The Geological Sciences Department Annual Assessment Report to the College of Science and Mathematics 2018-2019

Abstract

The Geological Sciences department 2018-19 annual assessment report to the College of Science and Mathematics for the Office of Academic Assessment and Program Review. Conducting a longitudinal analysis of gateway to capstone student course work over 2/3 years centered on a PSLO related to visual communication, the department assessed student posters, finding the posters created for GEOL 306 (gateway) to be "haphazard and cluttered, with only one poster organized around a scientific question or ‘story’ with a main message, while the rest largely included ‘information dumps’ without a coherent connecting thread," a result that contrasted with the posters for GEOL 490 (capstone), which showed improvement, with students making "some progress with organizing their posters around ‘storylines’ or scientific messages, but even when students identified a main message for their poster, they did not emphasize that message effectively, nor did they effectively relate each of the panels on the poster to their main message using targeted figure captions." Detailed analyses, along with sample student posters and a scoring rubric, are included in the report. Plans for 2019-20 include "loop closing" activities designed to 1. "Provide examples of successful student work to future gateway and capstone classes so that students can see models of low, medium, and high performing work. 2. Include more posters and visual communication at the “Tier 3” curricular level. 3. Create a ‘visual communication strategies’ handout for faculty to post and distribute with their assignments as a ‘cheat sheet’."