Assessment

Today I had to send the Director of General Education a preliminary report regarding assessment of my Intellectual Issues course (PBJ 377, Choosing to Die: Suicide, Assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia). In the report I had to explain how certain assignments in the course meet the learning objectives for the intellectual issues requirement and how I am going to assess them. That means, if I give students an A, B, or C on the assignment, what did they have to know and do in order to get that grade? Thinking about the purpose of the course, the means of achieving that purpose, and how the assignments evaluate whether students are learning what we expect them to learn makes us better teachers, in my opinion.