On December 11, 2018, a group of faculty from across campus came together in the Union Club to review senior Public Affairs essays from the Fall 2018 administration of the University Exit Exam.
The following Assessment Council members participated:
Tara Benson | Tracey Glaessgen | Josh Smith |
Stephen Berkwitz | Andrew Homburg | Tracy Stout |
Mary Bohlen | Juan Meraz | Cathy Van Landuyt |
Christie Cathey | Letitia White Minnis | Elizabeth Walker |
Julia Cottrell | Kathy Nordyke | Sue Webb |
Rachelle Darabi | Michelle Olsen | Kelly Wood |
Toby Dogwiler | Kelly Rapp | Mark Woolsey |
Brian Edmond | David Rohall | Ximena Uribe-Zarain |
Keri Franklin | Steven Senger | |
Kathy Gibson | Matthew Siebert |
The following guest faculty and staff participated:
- Mary Ann Wood
- Andrea Weber
- Sarah Lancaster
All undergraduate students are required to complete the University Exit Exam. On this exam, students are asked to select and respond to one of three prompts for each of the three pillars of Public Affairs: Cultural Competence, Ethical Leadership, & Community Engagement. They are asked to respond in at least 250 words.
Faculty reviewers were asked to look at the essays and determine if they saw patterns. Working in groups of four or five, reviewers discussed the essays and offered their perspectives on the public affairs prompts and essays. Reviewers were asked to consider how to make the prompts more accessible to students.
Faculty were also invited to apply for an Assessment of Student Learning Grant to study public affairs essays within their department.
After reviewing nearly 2000 student essays, faculty noticed…
Cultural Competence
Prompts
- Describe ways in which you have initiated and developed interactions with culturally different others.
- Analyze how experiences at Missouri State have helped you to articulate insights gained regarding cultural rules and biases (e.g., seeking new perspectives, awareness of how your personal experiences have shaped these rules, and how to recognize and respond to cultural biases resulting in a shift in self-description). How did you gain the insights? What are your new understandings of cultural rules and biases?
- Describe how you have adjusted your attitudes and beliefs through working within and learning from diversity of communities and cultures.
Reviewer Comments
Reviewers were asked to write their thoughts as they processed their thinking for each group of essays.
- We noticed that the essays seemed even better this year and that students used more examples of actual interaction in cultural competence.
- Reflections are much improved compared to three years ago!
- These student responses are much more in-depth than ever. There are fewer blank and one-sentence responses.
- I’d be interested to know how much of a breakdown there is between academic and co-curricular experiences that shape students’ Public Affairs experiences.
- We recommend having just one prompt (we like the third one best) rather than giving the students the choice between three. On top of that, ask students to give 2-3 specific examples of how & where (classroom, activity, job, residence hall, etc.) their Cultural Competence experiences took place.
- We should share great responses with other students, faculty, staff, and administrators.
- Even with our lack of diversity, many students’ minds are opened to diversity when they come to MSU. “I’ve had a cultural shock.”
- How can we get students to think deeply about Cultural Competence, not just talk about superficial encounters?
- How can we require all students to complete some experience with the community or to complete a group project in their major?
- Can student involvement include the arts and theatre?
- Tough Talks is one eye opener; do students participate for class credit?
- How can we connect Cultural Competence to university work/life and encourage students to go beyond their experiences in the City of Springfield?
- Students might benefit from some discussion on bridging the gap from seeing/recognizing other cultures to reflecting on how that experience impacted them.
- Students seem to be “getting” the idea of Cultural Competence, but fewer are embodying the practice.
- Community Engagement=better Cultural Competence
- We need to figure out how to make Public Affairs relevant to freshmen who are coming from very diverse experiences.
- Better responses include relevant personal examples to demonstrate their learning.
- What can we do to drive home the point that Cultural Competence is more than just observing or knowing about differences?
- Next Steps: Increasing diversity within groups for group projects, in majors, and in core courses.
Ethical Leadership
Prompts
- Discuss in detail and/or analyze your core beliefs about ethical leadership and the origins of your beliefs.
- Describe opportunities you have had to recognize ethical issues in your discipline and recognize cross-relationships among ethical issues.
- Describe an ethical issue in your field. Apply ethical perspectives or concepts to that ethical question in your field. What are the full implications of the ethical issue? How do you plan to handle the issue in the future?
Reviewer Comments
Reviewers were asked to write their thoughts as they processed their thinking for each group of essays.
- It seems that we’re getting great responses about ethical issues, but students aren’t relating them to Ethical Leadership.
- “Describe” or “Identify” an ethical issue.
- Students can readily identify ethical issues and point out the right and wrong of it, but I’m seeing less reflection/introspection than the Cultural Competence essays.
- Overall, I think the writing in the Ethical Leadership pillar was stronger, but the “highs” weren’t as on target as the Cultural Competence “highs”.
- As a table, we do not like the multiple part questions. It seems like students never fully develop their answers.
- The examples are rather shallow. There seems to be a textbook example of ethical leadership, but not much depth or real understanding. How can we draw that out?
- The “Describe an ethical issue” question is important. Could we add something about “in your major/projected future career”?
- Ethical Leadership seemed to have fewer specific examples to courses—more hypothetical or career oriented.
- Change Question: “Describe your experiences with leadership at MSU & how you applied ethical principles in that role.”
- Change Question: “Discuss in detail and/or analyze your core beliefs about ethical leadership and how your experience at MSU has shaped your thinking.”
- Many examples that students used to discuss Ethical Leadership seemed to pull in family/external beliefs & values outside of MSU.
- The best Ethical Leadership responses are often relating to how an ethics issue relates to their field of study.
- Clarify the questions to emphasize relating their response to their field of study or an experience at MSU.
- Prompts should be about experiences while here at MSU—even related to core beliefs & the effects of coming here.
- What experiences at MSU taught you about Ethical Leadership?
- Several students (most) didn’t seem to understand what “ethics” or “ethical leaders” mean.
- We want students to talk more about their leadership experiences at MSU.
- It seemed that the students expected ethics to come from the home or work & didn’t mention much about MSU or what their experiences in college or classes taught them about.
- Many students don’t talk about the origins of their beliefs in ethical leadership.
- What does “recognize cross-relationships among ethical issues” mean? Confusing.
- Question Change: “How would an ethical leader approach/handle the issue in the future?”
- Question Change: “As a leader, what would the ethical approach be to this issue?”
- The second Ethical Leadership questions asks about the origins of beliefs; many students left that part out or seemed unsure of the origins.
- We’re not sure all students have a clear understanding of ethics.
- Clarify the difference between “leadership” and “ethical leadership”.
Community Engagement
Prompts
- Provide evidence and examples of your experience in community or civic engagement activities and describe what you learned about yourself, your civic identity, and your future commitment to public action.
- Describe experiences in which you have shown initiative in team leadership of complex or multiple community engagement activities. Reflect or analyze the aims of the experience and the accomplishment of your actions.
- Describe ways in which you have connected and extended knowledge (facts, theories, etc.) from your own academic study to community engagement and to your current and future participation in civic life, politics, government, and your career.
Reviewer Comments
Reviewers were asked to write their thoughts as they processed their thinking for each group of essays.
- We seem to be doing a better job of getting students in the community and involved with service.
- Some essays overlapped with other prompts, some were confused or didn’t participate.
- Many students seemed to not address all aspects of the third question for Community Engagement. Perhaps we could make it an “and/or” question.
- I believe the questions in this category didn’t draw out the desired emotional impact of Community Engagement of the students. Many answers were factual—almost a list of activities. Perhaps we need to change the questions.
- Should we give this prompts to students in GEP 101 & inform them they will respond to the questions again on their University Exit Exam?
- Let’s make one prompt, and just be really direct. (i.e. How did your experiences at MSU, inside and outside of the classroom, contribute to your learning/growth in community engagement?
- Students don’t always seem to understand what community engagement looks like. Others list accomplishments without much reflection on how they’ve changed.
- The examples from the Community Engagement pillar did not seem to demonstrate as much of an understanding as they did in the other pillars.
- The prompts seemed longer and students seemed to focus on the first half of the prompt.
Overall Comments/Recommendations
- How do we best connect the dots across PA classes and experiences to make a comprehensive experience/view for students?
- What is a more integrated way to expose students to Public Affairs?
- Shorter questions would be better.
- Multi-part questions don’t seem to be effective.
- It seems like less is more on the questions.
- Can we use a text platform or social media to convey Public Affairs in a fun way?
- Look into not marking the University Exit Exam graduation requirement when students fail to respond to all three prompts.
- For future workshops, it might be helpful to have the essays sorted by pillar and prompt.
- We saw some excellent responses. Could we look at those and see if there is a correlation with the questions?