Research conducted by Manda Williamson, Leen-Kiat Soh, Debbie Minter, and Wayne Babchuk has been published in the Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness.
The four were the inaugural cohort of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Teaching Academy, a program that brings faculty fellows together to discuss issues in higher education, promote positive change on campus, and strengthen outcomes for students and faculty. The program launched in 2017.
Fellows also collaborate on projects, such as the newly-published study, "Assessing Arts and Sciences Faculty Learning Objectives and Practices: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Describe a Unique College Identity." The purpose was to describe what makes a college's identity unique using faculty learning objectives and skills they teach valued by the liberal arts and employers.
The researchers expected that CAS professors would focus more on higher-level thinking skills—like applying and analyzing ideas—and would often use group-based teaching methods to help students reach those goals. They found that the professors include higher-level learning goals just as often as basic ones and regularly use collaborative teaching methods to achieve them. Compared to national trends, liberal arts faculty stood out for relying on these methods more than other academic areas. The study provides a way to measure and compare how colleges define and teach their educational goals across different disciplines.
"This project represents a collaboration, not only among the four of us with June Griffin as our biggest supporter, but also with over 100 faculty across the College of Arts and Sciences," Williamson, professor of practice in the Department of Psychology, said. "We are incredibly grateful for their willingness to participate. What they have shared about their course goals and teaching practices provides empirical evidence for the goals we value as a college: teaching our students the tools needed to critically evaluate evidence, to foster a broad-minded openness to complex ideas, and to hone these skills in a collaborative environment."
Soh is now Bessey Professor in the School of Computing, part of the College of Engineering; Minter is an associate professor in and chair of the Department of English, and Babchuk is now a professor of practice in the College of Education and Human Sciences with courtesy appointments in CAS' School of Global Integrative Studies and Department of Sociology.
The study is available online (subscription required).
