Executive Summary
Educational Goals
Assessment Techniques
Annual Report Forms - 2002/03, 2003/04
Data Gathered from Assessment Techniques
Analysis of Data
Summary of Actions Taken
Proposed Next Steps

I. Executive Summary

Assessment continues to be an integral part of the Department's success at providing a coherent, accessible, and rigorous political science curriculum. Faculty in the Department regularly update and refine their courses to reflect new trends and developments in their respective subfields. New courses are developed to reflect student needs. Assessment activities have included a review of the state of assessment in political science programs nationwide and an external review of the program. Data from these activities has informed the planning of the Department in its hiring decisions as well as its development of the curriculum. Feedback from students and the external review indicate that the Department does an excellent job in advising and teaching.

II. Educational Goals

The Political Science Department seeks to prepare students to assume the duties and obligations of citizenship, to provide special knowledge and skills useful in public service, and to lay foundations for the scholarly study of government and politics. In order to achieve these goals, we seek to create courses that enhance student knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of political concepts and processes. In addition, we work with students outside of the classroom, through academic advising and the sponsorship of internships, service learning assignments, and independent studies to enrich our students' intellectual experiences.

III. Assessment Techniques

a. Classroom assessment - done on a regular basis
b. Capstone course (senior seminar required for all majors, may be taken in junior or senior year)
c. Faculty inventory - faculty discussion throughout the year and advising of students to monitor student progress and satisfaction with the curricular offerings of the Department.
d. Senior Exit Survey - Students enrolled in the capstone course (Pols Y490) are now required to answer a survey that is designed to gauge their satisfaction with the Political Science Program
e. Survey of the Norms in the Discipline - a survey of political science departments and a review of the literature on assessment in political science programs was carried out in 2003-04.
f. An external review of the Department of Political Science was completed in January 2004.

IV. Annual Report Forms - 2002/03, 2003/04

V. Data Gathered from Assessment Techniques

a. Classroom assessment - Data on student learning is assessed through a number of instruments:
- exams and quizzes
- short and long papers: research, opinion, analytic, position papers
- class participation - informal discussion, small group work, formal presentations
- out of classroom field work - service learning, internships, data gathering, participation in simulations

b. Capstone Course - All political science majors are required to enroll in the capstone course in political science (Pols Y490) in either their junior or senior year. Course content is determined by the instructor but the major focus of the course is the drafting of a research paper by each student. Students are required to work on drafts of their research paper throughout the course of the semester. Attention is paid to developing a research topic, question, and bibliographic sources. The paper content is assessed for how well students integrate information within a theoretical framework.

Student papers from the capstone seminar are reviewed by two faculty members (in addition to the instructor for the course.) The review of these papers is to assess the following:
- to what extent do majors demonstrate a good understanding of the issues and concepts of political science?
- to what extent do they reveal an appropriate level of general knowledge of the world of politics?
- to what extent do these papers demonstrate students' ability to think critically;
- to what extent are the papers well-written and meet the standards of scholarly presentation?

c. Faculty Inventory - This data gathering is by its nature informal. As all faculty in the department serve as advisors to our major students, we regularly survey our students as to their degree progress, course satisfaction, and career goals.

d. Senior Exit Survey - The year 2004 was the first year we administered the senior exit survey. This survey sought information on our majors' experiences in the program. Questions were asked concerning course requirements, course scheduling, level of advising, and approachability of faculty. This survey will be administered for the second time in spring 05.

e. Survey of Norms in the Discipline - With a grant from the Assessment Committee, Elizabeth Bennion oversaw a review of literature in political science on assessment techniques within the major.

f. External Review of Program - In January 2004, the Department was reviewed by Dr. Thomas Wolf, professor emeritus of Political Science at IU South East. Professor Wolf offered evaluations of current assessment practices and gave recommendations about the future directions of the program.

VI. Analysis of Data

Classroom Assessment
Exams and quizzes provide measurable evidence of how well students master course content; papers provide evidence of students' ability to think critically through research and interpretation of information. Service learning assignments and participation in political science simulations enable professors to assess how students apply what they have learned in the classroom to the community. Class lectures, small group work, and discussions enable professors to assess how well students understand the course content in real time. In short, faculty constantly assess the learning of our students on a daily basis in our classes. Data gathered is used to refine and revise our courses and teaching pedagogies.

Capstone course
The Department's Assessment of the senior seminar papers has provided us with the following assessments of student learning:
- Students demonstrate the ability to discuss political science concepts in a coherent and organized manner;
- Students demonstrate ability to critically analyze information and to integrate it into research papers;
- Students demonstrate ability to present papers that meet the standards of scholarly conventions in the field of political science.

Areas that require further development include:
- Students need to work on integrating theory with data in their papers;
- Students need more work on discerning the validity of different types of sources used in their research;
- Students need more practice at oral presentations.

Faculty Inventory
Based on informal discussions among faculty about advising our majors, we conclude the following:
- Students feel comfortable with major requirements and indicate a high level of satisfaction with courses and faculty instruction;
- Students feel that the general education distribution requirements for a Liberal Arts degree are excessive.

Senior Exit Survey
Echoing what we have heard generally from student majors, the senior exit survey provided us with the following:
- Students highlight the quality and extent of the advising provided by the dept.;
- Students appreciate the flexibility in the major to enable a range of choices in course selection;
- Students indicate a dissatisfaction with general education distribution requirements, particularly in the sciences;
- Students believe that the level of work required in the major is appropriate;
- Students indicate a high level of satisfaction with the faculty.

Survey of Norms in the Discipline
Elizabeth Bennion's review of the political science literature on assessment discovered the following:
- the Department's assessment activities to date are in keeping with the national norm;
- that the assessment techniques most departments use entail a capstone seminar, faculty observations, and senior exit interviews (all used by the IU South Bend department);
- that there exists research to indicate that a more structured political science curriculum fosters greater student learning.

External Review Report
The external review generally found that the department was doing well in the education of its students. The areas of political science covered were all strong. Maintaining the quality and breadth of the American politics course offerings required that the Department be able to replace John Lewis (which the department has successfully done.) Levels of service among faculty with regards to enhancing student learning were high. Collegiality, an increasingly rare commodity in some corners of the campus, was apparent and genuine.

Recommendations of the external reviewer included:
- development of a scope and methods course;
- consideration of a pre- and post-questionnaire for majors;
- alumni survey and regular contacts with alumni (currently in process).

VII. Recordkeeping and Documentation
All important documents pertaining to assessment are maintained on the departmental H-drive. Files of student majors are kept in the central Political Science Office where faculty have access.

VIII. Summary of Actions Taken

- The Department has successfully recruited a faculty member in American politics who will be developing a course on research methods;
- Committed to maintaining a high level of advising, all political science majors are now required to be advised once a semester;
- Faculty are in the process of developing new courses and reworking old ones to meet the new campus wide general education requirements with an eye towards increasing the recruitment of majors.

IX. Proposed Next Steps

- Faculty in political science will continue to assess student learning in their classrooms;
- Faculty in the department are discussing ways to encourage and enhance student participation in internships;
- Faculty will review major requirements in the next few years in light of findings from the survey of norms in the profession;
- The chair is currently gathering information on recent graduates of political science to assess changes, if any, in our major cohorts, over the years;
- Beginning Fall 2005, the Department will work on a new assessment plan.

Appendix

Assessing Student Outcomes - 2002-03

Program Name: Department of Political Science
Report prepared by: Linda Chen
Current assessment contact: Linda Chen
Send information to: Linda Chen

1. What assessment techniques did your department use in the last academic year?

a. Classroom assessment (exams, quizzes, papers, class participation are all used to assess student progress)
b. Capstone course (senior seminar required for all majors, may be taken in junior or senior year)
c. Faculty inventory - faculty discussion throughout the year and advising of students to monitor student progress and satisfaction with the curricular offerings of the Department
d. Assessment Grant - data collection on how other departments at IU South Bend and other departments of political science dealt with assessment. This project, began last year, is almost completed, at which time the department plans to have a retreat devoted to assessment issues.

2. How did these techniques help the department to measure student learning and achievement in the five educational objectives outlined below?

a. Discipline specific knowledge and skills: Faculty use a combination of exams, quizzes, papers, service learning assignments, and class discussions to gauge student mastery of specific course knowledge and skills. Exams and quizzes provide measurable evidence of how well students are learning; papers provide evidence of students' ability to think critically through research and interpretation of information. Service learning assignments enable professors to assess how students can apply what they have learned in the classroom to the community. Class lectures and discussions enable the professors to gauge how well students are understanding the course content in real time.

b. Personal development and career preparation: Academic advising is the primary means by which we enhance the personal development and career preparation of our students. In addition, the service learning components of several of our introductory courses introduce students to the world of non-profit organizations where students learn about career options. Internships undertaken by our students also open up possibilities for career preparation. In both service learning and internships, students are required to be self-motivated and independent thinkers. They are also required to develop habits of responsibility and to work with others.

c. Basic academic skills: Academic skills are primarily assessed in our classrooms through exams, quizzes, papers, and oral presentations.

d. Academic values: These are assessed in the classroom through class discussion and in individual conferences with students about their work. In addition, professors serve as role models by personifying the academic values we all hold dear. We model ways of discussing controversial issues in a civil manner, for example, in contrast to how let's say talk shows allegedly deal with controversial issues. In our courses, we introduce multiple ways of analyzing political phenomena. Our best gauge of whether our efforts work is really not measurable since academic values are learned over time. We are working on an alumni survey that will assess this better.

e. Higher order thinking skills: These are assessed in our upper division courses as we require students to read more complex tests and to think more critically. The Senior Seminar capstone course is the final assessment of student's oral and written skills.

3. How were the results of your assessment program analyzed and recorded?

a. How was the department faculty involved?
All faculty in the department were involved in developing their own assessment tools. During the 2003 calendar year, the department has supported a project to rethink our assessment activities. Data collection is almost complete and the department hopes to analyze the results in spring 2004.

b. How were students involved?
The student evaluation form is the principal method by which we gain student input into assessment. We are about to undertake a project to identify alumni of the program to survey them about their experiences in the major.

c. How were records kept?
We now keep advising journals on each of our majors as a way of assessing their progress through the major. All faculty have access to student advising journals.

4. What changes if any were made in the assessment plan?

As soon as practicable, we will be administering an exit survey of graduating majors. We are also committed to identifying and surveying our alumni as part of our assessment plan.

5. Changes in academic program

At this point, we have not made changes to our academic program. We are still working on gathering data. The department will undergo a self-study and external review in spring 2004, the results of which will inform our discussions on reforming our curriculum and assessment needs.

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