outcomes assessment plan

Mission Statement

The department of philosophy aims to provide excellent undergraduate education in the major subfields of philosophy and to provide high quality contributions to the strong liberal arts foundation at Western Washington University. Our courses are designed to help students learn to think for themselves and to become proficient at conducting careful, rigorous, deep, and critical analyses of concepts, problems and arguments. We strive to help our students become excellent critical thinkers, readers, writers, and speakers.

Student Learning Objectives

Philosophy is among the oldest of intellectual disciplines. Many areas of study now distinct from philosophy--for example, the various sciences--may be regarded as offspring of philosophy which have come of age. Nevertheless, the central philosophical questions remain as vital as ever. Historically, philosophy has been regarded by many as the most basic of intellectual disciplines; it is the firm conviction of the faculty of the department of philosophy that it is among the most relevant. Among the questions dealt with in one philosophy course or another are what exists? What are the fundamental categories of reality? What is truth? What is knowledge? In virtue of what is an action morally permissible? What is virtue? Does God exist? What is the relation between mind and body? and the like. The members of the department believe that consideration of these and related questions is fundamental to being educated and, as such, should be of interest to all students; moreover, members of the department believe that many students are sufficiently able and mature intellectually to pursue answers to these questions at an advanced level with profit, and the faculty invite them to join in this pursuit.

Assessment of Student Learning

Philosophy curricula are commonly divided into five major areas: metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, history of philosophy, and logic. Our curriculum contains sequences of at least three courses in each area, with the exception of our logic sequence which consists of two courses. Moreover, our courses in the history of philosophy are all at the same level (300), whereas our sequences in metaphysics, ethics, epistemology and logic are progressive. Our logic courses are offered at the 100 and 200 levels, and our metaphysics, ethics and epistemology are offered at the 100, 300 and 400 levels.

Because of the progressive nature of these latter three areas, and because of their centrality to the discipline of philosophy, the extent to which a student has mastered material in the three areas can be determined by examining the quality of the student’s work in the final courses of the sequences corresponding to those areas. We regard these determinations of coursework quality as constituting outcomes assessment in metaphysics, ethics, epistemology and logic. The relations among the courses in our history of philosophy sequence are different from those that obtain among the courses in the other sequences, and outcomes assessment in that area must be determined on a course-by-course basis.

A seminar in philosophy (with an enrollment limited to 15) is now a requirement for the major. As we presently teach this seminar, it is a special topics and writing proficiency course. Our seminar is not designed to function as a capstone; that is to say it doesn’t summarize or otherwise collect material presented in previous courses thereby permitting assessment that is cumulative in nature. Instead, a student in our seminar devotes a quarter to writing and polishing a substantial paper under the close supervision of a faculty member, an achievement which has become a significant element in our outcomes assessment. We create a portfolio (stored electronically) for each of the students who complete our seminar – a group which includes not only our majors, but also anyone with a substantial enough philosophical background to enroll in the seminar. The portfolio contains three items: (i) a copy of the final paper submitted for the senior seminar, (ii) a self evaluation (containing content that extends to all aspects of the philosophy major at Western and functioning to some extent as an exit interview), and (iii) a faculty evaluation (confined primarily to the performance of the student in the senior seminar).

Evaluation of Assessment

Each summer quarter, the department chair reviews the portfolio files of the students who have completed the senior seminar in the preceding year. Then, at the first departmental meeting of the subsequent academic year, the chair (with the assistance of the faculty who have taught the senior seminar) reports to the rest of the department on the facts, figures, and character of the self evaluations, the faculty evaluations, and the writing samples of our junior- and senior-level majors. The report evaluates the evidence provided by the portfolios on whether (and to what extent) we are successfully meeting our student learning objectives.