Oral Communication

During finals week class time, SOC 212 (Gender and Society) students create a public service announcement. The instructions given are "Based on the information you learned on gender and society, what would you focus on to promote social change? You are going to create a two minute Public Service Announcement to share with the class." The goal of this assessment is to see which topic is chosen as most important to create a public service announcement. Students were required to choose one topic; some chose more than one to discuss.

In another assessment, the gender issues survey incorporated in SOC 212 as a pre and post survey is discussed. The focus is on similarities and differences between the pre and post results. This assessment focuses on the post survey as a comparison between hybrid and online. A spreadsheet is attached with the results for Spring 2013. The similarities between the hybrid and online courses include 1. majority of students indicate that most of the listed gender issues are important and very important (higher end of scale) 2.

Students continuously give us positive feedback on campus events. Love Your Body Week is assessed with a survey for the week long series of events. Self reflection questions focus on learning from the event, interest in going to other eventes, interest in learning about other social issues, interest in being active in the community, feeling open minded, and having resources on the social issues. If you examine the attachments, you will see results for the presentations, activitie,s and the outdoor event.

I made my course a hybrid like course, where students could learn online as well as in the class w some assignments. Here is a sample from a project given. Not your usual PED course.

In order to get students more personally involved in the learning process, students are given the responsibility of choosing four debate topics that are then used to formulate the questions used in the formal debates in the course.

Through a combination of guided discussion and voting students decide as a group what they will research and debate.

The Humannequin Project includes an assessment each year which varies by topic. The 2013 assessment, rubric, and student scoresheet are attached. Each questions always focuses on Bloom's Taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze,  Evaluate and Create.  Questions 4 and 6 have lower averages. These two areas need to be improved for the 2014 project. UPDATE: For 2014, the topic for the project was gender and language.

Since Spring 2010, a common assignment has been incorporated into Sociology 101 (Introduction to Sociology). A group of faculty worked on the assignment and rubric with the SAAC co-chairs during Fall 2009. The assignment has been implemented at the end of each semester in the SOC 101 courses (learning outcomes, assignment, and rubric attached below). I have attached some of the comments and results from the instructors from each of the semesters (when information was provided).

The Social, Civic, Global Responsibility Common Assignment was implemented in SOC 130 (Human Sexuality). Students were given the topic of the AIDS epidemic as their focus for this assignment. The rubric was given at the same time as the assignment. Both were discussed and reviewed in class. The focus of the assignment tied in with the rest of the semester as the students organized the EMCC AIDS team, raised money for AIDS awareness, and created slides to be shown outside during the AIDS Day event. The average scores were as follows:



Question 1:  2.67(of 3)

During Week 1, students complete a journal entry in which they discuss their thoughts on current gender inequalities and what they think the course will include. The majority of students do not have the details of contemporary gender issues. Most of them state that gender inequalities are part of the past and/or that there are a few gender inequalities due to progress. During Week 16, students complete a journal entry asking them what they will walk away, what surprised them in the course, and how will they promote social change.

The Social, Civic, and Global Responsibility assignment was given to my EDU222 hybrid course, with disappointing results. The average score was a 10.6 out of 15 (71%). Knowing that I would be giving the same assignment to my EDU230 hybrid course, I consulted with others who had better results. This led to the creation of the following guides that students were mandated to use and attach to their final paper:

Student reflection is an integral aspect of effective Service Learning practices and should demonstrate both Academic and Affective learning. In the past I used student-self-directed reflection, with minimal guidance or structure. In order to better assess SCGR proficiency, I (1) provided the students the rubrics for this ability, (2) reviewed them carefully, and (3) required adherence to the criteria in the presentation of Informative Speeches, adding the SCGR criteria to the evaluation instrument as part of the content grade.

Students were asked to research, analyze, and explain the role of inclusion in today’s K-12 setting.  A detailed guide was provided to students in addition to the SCGR rubric.

Steps:  1. Online EDU222 were given a PP to build background and a number of related articles to review. F2F students participated in whole-class, interactive lesson on various SpecialEd programs 2. F2F rubric and assignment guide discussed in detail  3.  Student research- 1 day in-class 4. Submit to Writing Center 4. Implement feedback and submit to BB

Students were asked to research, analyze, and explain a controversial issue in today’s K-12 . Students were given 5 topics to choose from ranging from the rights of illegal immigrants to higher education to the inequality of resources between low SES schools in more affluent schools.

One student outcome for this online Intercultural COM course is "Continue to move forward into and/or through the ethnorelative stages of intercultural communication competency." The assessment is a self-created profile survey based upon the Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D., Dev. Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. Ethnocentric levels (ascending order) are 1 Defense, 2 Denial, 3 Minimization.

A general survey on gender issues was given at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester. There were two questions for each gender issue: (1) how important is the issue and (2) how much work needs to be done on the issue. The issues focused on the feminist movement, reproductive rights, economic justice, gender and violence, men and masculinity, lgbtq rights, gender and language, gender and the media, gender and politics, social activism and social change. A 5 point Likert scale (not important to very important) was used.