Program Assessment Report
PROGRAM INFORMATION
Date submitted: March 1, 2011
Degree Program(s):
Department:
BA History
History
Department Chair:
Patricia Evridge Hill
Phone:
(408) 924-5755
Report Prepared by:
Patricia Evridge Hill
Phone:
(408) 924-5755
AY 2014-2015
E-mail:
Patricia.Hill@sjsu.edu
Next Self-Study due :
Note: Schedule is posted at: http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/programplanning/
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Location:
DMH 134
Person to Contact:
(Bldg/Room #)
Diana Baker
(Name)
(408) 924-5500
(Phone)
Assessment schedule is posted at http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/assessment
Please send any changes to the schedule or to student learning outcomes to Jackie Snell
jacqueline.snell@sjsu.edu
2. Using modern bibliographic data storage sites and systems and traditional (print) sources,
students systematically collect and appraise the historical significance and use of evidence of
various kinds of primary sources in western and non-western fields in pre-modern and modern
history: Government documents, Histories/Historical Accounts, Literature and Poetry, Images,
Autobiographies, Diaries, Letters, Newspapers, Maps, Quantitative Data, Oral Interviews.
Note: The history department assesses undergraduate learning through the three courses of its
core/skills sequence (Hist 99, Hist 100W, and Hist 102). These are the only courses that all SJSU history
majors must take. Each course in the sequence is significantly more challenging. As a result, what an
instructor in 100W sees as a student’s shortcomings when the semester begins likely represents real
learning on the part of that student the previous semester in Hist 99 (the 100W instructor rarely knows
where the student “began”). Instructors of these courses meet several times each year to discuss
assignments and ensure that each course in the sequence is appropriately targeted, but with the
exception of a year when three faculty members received Learning Productivity grants our workload has
prohibited systematic assessment of students’ progress on common assignments from the beginning of
the sequence through common assignments at the end of the sequence (our original plan). Recently,
we’ve moved away from common assignments altogether so that instructors can experiment with new
methods, exercises, and techniques. For the last two years—since we began assessing a single SLO
each year—instructors in each section of the core/skills classes prepared an assessment report specific
to that class. The department chair based this report on those analyses. Assessment results for each
course will be addressed separately below.
Initial Evidence of Student Learning:
[Prior to F10]
Hist 99—History Fundamentals (2 sections—Drs. Don and Wilson)
The typical problems that HIST 99 students face in mastering this SLO stem from a lack of familiarity with
primary sources and an inability to gauge and develop appropriate questions to ask of the source or
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Program Assessment Report
formulate theses after reading a source. An example: Dr. Don asked her class to pose factual and
analytical questions of the Emancipation Proclamation. A typical analytical question from students was:
What effect did the Emancipation Proclamation have on the South? She then asked what part of the
Emancipation Proclamation can answer this question, and students soon realized that the primary source
cannot answer that question. This is a problem of textual analysis. Instructors in Hist 99 must spend
quite a bit of time developing students’ understanding of the uses of a primary source. This is less a
problem of particular kinds of primary sources than it is an inability to think though the logical uses of
sources as evidence.
Dr. Don’s Hist 99 students completed a Pre-test. Only five out of 22 students were able to pose a thesis
that was specific and germane to the primary sources provided (WWI American propaganda posters
depicting Germans/Germany). Most of the students generated generic theses that could have applied to
almost any propaganda poster not just to those provided for analysis. In addition, only the same five
posed arguments in support of a thesis with direct evidence from the posters. The obvious conclusion
was that a lack of experience with textual/visual analysis led to weak theses and weak theses led to poor
papers.
In Dr. Wilson’s Hist 99 class, a Primary Source Paper was the first major assignment. Students chose
one primary source to evaluate from a published compilation required for the course. Most students
chose excerpts from Gilgamesh, The Book of Songs, the Ten Commandments, or the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. To succeed in this assignment, students needed to write a thesis-driven paper focused solely
on the information in the chosen primary source. Twenty-two students completed this assignment. 1/10 of
the students completed the assignment with insight and solid evidence. 1/5 of the students completed
the assignment competently with some errors. 1/3 of the students generally understood the assignment
but had major problems. The rest of the students did not succeed in evaluating the sources. Seven of
the students decided to rewrite their papers. All of the rewrites were significantly better.
Hist 100W—History Writers’ Workshop (2 sections—Drs. Don and Hilde)
Dr. Don noted that although about 90% of students in Hist 100W have taken Hist 99, her F10 section
included a quarter who were “grandfathered” into the course because they were SJSU history majors
before we introduced Hist 99. “I guess it is not strange that I lost pretty much all of those students before
the semester was over.” Overall, students possessed two main weaknesses related to their use of
primary sources. First, the students needed to do more textual analysis. Secondly, students had to
produce a 20-page paper, so this class challenged their pre-writing or outlining skills.
In a Pre-test, Dr. Don presented primary sources, WWI-era American propaganda posters against the
German enemy and in favor of buying liberty bonds with strong content that portrayed Germans in a
brutal light especially in regard to sexual matters. Also, she gave students some background that
suggested that German society and culture had been held in high regard in American educated society in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The writing prompt asked students to keep the background in mind
and write an essay that explained the posters. She asked students to be specific as to the content of the
poster in their arguments.
The Pre-test indicated that the most of the students could write a thesis about WWI-era American
propaganda posters, but none actually wrote a thesis that effectively analyzed the sexual content and
juxtaposed it with information provided about more positive American sentiments toward Germany before
WWI. Strangely, many papers made good arguments that characterized the sexual content of the posters
and attempted to analyze why such negative characterizations might be valuable to propagandists. Yet
none of the students connected this with the need to tear down pre-WWI sentiments in favor of Germans.
Dr. Hilde explained that every semester students seek to use oral interviews, either those already on file
at the SJSU archives (primarily the Chicano oral histories), or interviews they conduct themselves. She
does not allow students to conduct their own interviews unless they have taken public history classes and
are aware of proper procedures. They must also submit a copy of their questions and the transcribed
interview as part of their appendices. Students appear particularly drawn to this type of primary source
yet often fail to ask the kinds of analytical questions of oral history interviews that they would of more
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Program Assessment Report
traditional text-based or visual primary sources. In Dr. Hilde’s classes, the most popular primary sources
are diaries, letters, and autobiographies, as these are easiest to locate and to use. She noted that
students entering Hist 100W find the 15-page research paper daunting since it requires focus and
independence. However, they come to realize that because they are in charge of their own topic and
research it can be an incredibly rewarding experience.
Hist 102—Historiography (1 section—Dr. Katsev)
In Historiography, the primary sources that students use are writings by historians and historical thinkers,
ranging from ancient Greeks to post-modernists. Dr. Katsev explained that one of the biggest challenges
for students who have reached this level in the history program is to shift their thinking and appropriately
appraise these works as primary sources, not secondary sources. “They want to ask their usual
questions: What is this historian telling me about the past? Is it true? Instead, they have to ask: What
does this historian’s account reveal about his/her worldview? How might that worldview tell us something
about his/her times? How might this narrative have shaped others’ views of the past?”
Change(s) to Curriculum or Pedagogy:
[F10]
Hist 99
This fall, Dr. Don increased the amount of time she spent on textual analysis and the number of exercises
she used to help students develop their analytical abilities with primary source texts, especially as they
led up to major writing assignments. For the first time, she made a textual analysis paper in which
students analyzed a set of primary sources the first major assignment of the semester. Previously,
students had been able to select a package of 10-12 primary sources in some period of American history
that they used to complete a seven-page paper, the first of two papers. In F10, however, she required
the students to complete a three-page textual analysis paper and spent far more time teaching them
sourcing and contextualization skills before moving on to a more substantive essay. Completing this
small but significant assignment early in the semester greatly improved the focus of the major papers that
followed.
Dr. Wilson devoted two class sessions early in the semester to “reading the text as a historian.” She
asked students to read aloud excerpts from Hammurabi's Law Code then volunteer to tell the class what
certain passage say about 17th century BCE Mesopotamian attitudes towards divorce, property, justice,
water, and many other things. The students, overall, had some difficulty reading beyond the words of the
texts. Still, during the course of two class sessions with coaching, 75% of the students were able to
confidently make a statement about Mesopotamian beliefs and support the statement with evidence from
the primary source.
Hist 100W
Dr. Don met individually with students in this small section of 13 to review outlines and sources chosen
for the students’ second research papers. Eleven of those students responded to the increased individual
attention and made great progress—“I felt those 11 papers were some of the best I have had in my years
in my department.” Still, individual sessions added hours to an already overwhelming workload leading
Dr. Don to conclude, “I am not sure the interventions were ones that I would want to sustain in the future.”
Dr. Hilde strongly recommended that students base their research papers on materials in the SJSU
Special Collections and meet with that unit’s director, Danelle Moon, who introduced them to the
collections available at SJSU. Dr. Hilde allowed students to go beyond local and SJSU history if they
demonstrated that they had a viable topic and a plan for locating sources. F10 paper topics included the
changing mores of San Jose State students as seen through text, images, and poetry in the student
publication from the 1920’s, the Spartan Spanker, and the public reaction to Custer’s Last Stand indicated
by newspaper coverage in the North and South and in diaries, and autobiographies. These were both
highly successful paper projects—one based on primary sources in the University’s Special Collections
and the other based on the student’s exploration of an area in which Dr. Hilde has a great deal of
expertise.
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Program Assessment Report
Hist 102
During F10, Dr. Katsev decided that a key step in helping the students appraise the works of past
historians as primary sources was “to work with them from day one on how they read the sources.” This
involved focusing on how they think about the sources. “In the past, I had assigned material, and then
when we came to class, asked them questions about the text. Now, I’ve switched to introducing them to
the questions first.” At the very first class meeting, before students did any reading, Dr. Katsev gave
them a set of reading questions that they would return to throughout the semester. And, so that they
understood the kind of thinking these questions required, together in that first class, she guided students
through the application of the questions to a few paintings from the Renaissance (visual primary sources).
Dr. Katsev emphasized that this was just an exercise in using the questions, so students wouldn’t feel
intimidated by the art. “For example, I show side-by-side a painting by Vermeer and Raphael. All of the
students can readily make comparisons of what the two artists think is worth recording, why, and how.
As they look at a macabre image of life and death by Hans Baldung, they find they can discuss his
understanding of the relationship between past, present and future.” For their first homework assignment,
students applied these same questions to texts by Ancient Greek and Roman historians. At the second
class meeting, students’ picked up with these same questions, and together did close readings of the
assigned texts.
Evidence of Student Learning after Change:
[F10]
Hist 99
On Dr. Don’s Post-test, a little over half of the 22 students were able to pose a thesis that was specific to
the primary source evidence. Too many students still formed obvious general theses, though more of the
unsuccessful students at least noted that the propaganda posters made characterizations of Germans
that were designed to motivate Americans to purchase liberty bonds, which was slightly better than the
Pre-test. Again, the quality of the papers and citation of evidence followed closely the quality of the
thesis. The obvious conclusion was that increasing textual analysis instruction helped students’ overall
understanding of historical analysis and the writing process. In response, Dr. Don has increased the
amount of instructional time on textual analysis even more during S11 and has tied sourcing and
contextualization to the section of the course on historical questions and theses.
Below are samples of Pre/Post-test theses of 1) a student who made only slight progress, 2) a student
who made significant progress, and 3) a student who did well at the beginning of the class but made slight
progress honing his thinking in the class.
Only slight progress—
Pre: “They used several posters to show how Germans were a deadly, destructive force and they would
kill anyone in their path.”
Post: “The propagandists in the US appealed to Americans’ urge to buy liberty bonds to support the war
effort by making the Germans seem like villains, while the US was the hero.”
Significant progress—
Pre: “The US used several propaganda techniques to move American opinion against Germany in WWI.”
Post: “The portrayal of Germans in US propaganda was one of savagery, violence, and authoritarianism,
and the portrayals were used to persuade Americans to support the war effort by buying liberty bonds.”
Strong student who improved—
Pre: “By using fear, loss of traditions, and ancient prejudices and characterizations of Germans as brutes
or barbarians, the US made its appeal to its citizens to help the war effort to defeat the enemy and buy
liberty bonds.”
Post: “To make the image of evil Germans, the US government chose to portray them as barbarians that
challenged the traditional American values of decency toward women and respect for the innocents in
war, thus motivating Americans to buy liberty bonds and support the war effort.”
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Program Assessment Report
A Primary/Secondary Source Paper is the last major assignment due in Dr. Wilson’s class. To succeed
in this assignment, the students needed to write a thesis-driven paper based on primary sources they
chose from the textbook and secondary sources they accessed on their own. Eighteen students
completed this assignment. 1/2 of the students were able to use evidence and some insight to evaluate
their sources. 1/4 of the students focused on the secondary sources and not the primary sources. 1/4 of
the students did not succeed in evaluating the sources. This paper could not be rewritten since it was
due on finals day.
Stats from this class:
Final grades:
Began with 24 students
A or A- = 2
B or B- = 4
C or C- = 3
D or D- = 4
F = 9 (5 of these stopped attending class during the semester)
I=1
W=1
Hist 100W
On Dr. Don’s Post-test, the twelve remaining students did a good job of organizing the essay and writing
theses that analyzed the characterization of Germans and the emphasis on sexual matters. However,
again, none made connections to educated Americans’ pre-WWI admiration of Germans and German
culture, revealing a lack of sophistication when combining an analysis of primary sources and historical
context. Over 70% of the students used blueprinting of the thesis. All of the essays were much more
focused on the question and also guided by the students’ theses. Overall there was a good improvement
in both textual analysis and organization of thinking.
Based on the final essays Dr. Hilde concluded, “Students are often motivated to go beyond the obvious
sources because they choose topics they truly find interesting.” For instance, a relatively weak student
ended up doing some of the most involved research. He cares deeply about baseball, and learned of a
WWII baseball team when reading a popular book. This led him to a secret WWII prison camp housing
German sailors seized from a captured u-boat. He corresponded with archives in Louisiana to find more
primary sources to document his essay. Dr. Hilde added that once students make it past the second
paper, they almost always complete the final paper. They must do research based on both primary and
secondary sources, but students enjoy having their own individual projects and they pursue the research
with great attention, often finding far more information than expected. Samples of the final essays are
available for review.
Hist 102
Dr. Katsev assessed students’ abilities to analyze the writings of historians as primary sources through a
section of the mid-term exam, in which they were required to analyze passages from historians Livy (59
B.C.E.-17 C.E), Agrippa (1486-1535), Condorcet (1743-1794), and Michelet (1798-1874). Samples of A,
B, and C responses are available. By changing students’ perceptions at the very beginning of the course
and reinforcing the view that historians of the past create primary sources both through discussion and in
writing, “almost all of the students early on in the class showed a sophistication of analysis of primary
sources that I had not seen before.”
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