Thoughts on the Academic Learning Compact

Thanks for the note on the assessment. I have changed some of the Humanities assessment plan, and the rest should be done shortly. I know that the assessment office in general thinks that the only reason for this exercise is for the improvement of the program, but if that were true, I'd suggest that SACS not require us to use problematic social science techniques administered by untrained statisticians (that is, us, especially me) to analyse humanities disciplines. Some things can be counted, but others can't. This is why in anthropology (for instance), generating knowledge means doing fieldwork and writing ethnographies that involve talking to people, not trying to operationalize some characteristics of those people and counting them up. If the goal of the humanities was to get students to memorize concepts or even to gain skill sets, this would be an appropriate form of assessment (and in fact, it may be perfectly fine for other disciplines, although I think even there real program improvements are made on other bases than this sort of quantification). However, I hope for more from my students. I hope that they will be able to examine themselves, and ask what it means to be human. I hope that they will not just collect knowledge and skills, but reflect on the subject who uses and wields that knowledge and those skills. That is not measurable, although it may become apparent in conversation (and indeed, that conversation may well change our minds as faculty as to what proper goals might be - that's the difference between a conversation and an interview). There is plenty of precedent for looking at the humanities in this manner, starting with Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and moving on to work such as Gadamer's and Derrida's on education. Of course, I do not grade students on whether their lives are changed, but I do think that the humanities has to strive for more than what can be operationalized. I do think that this is assessable, in a broad sense, but I think it should be done using humanities methods of assessment, not social science methods. Some of this goes back to the larger question of how knowledge is generated in the university, and what it is used for. This is something that the humanities has studied a great deal (I teach a course called Theories and Methods of the Humanities, which is directed at exactly this question). I am not convinced that an uncritically applied quasi-social science method generates any reliable or useful knowledge to the department. It may well generate knowledge that is useful to those outside of the department, however. I am not convinced that (as you say in your email) the sole purpose of this exercise is the improvement of the program, especially given that the next thing you say in your note is that the numbers have to go to the state by Nov. 4. I think it is far more likely that the reason assessment is in the form that it is, is that it generates numerical data that will be used to judge programs against each other and eventually penalize those which are not measuring up. I also think it distracts from a more fundamental problem in education, which is the proper support of education. If quality is made a function of the department's ability to realize its goals, one need never ask the question of whether the department has received proper support in that. It deflects attention from a state that underfunds education, from the regular demand that all education lead directly to careers, from a resistance to real dialogue between disciplines due to structural impediments, and from a host of other issues on campus that govern what counts as legitimate knowledge. At any rate, I would at least like to see the scholarly peer reviewed work that SACS used to arrive at this mechanism for generating knowledge about the university and its programs, along with some critical reflective work on the ways in which this knowledge will be used. I suspect there was none. I said in my initial report that the assessment plan had not affected program development in the past, and likely would not in the future. What I meant by that was that the changes we have made in the program were in response to having talked to students, and realizing that they were unclear on what the humanities were. We wanted them to be able to describe better what they did. I expect future changes in the program will be generated by the discussions we have with students and among the faculty, and the hermeneutic, non-quantifiable knowledge that is generated through our interaction, as opposed to assessment of knowledge or skills. We will, of course, do what is required by the university and the state in assessment, but in fact real improvement will come from something else. Indeed, the more we are fulfilling these requirements, the less we can devote time to teaching, research, and proper humanities assessment. I realize that the assessment office is only administering a directive from above, and that you may in fact have some of the same questions I do about this process. I also realize that you're aware that the humanities has as one of its areas of research the question of how knowledge is produced and maintained in society in general, and the university in particular. I also recognize that my note will not change anything. I'm just hoping that you understand that my general antipathy toward this process comes from some principled questions, not just a sense that we should have no assessment at all. Rest assured, as I say, we will do everything that is required, but we will have our own conversations with the students as well, which I think will lead to education in the true humanities tradition. I hope this note doesn't seem too contrary - I intend it as an expression of the difficulty I'm having with the process, not as a criticism of anyone here at UCF, particularly not you. I recognize you are doing the job you have been assigned. Bruce Janz

Be certain: numbers do not go to the state, and are not used to compare programs. The plans do go to the state. But nobody sees the results of your assessment except your department, members of the college's review committee, and [the director of assessment]. The dean, the provost, the administration, the state -- none of them see results. Assessment cannot work unless the faculty are free to discover inadequacies. That requires confidentiality. What the dean does receive (and the president and provost could if they asked) is an indication from me and the review committee as to how well faculty are examining their own programs using assessment. That is, not whether they met their goals, but whether they have figured out how to ask the right questions -- questions whose answers the faculty find interesting and that they use to improve their programs. If the best information for your program is non-quantitative, then that is what you should use -- in your assessment plan too. See if you can figure out how to communicate what you learn from conversations. The best efforts we get are from programs that use approaches that suit their discipline. English faculty examine portfolios of their students' work and decide if they are happy with the result. Theatre faculty examine productions, and have outside jurists give opinions too. Neither of these looks like a social science investigation. They work because they suit the faculty.