The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate General Family and Consumer Sciences majors who have an in-depth knowledge of the content areas of the major.
Objective
Demonstration Of Content-Area Knowledge And Skills
Students graduating from the family and consumer sciences program will demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary for entry-level management in family-and-consumer-sciences-related positions.
Indicator
Exit Survey - Knowledge And Skills
The Exit Survey for family and consumer sciences majors includes multiple-choice and short-answer sections that test retention of course material and a case study that applies directly to retail apparel merchandising; it is graded on a pass/fail basis. (Each program area has multiple-choice, short answer and other questions that are specific to that program content.) To develop this instrument, faculty in the content area reviewed course and program objectives and chose questions from exams that reflected important concepts that students should retain. The test is used repetitively and the scoring is consistent. For security reasons, the "test" portion (multiple-choice questions, short essay questions, and case study) is not attached. However, this document is available in the chair's office.
Criterion
Exit Survey - Knowledge And Skills
80% of students who complete the family and consumer sciences program's Exit Survey will score a grade of Low Pass, Pass or High Pass on the content portions of the exam.
Finding
Exit Survey - Knowledge And Skills
100% of the three students for whom this data was available and who earned the BA in Family and Consumer Sciences during the December 2009 - May 2010 time period attained a score of Pass or High Pass on the content portion of the Exit Survey. Students tend to do better on the essay portion of test than the multiple-choice items. The skills needed for these different testing formats vary so that students do not appear to have the deep learning required eliminate answers on a multiple-choice format.
Action
Exit Survey - Knowledge And Skills
The findings show that this goal was met, at least for those three students for whom data was available. The rubric will be re-visited to determine whether the "Pass" score is set at too low a level. Faculty in the department may consider adjusting it so that a higher score would be required to achieve a score of "Pass." Also, a more conscientious effort will be made to collect the data on all program graduates -- by collecting surveys on 50% of graduates, we do not have a true picture of student performance. The questions over program content need to be updated in this Exit Survey. Additionally, our projects should promote deep learning over surface learning; yet we need to examine how we can address the poor performance with the multiple-choice format.
Goal
Computer Literacy
The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate students who have performed satisfactorily in the area of computer literacy through computer-based assignments in courses that are required of all FCS majors.
Objective
Computer Literacy
Students will meet university requirements for computer literacy through assignments in two courses that are required of all undergraduate majors in the department. When it was decided to eliminate the requirement of a basic computer literacy course as part of the undergraduate core at SHSU, faculty in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences decided that, to assure competency in this area, students would be required to complete specific assignments in FCS 268 (a written assignment requiring use of a word-processing program and a budget assignment requiring the use of a spreadsheet) and FCS 462 (a presentation using PowerPoint). Satisfactory completion of these three assignments will indicate achievement of basic computer literacy skills that students are projected to need as they graduate from FCS programs and enter the world of work.
Indicator
Computer Literacy
Students who graduate from undergraduate programs in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will satisfactorily complete three assignments in courses required of all undergraduate majors in the department: a word-processed assignment and a budget prepared using a spreadsheet in FCS 268 Consumer Education and a presentation involving use of PowerPoint in FCS 462 Presentation Techniques.
Criterion
Computer Literacy
90% of family and consumer sciences majors who take the courses FCS 268 and FCS 462 during the 2009-2010 academic year will score 3 or better on a 5-point scale with 5 being the highest score and 1 being the lowest score on the three assignments that are required to meet this computer literacy competency. Examples of assignment sheets for these three assignments and rubrics for grading them are attached.
Finding
Computer Literacy
This data was difficult to collect and was collected on all of the undergraduates from the department who took the department's two foundation courses, FCS 268 and FCS 462, a requirement of all undergraduate students in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. In FCS 268 undergraduate students complete an assignment using an Excel spreadsheet to organize information related to a monthly budget analysis. 80.6% of students enrolled in FCS 268 met the rating of 3 or better on a 5-point scale. In FCS 462 undergraduate students complete several writing assignments that use a word-processed format and develop three visual presentations using a PowerPoint format. The writing assignments require students to use titles, page layouts, justifications, appropriate fonts, spacing, spell-check, bullets, bolding of fonts, italics, and underlining. 100% of students met the rating of 3 or better on word-processed assignments. The PowerPoint assignments require the students to design the background; use text, illustration and clip art; and incorporate animation. Students also must be able to present the PowerPoint assignment in class to an audience of their peers. 89.8% of students met the rating of 3 or better on a 5-point scale.
As the results suggest, the weakest area is the budget assignment managing a database. Next would be an effective PowerPoint presentation. Students seem to have mastered word-processing skills.
Action
Computer Literacy
This goal was not met in its entirety, although over 80% of all undergraduate students in the two courses during the 2009-2010 academic year were successful in the areas that impact computer literacy competency. At least some of the problem was seen in the collection of the data. Beginning with the Summer I 2010 session, the department chair will work with those teaching FCS 268 and FCS 462 to verify that data are collected in a way that they can be easily sorted to determine whether the computer literacy requirement is met for each individual program and at the level set by the criterion.
With the data collected for computer literacy, database management is a weakness when compared to PowerPoint presentations and word-processing.. The emphasis given to word-processing is obviously adequate.
Goal
Employer/Supervisor Feedback
The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate general Family and Consumer Sciences majors who perform well in employment positions within the field
Objective
Demonstration Of Applied Professional Competence
The student will demonstrate professional competence and the ability to apply what they have learned (egs., appropriate product knowledge, knowledge of business procedures, knowledge of industry systems) in various aspects of family-and-consumer-sciences-related positions.
Indicator
Employer/Supervisor Evaluation
Supervisor evaluation form for general family and consumer sciences interns evaluates three skill areas (personal skills, interpersonal skills, and professional characteristics including appropriate use of knowledge from the program content). Both questions from this form used as indicators are essentially overall supervisor ratings of the intern. One of them rates the interns on a Likert-type scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest rating and 5 being the highest rating. The other is a "yes-no" indicator of whether the employer would hire the intern in the company for an entry-level management position. Internship is a requirement for degree completion in this program, so all fashion merchandising students are evaluated in this way. The instrument, which includes the supervisor rating of the intern that will be extracted and reported, was developed by the department faculty as a whole. Instruments used by other family and consumer sciences colleges and departments were reviewed in the development of the instrument. The attached instrument was designed to be generic for all programs in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences that require this type of internship and is published in the Internship Handbook which serves as the textbook for the internship course (FCS 469). The other programs that use this same form are interior design, fashion merchandising, and food service management.
Criterion
Employer/Supervisor Ratings At Least 3.5
80% of business supervisors of family and consumer sciences interns will give the intern a rating of 3.5 or higher on a 5.0 scale and 80% of business supervisors will indicate that they would hire the intern given the availability of a suitable entry-level management position in the company.
Finding
Employer Evaluation Data
Employer evaluation ratings were available on all six of the students who earned the BA in Family and Consumer Sciences from December 2009 - May 2010. All but one (5 out of 6) business/professional supervisors rated the interns with scores of 3.5 or higher on a 5-point scale (83.3%). All but one supervisor (again, 83.3%) indicated that they would hire the interns given the availability of suitable, entry-level management positions within their companies.
Weaknesses reported included: poor punctuality, request for personal leave, cell phone use, time management etc. Although we believe we repeatedly address professional characteristics, it is obviously an area in which we need to stress them even more strongly.
Action
Employer Evaluation Data
The findings associated with this goal indicate that family and consumer sciences interns going into the job market are well-prepared and deemed worthy of employment by their supervisors. All but one of these students is working in the broad network of positions now known as "event-planning" and the one that is not doing event-planning is working in restaurant and retail settings. We plan to work with our students so that this goal is met at 100% -- it is interesting that the one student who was rated lower was an excellent student academically, but had trouble in securing an internship position, and then was not very pleased with the position that she did secure, and it appears as though these difficulties were reflected in her performance. We strive to match intern with internship site, and perhaps we need to be more involved in supervising the intern when the match is not ideal.