Not knowing what the learning outcomes are for your program makes answering your question more difficult.
If you are focused entirely on content and fact retrieval, a pre-post test doesn't pose a very interesting question. You could probably answer it better by using something like the Major Fields test for psychology (ETS) and then look at subtest scores to look at knowledge areas to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. I'm assuming ETS provides these subscores for areas in psychology for the Psychology test. I know they do this for the Business test because the College of Business uses this approach to look at strengths and weaknesses in in the Business curriculum - ETS gives them subscores for finance, economics, accounting, management, etc. If you would really like to have some sort of baseline for content knowledge, you could volunteer to pariticipate in the College Board development of norms for the AP Psychology exam. Students take the AP exam at the end of their introductory psychology course. Not exactly entering the major, but I hope they learn more about the content of psychology in all those other courses they take later! It would be sad if they learned all the relevant content in intro! :-) Many programs have learning outcomes related to critical thinking and analysis skills, information literacy, and quality of writing. If your institution has an assessment for these learning outcomes in the General Education curriculum, you could try to get the average scores for students in Gen Ed entering the psychology major and use those scores as the baseline. Then create a meaningful assessment of these skills with an embedded assignment in the capstone course to determine what changes occur during completion of the major coursework. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Marte Fallshore <ma...@cwu.edu> wrote: > > > Hi, everybody. In case anyone's missed me, I'm back. Still mostly lurking, > but I do have a question. My school, like all the others, is obsessed with > assessment (sounds like a poem title by e.e. cummings, doesn't it?). I was > wondering if anyone out there does a pre- posttest assessment of psych > graduates? My chair is wanting to start something like that b/c we now have > a 1-credit introduction to the major class when they declare. We want to > give them the pretest in the majors class then a posttest during their > senior assessment class. What do they know b/4 the major and what do they > know after? Anybody got any tests already written (and maybe normed) we > could use? Thanks, > > Marte > > > ************************************************ > Marte Fallshore > Department of Psychology > Central Washington Univ. > 400 E University Way > Ellensburg, WA 98926-7575 > > 509/963-3670 > 509/963-2307 (fax) > > No one knows what's next, but everybody does it. ~George Carlin > > When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. > When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. > ~Dom Heider Camara > > I teach for free; they pay me to grade. (anon) > ************************************************ > > --- > > You are currently subscribed to tips as: csta...@uwf.edu. > > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d550&n=T&l=tips&o=871 > > (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) > > or send a blank email to > leave-871-13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=878 or send a blank email to leave-878-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
