In an effort to improve learning assessment, the University of Idaho School of Journalism and Mass Media is implementing a new freshman-to-senior test, Director of JAMM Kenton Bird said.
Early in the school year, students in JAMM 100, the school’s introductory course, were tested on media knowledge and consumption, Bird said.
He said seniors will take the same test in the school’s media law capstone course in four years.
Various programs around campus use different types of assessments, such as the history department’s senior seminar or the portfolios in art and architecture, UI Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Jeanne Christiansen said.
Each program is required to post certain learning outcomes each year that code to the university’s five learning outcomes, Christiansen said.
She said two of these outcomes focus specifically on how UI students interact with the global community.
“It is about capturing that piece that is part of the UI experience,” Christiansen said.
Bird said JAMM’s learning outcomes include First Amendment principles and appreciation for diversity and multiculturalism.
He said the new assessment allows JAMM to compare students when they arrive at the university and when they leave.
“It’s about your performance in your major … not my performance as your teacher,” Christiansen said.
When academic programs set their learning outcomes for the year, they are required to follow a format that includes plans for direct assessments such as the JAMM test and indirect assessments such as senior surveys and face-to-face interviews, Jane Baillargeon, assistant director of Institutional Research and Assessment, said.
The format also asks for goals, reports and intended changes in curriculum to better meet goals.
“It’s a chance for the faculty to sit down and take a look at what they do,” Baillargeon said.
She said these learning outcomes are posted online so every student can see what he or she is expected to become.
JAMM learning outcomes are not confined to JAMM objectives, Bird said. He said they include how well students integrate other courses.
“By the time they get to be seniors, they will have been exposed to … most if not all of these learning outcomes,” Bird said.
Baillargeon said the whole process is designed to be cyclical. Each year, programs do assessments and check their progress against previous years.
“It’s a valuable process because it does help us improve our programs,” Baillargeon said.
Bird said JAMM is unique at the university in that it has a required introductory course and a required capstone course.
He said they expect more than 200 JAMM freshmen to take the assessment during the 2012-2013 school year.
About 120 students will take Media Law in 2016-2017, and about 70 to 80 of them should have taken the freshman assessment.
Bird attributed the discrepancy of numbers to transfers in and out of the program.
He said the data will not be exactly scientific, but it will be close enough.
“We will know if there are gaps in the curriculum,” Bird said.
For instance, if students do really well in the law portion, but poorly in ethics the program will be able to tweak classes to make the weak parts strong, Bird said.
He said the process will continue until they find something better.
Currently, JAMM uses internship reports and professional reviews of public relations and advertising work to assess what students are learning.
Kasen Christensen can be reached at [email protected]