December 14, 1998

Sociology Faculty
College of DuPage

Dear Colleagues:

Enclosed are materials dealing with Outcomes Assessment in Sociology. Expanding and utilizing outcome assessment is an important goal at College of DuPage. Outcome Assessment is a commitment to gathering information from students, considering it with reference to the instructional process and providing feedback to us as classroom instructors. This commitment is expressed in a wide variety of ways at a variety of levels. Individual teachers in a classroom can complete some activities in just a few minutes and some require more coordinated efforts. If you are interested in learning more about individual classroom outcome assessment activities visit College of DuPage’s Student Outcome Assessment web site at <www.cod.edu/outcomes> and follow the links to the section on "classroom assessment" where you can find many helpful ideas.

In designing our assessment project we decided to focus on developing a sociological imagination, a primary goal in all sociological classes. Over the past two years the full-time faculty designed and field-tested this assessment approach for sociology as a discipline. In looking back at our experience, many of us reported that this assessment approach provided a framework for our own instructional activities. Further, assessment provides a common ground to bridge the differences among our diverse theoretical perspectives and varied teaching styles.

This year we’ve committed to conducting discipline assessment in all sociology courses during the Winter quarter. We anticipate providing discipline level feedback during late Spring quarter. The attached "Faculty Instructions and Explanation" provide a description of this approach. Also attached are several examples of articles that might be used in an assessment. We ask you to join us in this beneficial process.

In asking you to join us in this effort, let us share one of the concerns we considered last year. The issue is faculty evaluation versus outcome assessment. The faculty conducts discipline outcome assessment and the findings are for the purpose of helping us to understand the impact of our instruction. Although administration expects participation in outcome assessment activities from all member of the faculty, the findings are not used in evaluation. The findings are aggregated among all of us and specific faculty members are not identified.

The sociological imagination outcome assessment process is more completely explained in the materials attached. In brief, students are asked to respond to some stimulus article or video in answering four questions. These answers are evaluated for demonstration of a sociological imagination. Evidence of this demonstration is implied from four criteria. First, use of a sociological perspective (seeing social issues in personal troubles). Second, use of vocabulary. Third, use of theory (without judgment of which paradigm or perspective). Finally, the general accuracy of the application of these efforts is evaluated. The student essays are collected and a random sampling from the total are read and evaluated using an approach that appraises inter-rater reliability.

Please join us in utilizing the sociological imagination outcome assessment process in your class during Winter Quarter. If, after reading these materials, you have questions, please contact one of us.