Vignette C – Humanities Course at a Field Station
(Fig. 2C)
The field site and course: University of Michigan
Biological Station (UMBS), which was founded in 1909, houses research,
courses, and field experience programs for students. UMBS is located 250
miles from central campus in a more remote/unpopulated setting. TheHumanities Course at a Field Station was a newly designed course
that was part of a larger effort funded by the U-M Provost’s
Transforming Learning for a Third Century Grant to bring students from
other disciplines to UMBS.
Development of student outcomes: During the humanities
course development, UMBS staff, including the program manager and
program evaluation coordinator, discussed outcomes that they wanted to
explore with this particular class to include in their annual program
assessment. These outcomes were informed by discussions with the course
faculty as well as reviewing syllabi. These intended student outcomes
included (1) Develop stronger connections to place in northern Michigan;
(2) Increased ability to communicate with/about scientific work; (3)
Increased value for the interdisciplinary nature of science.
Course and station context: The humanities course was open
to all students in all majors, room and board was free for the first
year of the program for students, scholarship assistance was available,
and transportation was provided. The course ran for six weeks during the
UM spring term, which allowed students opportunities to work or take
other courses during the rest of the summer. The course was a
place-based course, where the focus was on learning from and not just
about. Students involved in this course took four short courses and
received 8 credit hours across three departments (English, Anthropology,
and American Culture); each course was taught by a different instructor.
UMBS is a residential field station, where students live together in
cabins and faculty also live on-site. Students and faculty eat meals
together in the dining hall. Five other undergraduate courses ran at the
same time as the humanities course. These additional five courses came
from more traditional biophysical disciplines such as general ecology
and biology of birds. While students in the humanities course generally
spent time with their classmates and faculty in their individual course,
there were opportunities (both structured and unstructured) for students
to communicate, work with, and form connections with students,
researchers, and faculty in other courses.
Data collection: In order to assess change (increases in
perceived ability or value), the program evaluation coordinator used a
pre/post survey to identify student perceptions before they began the
course and after they ended the course. The survey included measures
about sense of place, sense of connection to larger-scale problems or
issues, and ability to communicate with scientists about scientific
work. The program evaluation coordinator also conducted a focus group
with students in the course to explore perceptions about their value of
the interdisciplinary nature of science, ability to communicate, and
connections to place in more detail. Interviews with the instructor and
a focus group with the TA for the course also provided insight into
change in student perceptions about these topics and how these
changes developed in their time taking this course at UMBS.
While this assessment was created to share for an annual report, the
program evaluation coordinator was interested in sharing this
information with the larger field education community, and so all of the
assessment of this course (and all courses at UMBS) had IRB approval. In
addition, the program evaluation coordinator selected published measures
to include on pre/post surveys that had been tested in college
populations. The program evaluation coordinator intentionally conducted
focus groups because students had no interaction with her until this
meeting and she was not associated with their grades or evaluation for
their course.
Next steps: Findings from the first year of survey
responses and focus groups indicated that students in the course formed
extremely close-knit bonds. Future assessment work will consist of
interviews with students, faculty, and TA to explore how connections to
others (sense of belonging in the class) impacts learning and
understanding of different course topics.
In addition, findings from surveys and focus groups indicated that
students in the course perceived increases in the value of the
interdisciplinary nature of science and increased confidence in their
ability to communicate about science. Findings from faculty interviews
supported student responses and also indicated that faculty had a strong
interest in doing more intentional collaboration with biophysical
courses in the future. After discussing all of the assessment data, UMBS
staff decided to expand their assessment for the next year.
Specifically, they wanted to know if students from bio-physical courses
who interacted with students in the humanities course also experienced
increases in perceived value of the interdisciplinary nature of science
and ability to communicate about science. The program evaluation
coordinator intends to add additional assessment approaches to examine
interactions between this course and other courses at the station. This
may include observations of structured and unstructured activities with
the humanities and bio-physical courses as well as adding survey
questions and/or focus group questions for all students who are taking
courses at UMBS. Thus, the results of the assessment of the humanities
course not only addressed whether the student outcomes were achieved in
the humanities course, but also highlighted changes in the program that
would happen in future iterations, and informed additional assessment of
all UMBS courses in the next year.