ASSESSMENT NEWSLETTER II

April, 2003

     This is the second of two newsletters provided by the Department of Foreign Languages faculty to student majors.  The first newsletter, dated January 2003, outlined for students the following topics:

n       What is assessment?
n       Language and culture – measuring proficiency and cultural competence
n       Measuring improvements in language proficiency
n       Portfolios and assessment / purpose and benefits to students

If you did not receive a copy of that newsletter, be sure to ask your language instructor or your advisor for a copy, or access it at our Web site at www.has.vcu.edu/for/.

     The second newsletter focuses on portfolios and assessment.   In preparation for university accreditation, in Spring 2003 we must have a sampling of portfolios from our senior class by April 30, 2003, and instructions to students at the sophomore, junior, and senior levels are contained in this newsletter.  The following topics are covered:

n       Major requirements and expectations for majors / April 2003 brochures
n       Senior class requirements / May 2003, August 2003,  December 2003
n       Junior class requirements
n       Sophomore class requirements
n       Portfolio checklist

I.                    Major requirements and expectations / April 2003 brochures

   By now students should have received a copy of the “Requirements and expectations” brochure either for a major in French, in German, or in Spanish.  The French brochure is blue, the German brochure is gold, and the Spanish brochure is orange.  Copies are available in the department office if you did not receive one.

II.                  Senior class requirements / those graduating in 2003

   Portfolios have two purposes:  the first is to provide evidence of your accomplishments when VCU undergoes accreditation, and the second is to provide evidence of your accomplishments to employers or graduate programs to whom you will wish to demonstrate your abilities. 

   Portfolio requirements for seniors graduating in May 2003.  Students graduating in May 2003 should already have filed for graduation.   Please schedule an appointment with your major advisor no later than April 17, 2003, or sooner if you need assistance in determining which items from the “portfolio checklist” in item V below are appropriate for your case. 

   The contents of your portfolio as a minimum should consist of (1) the brochure of major requirements and expectations for your language major, (2) a copy of your resume, (3) a sample of your graded writing from two or more classes.  You may use the resume you already prepared for job seeking, or you may follow the suggestions in item V below.

   Other possible items to include (e.g., oral work, evidence of study abroad, internships, service learning, etc.) can be discussed with your advisor, or, if you have had a portfolio course or a senior seminar, your work from those courses can be used.  Item V below provides more information on possible portfolio contents that will be optional for seniors graduating in May 2003.

   In one or two classes professors may already be working with students to put together  portfolios as a class project, and these portfolios may be presented to your advisor as your portfolio for assessment purposes.  Otherwise, present two copies of your personally designed portfolio to your advisor no later than the last day of classes.  By the end of final exam week, your advisor will review and return your portfolio and provide you feedback that will assist you in finalizing your portfolio choices for future presentation to an employer.  She or he will retain the second copy of the portfolio for assessment purposes during the 2003-04 accreditation visit by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and for use by our faculty in revising or updating our majors.  Note that all student names and identifying characteristics will be removed from portfolios presented to SACS accreditation teams, and student privacy will be respected.

   Portfolio requirements for seniors graduating in August 2003 and December 2003.   Those graduating in August 2003 and December 2003 will need to submit a portfolio to their advisor at the time they file for graduation.  Portfolio requirements will be part of your senior checklist. The portfolio as a minimum should consist of (1) the brochure of major requirements and expectations for your language major, (2) a copy of your resume, (3) a sample of graded writing in at least two classes, and (4) a sample of your oral work. 

   Make an appointment immediately with the VCU Career Center to discuss your resume and start a placement file there for use in job seeking or graduate and professional school applications.  Your resume should have been discussed with the VCU Career Center, and there should be evidence that you have established a placement file for use in job seeking or graduate school.  Be sure to mention not only your educational background and job experience, but mention study abroad, internships or cooperative education experiences, and service learning in which you used a foreign language.  Identify the people who may serve as your references.  Double-check spelling and grammar and overall presentation.

   Your graded writing will include at least one sample demonstrating your knowledge of the culture and civilization of one or more target countries, while the other will illustrate your analytical skills in analyzing texts. 

   Your oral work may be part of a class assignment, or it may be done as a 3 to 5-minute tape designed specifically for your portfolio.  Written evaluations by qualified professionals of your spoken language are also acceptable.

   If you have not already gained appropriate language and cultural experiences through  study abroad, or internship experience, or service learning courses, start planning now.  If study abroad or internships are not possible, consider volunteering to work as a tutor for 101 classes or as an assistant in the language learning center.  While cooperative education and paid part-time jobs are ideal, you may also check with your advisor about internship opportunities or with the department office to see if you can work for class credits as either an unpaid teaching assistant or faculty research assistant for a few hours per week.  The department head or his designee must sign off on all proposed internship opportunities.

   Present two copies of your portfolio to your advisor at the time you submit your graduation application.  By the end of final exam week, your advisor will review and return your portfolio and provide you feedback that will assist you in finalizing your portfolio choices for future presentation to an employer.  She or he will retain the second copy of the portfolio for assessment purposes during the 2003-04 accreditation visit by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and for use by our faculty in revising or updating our majors.  Any information that would identify you as an individual will be removed for all assessment purposes.

III.                Junior class major requirements / those graduating in 2004

Portfolios

   Portfolios are a way to show off your accomplishments.  VCU wants to highlight your achievements and assure accrediting bodies, legislators, and parents how much you have achieved as a language major at this institution.  More importantly, however, the portfolio also enables you to assure future employers of the level of proficiency you have achieved and the mastery of cultural materials that they can expect from our graduates when they are on the job.  The portfolio for the candidate for a teaching position or for an entry-level position with a business or government agency can serve the same function as the portfolio presented by an artist who shows samples of his paintings or a composer who provides samples of her compositions.  If you are applying to graduate school, you can also make use of your portfolio to illustrate the level of your qualifications.

   Anyone graduating in 2004 should already be preparing class assignments for inclusion in a portfolio.  Faculty in all upper division language classes have advised students of how important this is.  For identifying the specific contents, use the checklist found in Item V below. 

   If you have studied abroad this academic year or will do so this summer, it will be useful to illustrate in the future the samples of your work before and after you have gone abroad.  (If you have not saved work from classes prior to the time you went abroad, obviously this will not be possible.)  If your teachers are willing, you may also provide in your portfolio both graded writing samples and the subsequent revisions you did for the portfolio.

   If you take a portfolio class or senior seminar in the coming year, you will be asked to develop your senior portfolio at that time.  However, planning that portfolio as a junior will be critical.

Knowledge of content areas outlined in the brochure

   In the brochures that have been distributed to language majors, there is an outline of expectations for your knowledge in the areas of civilization and literature.  Most items listed were studied in either the required literary survey or the required civilization sequence.  You acquired in-depth knowledge of those areas in electives for majors.

   You are demonstrating some of your knowledge of content areas by what you include in the portfolio.  However, it is rare for students to master all areas in their courses simply because majors take only a certain number of elective credit hours for majors as undergraduates.  As a result, during the 2003-04 academic year, faculty in French, in German, and in Spanish, will develop a mechanism for students in each language major to pull together what they have learned and assure that minimal expectations have been met.  

   During the 2003-04 academic year additional assessment measures will be developed and piloted.  These will allow faculty to measure how much students have learned between the time they began their major and the time they graduate.  These measures will be the subject of the first Fall 2003 assessment newsletter.

Language proficiency and cultural competence

   Reading, writing, speaking, listening, and small c culture are taught in language classes at all levels. By small c culture, we mean how to use and understand common phrases and gestures and how to behave in a foreign culture, and it can vary from phrases that we write in letters to the way we handle telephone conversations to the gestures we use when we greet people or say good-bye.   New assessment measures will address our expectations for how much more students are able to do between the time they declare a major and the time they are ready to graduate.

   Our further expectation is that juniors will have an opportunity to measure their language and cultural proficiency using one of the national and international exams available.  The options will be outlined in a newsletter during the Fall 2003 semester. 

   The ultimate purpose of assessment testing is three-fold.  First and most important, a nationally or internationally recognized test will afford you the opportunity to include in your portfolio the test results that can guarantee to an employer or a graduate school that you have all the skills needed to do the job or to succeed in the graduate program.  Secondly, VCU will be able to demonstrate to accrediting bodies and legislators and future students the level of achievement our majors exhibit by the time they are ready to leave VCU.  Thirdly, our faculty can review the results in such a way as to integrate those results into our future curricular planning.

IV.                Those graduating in 2005 and beyond

   Sophomores and juniors who expect to graduate in 2005 and beyond need to begin planning their portfolios immediately.  They should follow the portfolio expectations outlined in Item V below. 

   If majors have not yet planned for study abroad, they should review such planning (both educational and financial) with their major advisors and the Office of Education Abroad.  Cooperative education experiences should be explored with the major advisor, with the VCU Career Center, and with the Office of Education Abroad.    Internships and service learning opportunities should also be discussed with the major advisor.

   The new brochures for language majors outline expectations for language proficiency and cultural competence, and they specify the content areas where majors can expect to be knowledgeable by the time they graduate.  (Most of the content areas are covered in required courses and are explored in depth in elective course work for majors.  Those who expect to graduate in 2005 are not currently expected to participate in pilot testing for current juniors.)  Brochures also outline expectations and opportunities for study abroad, for internships and cooperative education experiences, and for service learning. 

V.                  Portfolio expectations

   Faculty assistance.  Students will be assigned a portfolio advisor from among the full-time faculty in the major language.  This will not necessarily be the major advisor who works with students on their course schedules.  The portfolio advisor has several roles:  (1) to help personalize and tailor the contents of the portfolio to fit the student’s plans for graduate school or for employment, (2) to assure that the portfolio includes as a minimum all the items required for the portfolio, (3) to provide feedback on portfolio presentation and on the accuracy of spelling and grammar as appropriate, (4) to make sure students remember to include all relevant experiences, and (5) to establish a time line to include the range of items needed.   By the time the student is ready to submit a graduation application, the portfolio should already have be submitted for final feedback to the portfolio advisor.  This will be considered as a department graduation requirement for those graduating in August 2003 and afterward, with reduced expectations for 2003 and 2004. 

   When to begin establishing  a portfolio.  Students should begin promptly to collect materials for a major portfolio at the earliest opportunity after declaring a major.  When you first see a major advisor after declaring your major, you will be assigned a portfolio advisor as well. 

   Planning what to put in a portfolio.  Portfolios will include items such as the following:  samples of your writing from class work (graded papers or revised papers, compositions, projects,) one or more samples of your spoken language (recordings done for classes or specifically for the portfolio,) results of national or international exams, a list of courses taken, any brochures available on the VCU language major at the time you are putting together a portfolio, a list of internships, a description of study abroad experiences, and any complimentary notes or letters you have received from anyone who employed you for your language skills.  If you have taken the gateway or portfolio courses offered in Spanish (295 and 495), or if you took the senior seminar in German last semester, any added items you prepared with your instructors that were designed to be placed in a portfolio should also be a part of your materials collected.

   Here is a tentative checklist that should be tailored more specifically in discussions with your portfolio advisor:

___       Table of contents for the portfolio (should appear as first item / finalize in your
            senior year)

___       Senior-year resumé (See VCU Career Center on how to do a resumé.)

___       Brochure on what majors in your language are expected or required to do

___       Listing of courses you took in your major and related fields

___       300-level composition class sample

___       300-level class oral sampling or other evaluation

___       300-level civilization class written assignment

___       300-level example of written literary analysis

___       400-level written sample

___       400-level oral sample

___       International / national exam (description and results)

___       Local proficiency testing (with explanation of rating system)

___       Description of education abroad experience (one per experience)
            (Include complimentary feedback from program director(s) in portfolio and in
            Career Center placement file, as appropriate.)

___       Description of cooperative education / internship experience
            (Include complimentary feedback from program supervisor(s) in portfolio and in
            Career Center placement file, as appropriate.)

___       Description of service learning experience
            (Include complimentary feedback from program supervisor(s) in portfolio and in
            Career Center placement file, as appropriate.)

___       Other complimentary feedback you have received (letters of thanks, letters
            complimenting you on your performance as a language major, etc.)

___       Other items suggested in your senior seminar or portfolio course

___       Other items suggested by your portfolio advisor