs, at any rate). Initial discussions demonstrate that they have
come into the class knowing that they ought to be tolerant of difference (race,
religion, creed, and perhaps gender identity etc), but they are for the most part
initially cognocentric and ahistorical. Part II of the course addresses these issues.
Ongoing Assessment: The second readings choices in MSR all address social, political,
and religious movements, while the third readings address the equivalent issue in the
sciences: paradigmatic shifts in science and technology. Lectures and discussion in
class address these issues in depth, and the second midterm focuses on SLO 2, as do
some of the questions on the Final Exam.
Summative Assessment: Surprisingly (at least to me), SLO 2 is easier to convey to
students than is SLO 1. Students on the whole tend to do much better on the second
Midterm, which focuses on these ideas, than they do on Mid I which focuses on the
more cosmological questions of worldview, and the understanding of the sources of
personal suffering and healing. SLO 2, on the other hand, focuses on more
sociological rather than psychological phenomena — social forces which are debated
in the public arena. Why Al Qaeda? Why the Arab Spring? Why riots on the streets
of London? Mass murder in Norway? Opposition to stem cell research? And more.
Perhaps because these questions are so important outside the academic arena, and
perhaps because we actually learn how to answer these questions, students tend to do
well with SLO 2.
(3) What modifications to the course, or its assessment activities or schedule, are planned
for the upcoming year? (If no modifications are planned, the course coordinator
should indicate this.)
There is no plan for any significant modification in RelS/Anth 122 at this time. Minor
modification includes the inclusion of additional recent research, readings, films
and/or theorists into the course.
Part 2
To be completed by the department chair (with input from course coordinator as appropriate):
(4) Are all sections of the course still aligned with the area Goals, Student Learning
Objectives (SLOs), Content, Support, and Assessment? If they are not, what actions
are planned?
YES.