APPLYING ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES IN PSYCHOLOGY

The First Step in Student-Centered Assessment:
Helping Students Understand Our Curriculum Goals

Drew C. Appleby
Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology
Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

Most psychology majors believe that they understand their curriculum if they know what courses to take and when to take them. Although it is certainly important to know the answers to these questions, students should also be acutely aware of the answers to three other questions:

This paper provides an example of a strategy undergraduate psychology faculty can use to enable their majors to understand the rationale behind their curriculum; it is not just a list of courses they must complete to receive a degree, but rather a set of coherent and transformational experiences carefully created to provide them with the opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and characteristics that they will need to become the people they aspire to be.  This strategy is the first step in student-centered assessment that should enhance our ability to help students "select courses, plan careers, and develop life views" (Halpern, 1993, p. 37).

Although assessment has been defined in many ways, the most compelling conceptualization I have encountered is that assessment helps us answer the question, "How do we know that our students know what we want them to know?" (T. McGovern, personal communication, April 17, 1997).  The strategy described in this paper enables "our students to know what we want them to know" so they can become more motivated and cooperative partners in the teaching-learning process.

At IUPUI, we surveyed our psychology majors to measure their awareness of and ability to accomplish our curriculum goals and student learning outcomes (SLOs).  The following two student responses demonstrate considerable insight and conviction regarding the need to make outcomes explicit (Appleby, 2002, p. 135):

Student One: Give better explanations of why students need to know the things they are learning in their classes and not just "You need to know this."  For example, in what other classes would the same SLOs be used?  Statistics was used again in both my Research Methods and Capstone classes.   Students need to know these things!

Student Two: I learned in my cognition class that when people are aware of the purpose of a task they are asked to perform, they usually perform it better.   If my teachers would tell me why I am doing the things they want me to do that is, the department's SLOs and why they are important for me to accomplish would be much more enthusiastic about accomplishing them.  I am not an animal that must be operantly conditioned.   I am a human being who can benefit from knowing the purposes and consequences of the behaviors I am asked to perform.

The word curriculum derives from the Latin word currere, which means "to race" (Costello, 1993, p. 340).   In modern English, curriculum means "a group of related courses, often in a special field of study" (Costello, 1993, p. 340). Psychology departments carefully choose a group of courses to create a coherent curriculum whose successful completion will enable their majors to accomplish a set of crucial goals; ironically, they seldom share the underlying rationale for their curriculum with students. I contend that we should be more explicit about the curricula we create. When we simply present our curriculum as a list of classes with no explanation for their existence other than that they are required, many of our students take the original Latin derivation of curriculum far too literally by viewing their course of study as a race they must rush through as quickly as possible so they can graduate in the shortest period of time. If the goal of a college education were to finish it as quickly as possible, then this would be an appropriate strategy. But that is not its goal. The goal of a college education is to prepare a person to lead a fulfilling personal, social, civic, and professional life after graduation.

I wrote the section of this paper titled Understanding the IUPUI Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum for my students to explain how their curriculum can help them achieve their post-baccalaureate aspirations (i.e., the attainment of admission into graduate school, a satisfying career, and/or a fulfilling personal life)  . If they read it carefully and comprehend it fully, it will help them to become more "mindful" (Langer, 1989) of the nature and purposes of the psychology courses they are required to take so they can engage in these courses in an active, thoughtful, and goal-oriented manner, rather than simply attempting to "get them out of the way" as quickly and mindlessly as possible.  In other words, it will help them to experience the benefits of a greater sense of control (Rodin & Langer, 1977) over their undergraduate educations.

The APA's Board of Educational Affairs Task Force on Undergraduate Psychology Major Competencies has identified ten crucial student-learning outcomes (SLOs) for psychology majors and our department has used them as the foundation of its curricular assessment process.   The development of this combination of SLOs is congruent with the fundamental goal of education in psychology, which is "to teach students to think as scientists about behavior" (Brewer, 1993, p. 169).  The attainment of these SLOs is based on the acquisition and demonstration of the fundamental knowledge and skills underlying the principles of learning that my university urges all its undergraduates to achieve. The substance and depth of the first five SLOs distinguish psychology majors from their peers who major in other disciplines. The second five SLOs are those that can be achieved when students take full advantage of the general education courses they are required to take (e.g., English composition and speech) and apply what they have learned in these courses to their psychology classes and electives.

The remainder of this paper is the document I created to explain my department's curriculum to our students.  You will notice that I wrote it in a very personal manner (i.e., in the first and second person) in order to be as clear and compelling as possible.  It is important to keep in mind that our curriculum is only one example of many that could result in the accomplishment of the achievement of the SLOs suggested by the APA task force. For a set of other equally valid curricula, please see Brewer (1993). I want other departments to feel free to use the following document as a model for describing the purpose, organization, and requirements of their own unique curricula to their students.

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Understanding the IUPUI Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum:
An Open Letter to Students from Their Advisors

The IUPUI undergraduate psychology curriculum has been created to enable psychology majors to accomplish a set of student learning outcomes (SLOs) whose successful accomplishment will prepare them to continue their education in graduate school, to secure fulfilling employment, and/or to lead satisfying personal, social, and civic lives after graduation.  Our curriculum is divided into five sets of courses: introductory courses, methods courses, content courses, specialization courses, and capstone courses. The successful completion of each of these sets serves to enable psychology majors to develop one or more of our department's SLOs, which are listed and explained below.

1. Content of Psychologyˆ

2. Research Methods in Psychologyˆ



Students should understand and apply basic research methods in psychology, including research design, data analysis, and interpretation.



3. Critical Thinking Skills in Psychologyˆ



Students should respect and use critical and creative thinking, skeptical inquiry, and, when possible, the scientific approach to solve problems related to behavior and mental processes.



4. Application of Psychologyˆ



Students should understand and apply psychological principles to personal, social, and organizational issues.



5. Values in Psychologyˆ



Students should be able to weigh evidence, tolerate ambiguity, act ethically, and reflect other values that are the underpinnings of psychology as a discipline.



6. Information and Technological Literacyˆ



Students should demonstrate information competence and the ability to use computers and other technology for many purposes.



7. Communication Skillsˆ



Students should be able to communicate effectively in a variety of formats.



8. Socio-Cultural and International Awarenessˆ



Students should recognize, understand, and respect the complexity of socio-cultural and international diversity.



9. Personal Developmentˆ



Students should develop insight into their own and others' behavior and mental processes and apply effective strategies for self-management and self-improvement.



10. Career Planning and Developmentˆ



Students should emerge from the major with realistic ideas about how to implement their psychological knowledge, skills, and values in occupational pursuits in a variety of settings.

The remainder of this paper will identify and explain the purpose of each of the five types of courses that make up your curriculum. I have underlined the key words from each of the ten SLOs to bring them to your attention and create the connections between the SLOs and what you will be accomplishing in your required courses. I hope this information will enable you to understand the rationale behind your curriculum and lead you to a state of increased awareness of its value. Once you become aware of why you are taking the courses you are required to take and how they can help you to develop the knowledge, skills, and characteristics you will need to accomplish your objectives, I believe you will begin to view your coursework as an integrated whole that will help you achieve your future goals.

The purposes of introductory courses are to introduce you to the content, methods, and applications of modern psychology; to familiarize you with the department's faculty, organizations, resources, and programs; and to help you discover and explore the career opportunities an undergraduate education in psychology can provide. There are three introductory courses:

The successful completion of B103 enables you to better understand your strengths, weakness, and values and to identify, clarify, and create a plan to accomplish your post-baccalaureate goals. Many students choose psychology as their major before they fully comprehend its nature (e.g., that it is a research-based science). B103 has been designed specifically to insure that you are fully aware of the nature of your major and what you can do with it after graduation. In B103 you will begin to strengthen the written and oral communication skills you will need in all your remaining psychology courses.

B104 and B105 introduce you to the full spectrum of areas of specialization that exist within psychology. B104 covers topics that represent the social science side of psychology (i.e., personality, lifespan development, social psychology, abnormal psychology, psychotherapy, intelligence, and industrial-organizational psychology). B105 covers topics that represent the biological science side of psychology (i.e., behavioral neuroscience, motivation, emotion, memory, sensation, perception, cognition, language, and consciousness). Because of the importance of crucial topics such as learning, research methods, and the history of psychology, both courses cover these topics.

The successful completion of the three introductory courses paves the way for you to continue your study of psychology with a fundamental awareness of its basic history, empirical findings, principles, concepts, theories, specializations, methods, and applications and an understanding of how a psychology major can prepare you for your future. These courses will also provide you with an understanding of how psychological principles can be applied to personal, social, and organizational issues; help you develop insight into your own and othersÕ behaviors and mental processes; and provide you with strategies for self-management. Another important outcome of the successful completion of these introductory courses is that it will allow you to make informed decisions when you select your subsequent psychology courses.

The purpose of methods courses is to provide you with opportunities to learn and apply the research methods used by psychologists during their scientific investigations of behavior and mental processes.  These courses encourage critical and creative thinking during the scientific approach to problem solving because they require you to provide plausible explanations for psychological observations, comprehend and critique the findings of previous research, produce novel hypotheses derived from the existing psychological literature, create ethical research designs to test these hypotheses, weigh empirical evidence, and provide logical interpretations of the results of your research.  You will also demonstrate information competence (as you perform bibliographic searches) and use technology successfully (as you use computer software to analyze the data you collect).

There are two required methods courses: B305 Statistics and B311 Introductory Laboratory in Psychology. B305 focuses on the fundamentals of statistical analysis, which enable you to organize and summarize data (descriptive statistics) and to interpret and draw conclusions from data (inferential statistics).  B311 requires and builds upon the statistical knowledge gained in B305 as it introduces you to experimental methods in psychology, the ethics of research, and experimental report writing. The successful completion of these two courses is crucial to the further success of a psychology major.  Those students who aspire to graduate school will use the skills they acquire in these courses to design and perform the research projects that will serve as evidence to graduate admissions committees of their ability to conduct themselves as scientific psychologists.  Those who do not use this knowledge to perform research will employ the skills to understand and evaluate the research of others.  As you progress from your introductory courses to your more advanced courses, you will be required to read, comprehend, and critique original psychological research (i.e., primary sources such as articles in professional journals) rather than learning from secondary sources such as textbooks in which the authors have done all the interpreting and critiquing for you. If you have not mastered the vocabulary and techniques from your methods courses, and not carried it with you into your core courses, the results section of a journal article will appear to you as if it had been written in an alien language from a planet far beyond our galaxy.

Content Courses

The purpose of core courses is to provide you with a broad and deep exposure to the main content areas that define the discipline of psychology. You will select six courses from a set of twelve that represent the biological and the social science of psychology, including both basic principles and applied areas. These twelve courses are

Choose a coherent set of core courses that will provide you with the knowledge and skills you will need to achieve your post-baccalaureate aspirations.  Suppose you are preparing to become a school psychologist whose job will be to test the cognitive capabilities of children in order to determine if their ability to learn falls within the normal range.  In this case, B307, B310, B340, B344, and B380 would provide an excellent foundation.  The addition of B320 which provides a basic knowledge of how the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system controls behavior and mental processes would enable you to identify and understand the effects of the drugs that your young clients may be taking either legally (e.g., Ritalin or Prozac) or illegally (e.g., alcohol or marijuana).  No matter which career you hope to pursue, the core courses you take will enable you to understand how psychology can be applied to a wide variety of individual, social, and organizational issues and encourage you to recognize, understand, and respect socio-cultural complexity and international diversity.

The purpose of specialization courses is to provide you with an opportunity to continue your intellectual self-improvement by focusing your studies in a particular area of psychology by choosing and completing two 300-level or above psychology classes. Continuing our school psychologist plan from the preceding section, you could build on the knowledge you gained in B310 by taking B360 Child and Adolescent Psychology and become even more knowledgeable about the effects of drugs after completing B320 by taking B394 Drugs and Behavior. The addition of these courses to your already impressive set of core courses will set you apart from other graduate school applicants. Distinguishing yourself is becoming increasingly important because of the huge number of psychology majors who graduate each year in the United States with a bachelor's degree (approximately 74,000 in 2001).

A unique feature of IUPUI's psychology curriculum is the option to earn a certificate of completion in one of the following four areas of concentration: clinical rehabilitation psychology, behavioral neuroscience, industrial/organizational psychology, or the psychobiology of addictions.  You must complete a set of core, specialization, and capstone courses described in the table on page 524 of the 2002-2004 IUPUI Campus Bulletin to earn one of these certificates.  Courses you could take to satisfy this requirement include

Capstone Courses

In architecture, a capstone is the top-most stone that completes a building.  In an academic context, a capstone is the final class that completes a psychology major's curriculum.  The purpose of capstone classes is to provide students with an opportunity "to demonstrate comprehensive learning in their major through some type of product or performance" (Palomba & Banta, 1999, p. 124).  In other words, a capstone is a class in which senior psychology majors are required to pull together what they have learned in their previous classes and use this integrating experience to demonstrate they are capable of doing what they should be able to do as they graduate from the program (i.e., the department's SLOs).  This process serves a dual purpose. First, it will provide you with a final opportunity to practice and demonstrate the skills you will need to succeed after graduation on the job or in graduate school.  Second, it provides the Psychology Department a final opportunity to assess whether or not we have been successful in our mission to produce competent psychology majors and to use the results of this assessment to improve our curriculum for future psychology majors.

Most psychology departments offer only one capstone class; many offer no capstone at all. The IUPUI Psychology Department offers you three types of capstone courses. If you are pursuing a BA degree, then you may complete a capstone laboratory research project, a capstone practicum, or a capstone seminar. If you are pursuing a BS degree, you must complete a capstone laboratory.

A capstone laboratory offers you the opportunity to design, perform, analyze, and report an empirical research project on a topic of your choosing and can be conducted (a) in a laboratory class dedicated to the study of a particular sub-discipline of psychology (e.g., social, developmental, or personality psychology), (b) in an individual research class, or (c) in an honors research class. The classes that will satisfy this requirement are

The purpose of this paper has been to provide you with a clear understanding of the rationale behind the IUPUI Psychology Department's undergraduate curriculum.  You can approach your undergraduate education as a psychology major in a more active and purposeful manner once you understand why the department created its curriculum, how you can accomplish its SLOs, and who you can become as a result of their accomplishment.  Successful undergraduate educations take place when well-qualifiedfaculty lead well-informed students through a well-planned curriculum.  The IUPUI Psychology Department possesses a well-qualified faculty and a well-planned curriculum.  I hope this paper has helped to further transform you into a well-informed student.

Appleby, D. C. (2002). The teaching-advising connection. In S. F. Davis, & W. Buskist (Eds.). The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (pp. 121−139). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Brewer, C. L. (1993). Curriculum. In T. V. McGovern (Ed.), Handbook for enhancing undergraduate education in psychology (pp. 161-182). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Costello, R. B. (Ed.). (1993). The American heritage college dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Halpern, D. F. (1993). Targeting outcomes: Covering your assessment concerns and needs. In T. V. McGovern (Ed.), Handbook for enhancing undergraduate education in psychology (pp. 23-46). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Palomba, C. A., & Banta, T. W. (1999). Assessment essentials: Planning, implementing, and improving assessment in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Rodin, J., & Langer, E. J. (1977). Long-term effects of a control-relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 897-902.

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