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.