Psychology
Assessment Plan

Links to Assessment Measures:
    Senior Exit Questionnaire.
    Senior Course Rating Form.

I. Long Range Departmental Goals

The psychology faculty has established three sets of long-term goals to serve as guides for our department. Part two is particularly relevant to student outcomes. It follows:

We seek to provide majors with a rigorous traditional psychology curriculum which prepares them for diverse futures in graduate/professional schools and within the profession. Within this context, our goals are to develop students who:

• are intellectually curious and capable of independent pursuit of knowledge;
• are capable of critical analysis of knowledge and psychological theory and method;
• have a feeling of identity with, and appreciation of, the discipline;
• are knowledgeable of and respect the ethical guidelines of psychology;
• are knowledgeable of scientific methods and competent to implement their own research;
• are able to communicate effectively the products of scholarly thinking both within the discipline of psychology and   among disciplines.

These performance objectives will be used as a basis for our assessment plan. They are directly reflected in two of our assessment instruments. Their relationship to our long range goals is noted.

1. Students can demonstrate knowledge and appreciation of basic concepts and theories in
    psychology (long range goals 2a, 2b, 2c)

    (a) Students know the principles and theories of psychology
    (b) Students can critically analyze evidence and theories in psychology
    (c) Students can demonstrate knowledge of the cultural and historical context of psychology
    (d) Students demonstrate appreciation of the social, cultural and scientific roles played by psychology
    (e) Students demonstrate appreciation of/or identity with the discipline (e.g., psych club, psi chi, conference participation)

 2. Students can demonstrate communication skills within the discipline of psychology (long range goal 2f)

    (a) Students can demonstrate technical writing skills, APA format
    (b) Students are capable of organizing a persuasive argument
    (c) Students can write engagingly and interestingly
    (d) Students can make meaningful oral presentations

3. Students can demonstrate research skill. in psychology (long range goals 2d, 2e)

    (a) Students are capable of using library and other resources
    (b) Students can carry out independent research with appropriate hypotheses, design and  methods
    (c) Students can use statistical methods for data analysis
    (d) Students can evaluate the empirical research designs reported by others
    (e) Students know ethical guidelines in psychology.
    (f) Students practice ethical guidelines in psychology

III. Components of the Assessment Plan

    1.  A Senior Exit Questionnaire - When seniors bring their graduate application forms to the department chair they are asked to fill out an evaluation form. This questionnaire includes all performance objectives and is attached.

    2.  A Senior Course Rating Sheet - Faculty members teaching senior seminars and the advanced experimental courses rate the students on items related to our objectives. This is done in addition to traditional grades which are more global. This Senior Course Rating Sheet also addresses all the performance objectives and is attached.

    3.  Student Publications and Presentations - Psychology students often present oral presentations or poster presentations based on their research projects. The presentations may occur at national, regional, state or local conferences. Some of them may be based on joint efforts with faculty members as coauthor, but most are not. The projects presented at national and regional conferences are evaluated by representatives of those organizations. They are not accepted unless they meet professional standards which are similar to our objectives. This assessment is obviously more global, but it does provide an external assessment of our student's performance.

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