OATdb Archive - Sam Houston State University

OATdb Archive

2014 - 2015

Psychology BS

Goal

Core Concepts In Psychology

The Bachelor of Science Program in Psychology will provided students with a broad base of essential knowledge in the various subfields of psychology.

Objective

Students Demonstrate Broad Knowledge Base

Students who complete the Bachelor of Science Program in Psychology will demonstrate knowledge of core concepts in the various sub-disciplines of Psychology.

Indicator

PSY 1301 Exit Examination

Students' knowledge of the diverse areas within the field of psychology will be assessed using a common comprehensive final exam in PSY 1301 - Introduction to Psychology

Criterion

70% Of Students Will Pass Specific Areas Of Exit Exam

Criterion for success is to have 70% of the students respond successfully to questions in the following areas: Science of Psychology; Research Design; Physiological; Learning; Sensation/Perception; Developmental; Abnormal; Memory/Cognition; Personality; and Social Psychology. Our operational definition of "successfully" is a minimum of 70% correct on each of the subfields.
A copy of the instrument is attached to this indicator.

Finding

Broad-based Knowledge

In the fall 2014 semester, 649 students took the common Introductory Psychology final exam. The overall percentage of correct scores was 66%. In the spring 2015 semester we had a sample of 635 students taking the common final with an overall percentage of correct scores of 65.0.
Data from the Exit Exam for Introductory Psychology broken down between semesters showed that the following percentage of correct answers for specific areas in psychology. Note that the scores for fall 2013 and spring 2014 are listed in parentheses.
Asterisks (*) signify positive trends in our data while negatives (-) indicate negative trends in the data.
                                     Fall 2014            Spring 2015

Psychology as a science  67% (69)                   70% (65)*
Research Design           72% (73)                    68% (72)-
Physiological Psychology 61% (53)*                    60% (57)*
Learning                     72% (69)*                    72% (68)*
Sensation/Perception     71% (61)*                    66% (61)*
Cognition/Memory         62% (62)                    61% (62)
Personality                  61% (60)                    62% (53)*
Social                        69% (75)-                    67% (73)-
Developmental             61% (62)                    62% (61)
Abnormal                    66% (68)                    65% (65)

Action

Broad-based Knowledge

For the fall 2014 semester, the results were encouraging. The overall score for the Exit Exam was 1.4 points higher than the previous fall. There were some slight (1-2 point) declines in Psychology as a science, Research Design, Developmental and Abnormal, but there were large (3+) increases in Physiological Psychology, Learning, and Sensation/Perception, areas that were particularly low over the past several years.
For the spring 2015 semester, the results were similar with increases in Psychology as a Science, Physiological Psychology, Sensation/Perception and Personality. The results were below expectations, though, as we failed to reach criterion on several of the different categories. The reason expectations were high was that during the course of the semester the chair checked for progress on the different areas and found them to be quite encouraging, only to have a decreased during the exit exam. Reasons for these discrepancies may include: at the time the exit exam is taken the students are involved in comprehensive exams for several other courses; there is typically a long delay between presentation of the primary materials for the course and the exit exam; the exit exam includes materials given over a 15-week semester and the students may not have time to concentrate as well as they should on different aspects of the course.
We are better than we were a year ago but we are not near reaching our goals. One issue that did come up during the first semester was that the publishing company only provided about 60% of the books that were needed. Thus, a large portion of the classes was without books for the first 5 weeks of the semester. We then changed texts for the spring semester and the instructors had to get used to using a slightly altered format. This may have had an effect and we will see in the fall. One other issue is that the websites for the previous text required the students to pay an amount for access while the new text supplied a free web site.
Specific actions will include having all of our TAs attend the Teaching Conference in August 2015. In addition, we have continued to review individual questions in each section and, in some cases, change the wording or replace the questions to make them more understandable. This, perhaps, had a slight effect in raising performance and we will continue to do this this upcoming year to see if this strategy can have a lasting impact. Another factor is that the students seemed to do well with the sub-tests during the semester and didn't do as well during the exit exam. Therefore, one of the issues may be of retention of materials over the course of the semester. The TAs will be instructed to review all of the areas on the exit exam during the final week of class and the students will be given a list of terms from which to re-familiarize themselves for the exit exam.
As always, the department chair will meet with the TAs and stress to them the need to present the material in ways that are germane to the students and are linked with experiences that a typical young person may have encountered, e.g., rather than using "nonsense" syllables in the mnemonic section of memory, using the learning and retention of grocery lists or names of others in the class or even materials from which to be tested.

Goal

Generate, Apply And Communicate Scientific Findings

The Bachelor of Science program in Psychology will provide students with opportunities to apply and communicate the scientific findings of their discipline.

Objective

Generate, Design, Apply And Communicate Scientific Knowledge

Students who complete the Bachelor of Science Program in Psychology will be able to generate, design and apply the results of scientific investigations and communicate their implications.

Indicator

PSYC 3101 (Statistics Lab) Assignments

The ability of students to conduct and understand research as well as apply and communicate results is assessed by means of a series of faculty-developed assignments for Psychology 3101 (Statistics Lab). The instruments requires students to: 1) choose research designs, compute statistics, and interpret outcomes. (Objectives 1 and 2); and interpreting results of scientific data, making decisions using the results based upon statistical probabilities, and making recommendations for follow-up work, either in the scientific or social environment. (Objectives 3 and 4). We're basically asking what do these data mean and why are they important?
Copies of the Assignments are attached.

Criterion

Objectives 1 And 2

Criterion for Objectives 1 and 2, 80% of psychology majors will receive a score that is deemed "acceptable" score (70% or higher) according to faculty-developed departmental rubric.

Finding

70% Minimum--Objectives 1 And 2

In the fall 2014 semester, 79% of the students attained the aforementioned acceptable score on Objectives 1 and 2 and 66% scored at the 80% and above level. In the spring 2015 semester, 85%attained an acceptable score on Objectives 1 and 2 while 72% scored at least an 80% on Objectives 1 and 2.
Overall, for Objectives 1 and 2, 82% of the students scored at the acceptable level with 69% scoringt at the 80% level.

Criterion

Objectives 3 And 4

For Objectives 3 and 4, 80% of psychology majors will receive a score that is at least acceptable (70% or above), according to departmental rubric.

Finding

70% Minimum--Objectives 3 And 4

In the fall 2014 semester, 72% of the students reached the acceptable criterion while 64% attained at least the 80% level on Objectives 3 and 4. In the spring 2015 semester, 85% of the students reached criterion and 59% reached the 80% level.
Overall, for the 2014-2015 academic year, 79% of the students performed at an acceptable level and 61% performed at an 80% or above level.

Action

Generate And Communicate Scientific Findings

Overall, the data look reasonably good given that we reached criterion for Objectives 1 and 2 and almost reached criterion for Objectives 3 and 4. The scores in the spring seemed to be much better than in the fall semester and that may be a function of the instructor as the fall 2014 semester was his first teaching this particular class. We shall continue to teach the information as was done in the spring 2015 semester but will also include a new Exit Exam for the Psychology 3101 lab sections. This will incrorporate all of the information that was presented during the course of each semester and will add as a check for retention of materials over the course of that semester.

Update to previous cycle's plan for continuous improvement

Broad-based knowledge:
We seem to be maintaining where we were in the previous academic year which is unsettling. The numbers for the Social Psychology section are improved from previous years as are the numbers for Research Design. The problems remain in the Physiological Psychology section and the Personality section.
For those areas not reaching criterion, the coordinator for the Introductory sections will:
1. send out very specific guidelines for what their students should take away from the course—this was done and seem to have had a positive effect on semester exams and on the comprehensive final;
2. examine the performances for those areas on each pertinent exam during the course of the semester—interestingly, the performance on unit exams was fairly good with scores in the mid 70s to the mid 80s. There is some issue as to why the students didn’t perform as well on the comprehensive final exam but that could be explained because of the time lapse between when the materials were presented and the final exam or, perhaps, students did not review as well as they should have due to the weight of other exams. Regardless, the students did do better during the semester and perhaps we should consider those scores as well.;
3. the TAs will be instructed to make the materials for these areas more germane to student interest---the TAs were very open to this suggestion and it probably had an effect on their IDEA scores;
4. the instructors will be encouraged to utilize more on-line materials that the students can access.
Assessments will be ongoing and will consist of comparing performance on each area exam with performance on past and current final exams—See Number 2 above.;
In addition, it is the goal that the 70% criterion that is striven for on the final exam be in place for all the areas on the area exams. This should allow us to identify problems as the semester goes along.—This seems to have worked but needs to be viewed more consistently.

Generating and Communicating Scientific Knowledge: The chair will meet with the new instructor for the statistics course and lab and impress upon him the need to make the material more understandable to the students. He also will review the current types of embedded questions that are asked and attempt to update those with specific, real-life examples.
Specific points will be to consistently, throughout the semester, assess how students generate and communicate scientific knowledge.
For both areas:
1. questions will be embedded in each exam, and addressed on each laboratory exercise, to assess the students' abilities to determine and explain statistical findings and effects;
2. the 80% of students successfully mastering the materials criterion will continue to be used--Overall, the criterion was met on one indicator and almost met on the other. What would be better, though, would be to have met criteria for both indicators for each semester and not just over the entire year. Spring was better than the fall and this may have been due to the new instructor being more used to dealing with our students. We predict that the success for the spring 2015 semester will roll over into the fall 2015 semester.
3. if criteria is not met at each level of assessment further remedial tasks will be given--it appears that students did better as the semester progressed, indicating a positive learning curve and that earlier assignments had a positive effect on later assignments. Also, it may be presumed that later assignments reinforced the earlier assignments.
4. assignments including design selection (between vs. within, single factor vs. factorial, etc.) will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% of successful mastery of the materials criterion being used to determine effectiveness--this appears to have worked and we may raise our definition of mastery to 75% and not 70%;
5. assignments with hands-on SPSS/Excel based calculations will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% criterion being used to determine effectiveness--this also seems to have worked;
6. hypothesis formation, testing, and interpretation will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% of students mastering the material being used to determine effectiveness--the laboratory assignments required these factors and we shall continue to use them;
7. students will be tasked on three separate research papers to analyze mock data and report decisions in APA-style results and Discussion sections. An 80% criterion will be used to determine effectiveness of the course to instill the ability to generate and communicate scientific data--we used two APA-formatted papers during the course of the semester and student scored between 74% and 82% on Objectives 1 and 2 and between 69% and 80% on Objectives 3 and 4. Again, they were much better in the spring than in the fall and this may be a result of the instructor being more comfortable with our students. I think we will probably keep him.

Plan for continuous improvement Broad-based knowledge:
We appear to be progressing with respect to meeting criterion for most areas and we are cautiously pleased with this. As we did last year, the coordinator for the Introductory sections will:
1. send out very specific guidelines for what their students should take away from the course for both the unit tests and for the exit exam;
2. examine the performances for all areas on each exam during the course of the semester and compare them with the performance on the exit exam;
4. the instructors will be encouraged to utilize more on-line materials that the students can access.
5. TAs will be instructed to periodically review the materials during the during the course of the semester, prior to the exit exam, to foster re-familiarization of the materials for the students.

In addition, it is the goal that the 70% criterion that is striven for on the final exam be in place for all the areas on the area exams. This should allow us to identify problems as the semester goes along.—This seems to have worked but needs to be viewed more consistently.

Generating and Communicating Scientific Knowledge: The chair will meet with the new instructor for the statistics course and lab and impress upon him the need to make the material more understandable to the students. He also will review the current types of embedded questions that are asked and attempt to update those with specific, real-life examples.
Specific points will be to consistently, throughout the semester, assess how students generate and communicate scientific knowledge.
For both areas:
1. questions will be embedded in each exam, and addressed on each laboratory exercise, to assess the students' abilities to determine and explain statistical findings and effects;
2. the 80% of students successfully mastering the materials criterion will continue to be used--Overall, the criterion was met on one indicator and almost met on the other. What would be better, though, would be to have met criteria for both indicators for each semester and not just over the entire year. Spring was better than the fall and this may have been due to the new instructor being more used to dealing with our students. We predict that the success for the spring 2015 semester will roll over into the fall 2015 semester.
3. if criteria is not met at each level of assessment further remedial tasks will be given--it appears that students did better as the semester progressed, indicating a positive learning curve and that earlier assignments had a positive effect on later assignments. Also, it may be presumed that later assignments reinforced the earlier assignments.
4. assignments including design selection (between vs. within, single factor vs. factorial, etc.) will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% of successful mastery of the materials criterion being used to determine effectiveness--this appears to have worked and we may raise our definition of mastery to 75% and not 70%;
5. assignments with hands-on SPSS/Excel based calculations will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% criterion being used to determine effectiveness--this also seems to have worked;
6. hypothesis formation, testing, and interpretation will be required of the Psychology 3101 class with an 80% of students mastering the material being used to determine effectiveness--the laboratory assignments required these factors and we shall continue to use them;
7. students will be tasked on three separate research papers to analyze mock data and report decisions in APA-style results and Discussion sections. An 80% criterion will be used to determine effectiveness of the course to instill the ability to generate and communicate scientific data--we used two APA-formatted papers during the course of the semester and student scored between 74% and 82% on Objectives 1 and 2 and between 69% and 80% on Objectives 3 and 4. Again, they were much better in the spring than in the fall and this may be a result of the instructor being more comfortable with our students. I think we will probably keep him.