Assessing Our Programs

Over the last three years, I have used this space to describe the plan we piloted in the fall semester of 2005 to assess our BA program in English.  We implemented the program in the spring semester of 2006 by asking our graduating seniors to submit a portfolio of their work in English at MSU.  We also asked seniors to attend an exit interview with faculty members of our assessment committee, and then to fill out an exit survey on the major.

This plan has already borne considerable curricular fruit: a junior-level course called “Writing for the Workplace”; another junior-level course called “Selected Authors,” which will take the form of a course on Jane Austen in the fall; and a one-hour course required of all majors, “English Studies,” which introduces our students to the major and to the profession.  Dr. Kelly Marsh currently teaches the course.

Additionally, in the spring semester of 2008, we implemented as assessment plan focused on the MA program.  Devised by the graduate faculty and our director, Dr. Richard Patteson, this plan draws data from results on the MA examination and from a new exit survey.  Results from the first administration of the survey suggest that our MA graduates love the program and its faculty.

• Specifically, among our MA graduates from 2008, fifty percent “strongly agreed” and fifty percent “agreed” that the program prepared them well to analyze and interpret English and American literature. 
• Students also praised the program for making them effective literary researchers.  Indeed, sixty-two percent “strongly agreed” and thirty-eight percent “agreed” that they had learned to use library resources effectively and to document primary and secondary sources correctly and ethically.
• Just as encouraging, eighty-eight percent “strongly agreed” and twelve percent “agreed” that the program improved their writing skills.
• Results on the MA examination have been a bit less stellar.  Having set a benchmark that 75% of the graduates will be able to write “satisfactory” or “excellent” essays on the MA exam, the graduate faculty found that only 70% of last year’s graduates met these standards. 

Of course, we can draw only tentative conclusions from one year’s data, but the graduate faculty has already acted to improve performance on the MA exam and to retain students.  Specifically, the faculty has revised the reading list for the examination, reducing the 57 titles to just 16, with several titles rotating onto and off the list each year.  The goal of this reduction has not been to make the essay examination easier, rather to allow students to prepare in greater depth on a more limited range of works in English and American literature.  Students will still have to write four one-hour essays on the examination, and this narrowed focus will mean that standards for “satisfactory” and “excellent” will rise, not fall.  However, by fostering responsible, disciplined preparation for the examination, we hope to retain and graduate more students.  The graduate faculty will carefully monitor future results and consider other changes as data warrant.

Next year, I’ll report on our progress with assessing the MA program and describe our new plan for assessing first-year composition, a plan just implemented this fall.  Stay tuned!

Rich Raymond, Department Head