| GOALS
& OBJECTIVES
Course Objectives
Specific goals aimed at skills and activities are more properly called
objectives. For the spring 2001 class, these were articulated as
follows:
In L216, students could expect to
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Gain exposure to a wide variety of cultural texts (discursive and non-discursive)
and learn to discuss them competently both verbally and in writing.
-
Practice rhetorical and oral communication skills by reporting to the
class, both individually and in groups.
-
Work in groups and practice producing collaborative projects, learning
to recognize diverse strengths among group members and employing them to
accomplish the group’s collective goal.
-
Improve their written communication skills by preparing short, medium-length,
and long written projects.
Although these objectives give students a clear picture of what they will
do for the semester, the objectives do not lend themselves well to measurable
assessment. Below is a set of course objectives rearticulated with
more measurable skills in mind; possible assessment methods follow each
objective in brackets.
By the end of the semester, students of L216 can expect to have learned
competently
-
To write about, discuss, or otherwise interpret (note
2) a wide array of humanistic texts including but not limited
to essays, films, plays (written texts and performance), novels, editorial
copy (journalism), and art – both portraiture and sculpture.
[Each of the four paper assignments will ask students to synthesize
their interpretations of humanistic texts vis-à-vis a business-related
topic.]
-
To give professional oral presentations.
[After instruction, students will give oral presentations during the
semester which will be evaluated when given.]
-
To write a synthetic essay that pulls together the main idea of the course
and several of the texts covered in the course.
[This skill will be assessed concomitantly with the papers students
write that show their ability to interpret and discuss humanistic texts.]
-
To work collaboratively (recognizing diverse strengths among group members
and employing them to accomplish a collective goal) to create a group project
that can be presented to others in a competitive environment.
[Students will collaborate in small groups for a sustained period to
prepare an oral presentation of their collectively-proposed business plans.
The plan must outline a viable business that has a social and environmental
conscience.]
2. Because the course title, “Business
and the Humanities,” insists on probing the meaning of “the humanities,”
it is worthwhile to pause to consider what defines this field of study.
According to Thomas E. Helm, “What are you assessing? General education
and the humanities curriculum,” College Teaching 48:3 (summer 2000):
90-4, the watermark of humanistic endeavors is less the content under investigation,
but rather the act of interpretation. Hence my attention to
students’ competence in interpreting the texts covered in our class.
When I say interpretation, I mean moving beyond facile one-to-one equivalences
(e.g. this means that) to more complex, contextual signification.
Students in L216 will be asked to link what they see in a humanistic text
to the course inquiry question. |