Assessment Plan

Students looking at exhibit

The growing ICS curriculum focuses on ways we can help students to ‘unlearn’:

Goal 1: Stop understanding and interpreting the world through binary categories

Are students learning critical analytical skills that disturb both their binary understanding of themselves and of others as well as institutional and ideological structures?

Goal 2: Reframe American exceptionalism

Can students reposition their understanding of the world through a deep regional knowledge articulated with global connections that do not necessarily run through the United States?

Goal 3: Understand the present as rooted in historical empires and colonial structures

Can students recognize how the lives and institutions, inequalities and power structures that inhabit the present were produced by historical relations forged in colonialism and imperialism?

Goal 4: Have a strong point of view built on a sound empirical foundation

Are students able to offer thoughtful and engaged ideas about a particular topic that move beyond opinion to present in a public forum a clearly articulated argument about the world they or others inhabit?

The following goals have been used to shape our core classes:

Goal 1. Gain area knowledge

Assessment measures: analysis of curricular planning forms; responses to senior major survey

Goal 2. Gain knowledge of global and transnational dynamics

Assessment measures: evaluation of final writing assignment in capstone course; analysis of curricular planning forms; responses to senior major survey

Goal 3. Gain awareness of ways disciplines construct knowledge

Assessment measures: evaluation of final writing assignment in capstone course; responses to senior major survey

Goal 4. Gain knowledge through step-wise curricular choices

Assessment measures: analysis of curricular planning forms; responses to senior major survey

Goal 5. Integrate academic experiences through capstone

Assessment measures: evaluation of final writing assignment in capstone course; responses to senior major survey

Goal 6. Gain writing, analysis, and research skills

Assessment measures: evaluation of final writing assignment in capstone course; responses to senior major survey