Students' portfolios remain our primary instrument of assessment. Because we are trained to teach writing about literature and as a creative end in itself, this means of evaluating students' knowledge and skill makes particular sense for our discipline. This year we have also looked at how syllabi reflect our goals and we have developed and circulated a student survey to address the Campus Assessment Committee's desire for student involvement in program assessment.

I. The English Major Portfolio

Portfolio requirements: ten papers demonstrating the range of skills and work listed below. As of the end of this summer (after August graduations in 2005), all students graduating will need to write a self-evaluation (5 pp.) in which they reflect on their progress, what they've learned, and what the portfolio work shows. They will also need to have selected the nine other papers that comprise the portfolio, which they can do on their own or in consultation with the advisor.

The English Major Portfolio serves the dual purpose of assessing the performance of the student completing an English major and the performance of the major program itself. Students must demonstrate ability in both of the following areas for the literature and writing concentrations:

Assessment of Content:
1. ability to analyze and interpret literary texts
2. ability to apply literary and rhetorical theories to reading and writing
3. a sense of social and literary history as context
4. a knowledge of the concept of genre

Assessment of Writing Skills:
1. the general skills of college-level exposition (including research and documentation)
2. skills associated specifically with analysis and interpretation of literary texts
3. for majors with a concentration in writing, skills associated with two of the following: creative writing, exposition, and journalism.

The portfolio requirements are consistent with the goals established by the Higher Learning Commission and the new general education curriculum. (I have copied the following statement from the previous annual reports:) The instrument of the portfolio helps us address four of the five educational objectives required by the Higher Learning Commission (NCA). The portfolio papers themselves allow us to evaluate discipline-specific knowledge and skills, such as literary terminology and methods of approach (1); basic academic success skills, notably writing and reading (3), and improvement in these skills by review of the student's papers from the sophomore to senior years; and higher order thinking skills (5), evident in the presentation of a creative and important argument and the specificity of language and detail in an analytical paper. We can also gauge responsiveness to academic values (4) by a student's work with social, ethical, and philosophical issues in any literary work, but multicultural studies are also an area rich in questions about academic values. The student's writing and research on multicultural issues in American literature as well as in our required courses E301, E302, E303, and E304, Literatures in English, broadens his or her knowledge of academic values significantly. These courses include the works of writers of color from many countries in the context of colonialism and postcolonialism; they necessarily deal with the interpretation of varied and contradictory cultural and ethical standards. Although particular courses encourage aspects of personal development (2), certainly including the capacity to think for oneself, and often the ability to work productively with others as well as to develop leadership skills, we have no formal means of evaluating this progress.

Analysis of student portfolios addresses the following fundamental gen ed literacies: writing, critical thinking (evident in interpretation and analysis), information literacy, and computer literacy. The American literature courses address diversity in U.S. society. We are developing first-year courses in the areas of Literary and Intellectual Traditions and Art, Aesthetics, and Creativity.

Techniques

As for other departments, this process demands significant time on the part of faculty members over and above the usual intensity of their reading and commenting work. There are three hoops of fire to leap through and we have gotten through the second. The first is the collection of material; the second is department-wide analysis; the third is the more standard and consciously shaped portfolios themselves. Although we all agree that student involvement in the creation and development of the portfolio is important, for some years we have had limited and haphazard success in getting students to submit work for their portfolios. When we asked, students would forget or procrastinate, and they often did not keep even electronic versions of their work. We are in our second year of a system whereby faculty teaching courses in the major ask students to submit two copies of each paper when it is due and the second is given to me as Chair of the Committee on the Major (responsible for program assessment), who in turn forward these second copies to the appropriate advisors. This has so far vastly increased the number of papers, though it is not yet routine for every faculty member . Furthermore, because we are asking that this happen in all courses for the major, we are receiving papers from students at earlier stages and can better advise them about writing and interpretive strengths and areas to work on during their careers. (Typically, seniors were alert to the portfolio requirements and would give us many papers all at once at the end.) Between November and April, I distributed about 55 papers. As of February of this year, we have made another improvement, namely to forward a copy of the instructor's assignment, which has been helpful to the advisor in evaluating both what we ask of students and how well they do it; the assignment provides further direction for the advisor within the rubric of the portfolio goals.

We have also reframed the means of analyzing our findings. Whereas we used to charge a committee (the Committee on the Major) with all of the portfolio reading, though, granted, a sample, since we could not get material across the board, we now involve and charge all of the faculty in the major, with much greater success. Each advisor now reads the portfolio papers. Since faculty members are individually entrusted with grading, we concluded that they could be entrusted with evaluating portfolio papers, especially since there is not a grade that might be in dispute. Whereas we used to meet after graduation (which already meant some faculty might be away), we this year have dedicated the March department meeting to discussing the portfolios. The timing has been good for April advising and registration. Faculty were asked to read portfolio s in preparation for this discussion. The faculty in the major have met for this purpose for the first time in many years. It would be good to convene this body in the fall as well so that assessment can be more routine.

Our deliberations have been wide-ranging. We are considering and have looked at a model for an electronic portfolio, which would solve difficulties of collection and access; we will continue to think about creating a modestly credit-bearing course for selecting, assembling and editing portfolio papers, although there is difficulty in providing instruction for what would probably be an overload. We discuss the validity and usefulness of the categories and goals of the portfolio. We have identified several specific habits or weaknesses in writing that we can usefully talk about in order to improve our teaching of literature and writing. Once we regularly gather and discuss enough material, we can refine the goals, making our evaluation more precise, and recommend changes to the program.

Analysis of the Portfolio

Six faculty members read the portfolios of twenty-one students comprising 54 new papers. Faculty rated portfolios as strong, competent, or weak for the given stage in the student's career (according to the student's year). Eleven portfolios demonstrate strong work in almost all of the areas we are looking for, with the occasional exception of one of the categories such as genre or social and literary history and, if the student is a writing concentrator, one of the writing genres. Nine portfolios are competent; of these two lean towards strong, and several have one or two strong papers, demonstrating especially work in interpretation and literary analysis. Two others belong to creative writing students who need to represent more of their work in literary analysis. One competent portfolio leans to the weak side, and only one portfolio is unqualifiedly weak,

The implications of these results are that we are seeing more material at a higher level in the main categories. We would expect to see more complex work in the portfolios of advanced students, and we do. The very weak students are underrepresented in part because they have not heretofore submitted material for their portfolios. We have talked about holding formal discussions concerning the borderline students in order to try to increase contact with them and help them improve. This discussion would be good to have in the fall so that we have an opportunity to keep them on track during the academic year.

II. Program changes

We have responded to our findings in the most recent assessments. At the time of the last third-year review, the department had only recently adopted a different level and set of courses in which to teach the British survey, moving them from three courses at the two-hundred level to a choice of three out of four at the three-hundred level. There was a major conceptual change because the new sequence expanded the area of inquiry from pretty much English and Irish literature to "Literatures in English;" this move therefore included more work by students on expatriate, colonial, and post-colonial writers trained in English, and it helped the department address the requirements for greater multicultural study. A grant from International Programs and the Chancellor's Fund in the spring of 2003 enabled the acquisition of new library materials especially to support the E303 and E304 courses (the nineteenth- and twentieth-century courses), which in turn made possible better research opportunities for students to do work on literary and social history as context, one of our portfolio aims, for which we had not received much material. These E3xx courses have also become the forum in which to address students' knowledge of genre, essential to a broad understanding of the purposes, content, and forms of literature, and for which we have much more evidence. They do much to help us evaluate work in the major.

III. Survey for English majors

The Survey Form

Survey for English majors
Mar. 8, 2005

Dear English major,
Please give us your feedback on IU South Bend's English program. You can fill this out in your advisor's office or turn it in to Anne Richmond, the English Department secretary. (It would be helpful to have your comments each spring so that we can try to respond to your suggestions.)

1. What do you see as the strengths of the English major program?

2. How would you like to see the program develop (course offerings, teaching methods, departmental community, opportunities for creative work beyond courses and student publications, advising, anything else)?

3. Do you feel that you have been able to demonstrate your skill and knowledge? In what formats or mediums do you feel you are best able to demonstrate what you can do (writing, discussion, exams, other)?

4. Do you have an awareness of the concerns of historical periods in American and British literature? Do you have suggestions for how to provide this knowledge better?

5. Have you developed strength in interpreting literature and in writing about it? Do you have suggestions for how to teach these skills better?

6. If you have taken film studies courses, have you developed strength in analyzing and writing about films and in screenwriting? How would you like to see this part of the program develop?

7. Have you developed strength in creative writing (poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction)? How would you like to see the creative writing program develop?

Analysis of the Survey

We have only received four responses to the survey but they are informative. Students appreciated the variety of courses offered and the kind of work asked for, noting hypothesis, research, and the communication of ideas as useful and important in any field. The main shared request is for a greater sense of community among students and connection between faculty and students. One student would like to see an English club. Two surveys were completed by creative writers who had had positive experiences but wanted even more encouragement of writers and of more varied and creative modes of expression, perhaps a creative writing assignment, in the literature courses. One wanted nitty-gritty business advice for publishing. Two interestingly felt they demonstrated what they knew by writing papers rather than taking exams; regardless of the merits of either form of performance, the students are serious about their writing.

IV. Assessment of the Core Courses

The following assessment was drafted by Margaret Scanlan, Chair of the department:

The new core requirement for English majors, introduced in Fall 2001, follows the practice of the Bloomington department; we, however, were primarily motivated by 1) a desire to offer these courses at the three-hundred level, with longer and more demanding writing assignments 2) a desire to have a separate course for the twentieth century to do justice to contemporary literature and introduce a multicultural emphasis. We decided that "literatures in English" would include the traditional Commonwealth countries, but would exclude American literature, which is well-represented in our usual offerings.

One of our goals with these courses was to ensure that we were giving assignments-reading, tests, papers-that would help with the four basic categories that we use when we assess major portfolios. To help us see what we are doing in these four areas, I solicited syllabi from all of the sections of the four-semester survey offered in the last three years. I then went through them, looking for assignments directed specifically at these four goals. It emerged that we are covering all four of these goals in our four classes, in a wide variety of ways. The paper topics and exam questions listed below exemplify ways in which we are teaching these skills.

Ability to analyze and interpret texts: central to all classes; questions about what something means, how two characters or two elements in a text relate to each other; close comparisons of two works that are superficially similar; frequent admonitions to use evidence from the text; identification questions and others aimed at importance of close reading.

Ability to apply literary and rhetorical theories to reading and writing; reading in theory or criticism as part of assignment for the course in two cases; paper topic specifically invoking L222, encouraging students to use readings from that course in E304; frequent paper topics or exam questions evoking a theory that has obviously been much discussed in class.

A sense of social and literary history as context: chronological ordering of texts in surveys; statement that theme of course provides a "link" to the "century's larger divisions," which are specified in terms of social and political history, scientific and technological process. In another course, specification of, for example, "a brief introduction to Anglo-Saxon England" as topic of lecture; paper topics asking students to research "Germanic, lore, legend and history" and link to Beowulf; paper topics specifically evoking comparison between contemporary world and the past or between American and England, for example how hostility gets expressed in a society that places a premium of good manners and restraint; research paper; exam questions that reflect teaching of a key period concept, e.g., "right reason vs. wrong reason"; paper evoking differences between literary periods, e.g. Romantic and Victorian; literary history as context-one course organized around "ghost stories" (very widely conceived, of course) as they evolve over a century; comparison of immigration narratives (fiction, non-fiction) in contemporary England; modernism vs. nineteenth-century realism vs. the post-modern.

A knowledge of the concept of genre: paper topic: is Beowulf a "heroic poem"? Paper topic based on identifying characteristic feature of narrative and showing both how it works and what it means to our understanding of the text (unreliable narrator, role of host in Canterbury Tales); paper inviting comparison of two poems with similar topics, or of a poem and a narrative with the same topic, highlighting some features of form that distinguish them; paper based on conventions of allegory; manipulation of time as a feature of genre; two instructors specifically note "demonstrate your knowledge of genre" as purpose of a paper comparing epics with mock epics, or looking at formal elements of the novel; film adaptations compared to the print text; two instructors ask questions on "novel of manners"; question on what makes a comic story comic when a summary of its plot would make it seem unhappy, even tragic?

E301-E304 as "literatures in English," do these courses break away from the old survey of British literature model? E302 paper on literature of exploration; emphasis in E301 on variety of linguistic and ethnic groups that lived in medieval England; emphasis in E304 on postcolonial writers and "Black Britain." E303, Victorian colonialism; representations of the Other in English texts.

Other concerns: everybody has topics that invoke ethical and psychological issues, often with the explicit point that literature allows us to see their complexity. In Heart of Darkness, who really protects whom? How? Why? What are the implications? Or: "One of Iago's wicked goals is to destroy the relationship between Othello and Desdemona. Describe the methods he uses and explain why they are successful." Another paper topic: look at question of obscenity in the "Miller's Tale." "What is the sentence of this tale which might seem at first to be all solaas?" Exam question on "personal integrity and communal obligations" as seen in medieval texts. Exam question on whether the characters in Barbara Pym, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Elizabeth Taylor would be healthier or better if they lived in a society that encouraged free and frequent venting of all hostilities, emotions, and appetites. These sometimes have a political bent, e.g. why Auden repudiated "September 1939" in the context of the poem's enormous popularity in the immediate post 9/11 period; Conrad on civilization and the possibility of a moral life.

L222 What is there to say? This is clearly a theory course; the two instructors who have taught it have students read texts written by theorists, rather than secondhand accounts of their theory; student responses are overwhelmingly favorable in spite of the difficulty of the subject matter. Both instructors use literary texts as well as theory readings.

L202 This course emphasizes basic interpretative skills and close reading; all instructors introduce some technical vocabulary, although there is no agreement about how much prosody, for example, is taught. All instructors teach at least three genres and seem to spend time discussing the constraints, possibilities, and conventions of the genres. Everyone assigns reading from an anthology; while there's no required reading list, there's quite a lot of common ground in reading assignments: an Ibsen play, a Shakespeare play; modernist short stories (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce) and canonical English and American poets turn up on most syllabi. Some people assign an additional text of key terms (e.g., The Bedford Glossary); Scholes' Textbook (writing about literature, theory lite) appeals to some instructors. Instructors seem to require quite a bit of informal writing-a journal, a daily response paper, contributions to a discussion forum. Most instructors seem to require students to construct an annotated bibliography and work with Internet sources; one instructor offers students the options of writing to scholars or a "living writer of modest repute." Another asked students to use "wiki" technology to construct a research site. The number of short essays varies-in one case the course relies almost wholly on daily response writing, with a research project at the end; more typically, there are 3-4 essays; everyone seems to use essay exams, although some instructors also include a short answer section (identification, one-paragraph essays). Three instructors took advantage of student play productions-requiring students to read the play in question, attend a rehearsal or production, and in general get a first-hand experience of performance as interpretation. Another instructor assigned a paper topic on film adaptation, with an injunction to "use the film as a lens through which to interpret the written text."

Annual assessment reports for 2003 and 2004 are contained in an appendix.

V. Record-Keeping

A form which records the portfolio papers for each student with notes about findings for the requirements, along with a rating (strong, competent, weak), is kept in each student's file in the advisor's office. A copy goes to the department assessment liaison, currently the chair of the Committee on the Major. Discussion of the results has for a long time been limited to the Committee on the Major, but will now include all the faculty in the major.

VI. Conclusions and proposed next steps

In sum, I feel that we have made significant progress in the whole process of assessing our program, and also in the completeness of information and numbers of participants among faculty and students. Technically we only added one reader, but one person who had been on sabbatical had no current advisees and more new faculty have participated. Several faculty members have been active in advising their students, discussing their portfolios, and asking them to fill out the survey. A further result of improved advising is that more students are taking L202, the introductory course in interpretation, at an earlier point, and this course better prepares them for all other courses in the major. Further down the line, we will figure out how to incorporate the consultation of student and advisor about what goes into the portfolio, how the student can select papers that best reflect his or her achievement and fulfill our goals, and how to reflect on what the student has learned. The self-evaluations themselves will provide another instrument of assessment.

This third-year review is submitted by Karen Gindele, Associate Chair of the English Department and Chair of the Committee on the Major, therefore liaison to the campus Assessment Committee, April 13, 2005.

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