Some of the program weaknesses identified by this assessment will be mitigated by the offering of a new course; Environmental Geography. This new course will directly focus upon material pertaining to the awareness of physical systems and the relationships between the environment and human society.  Certain other learning gaps identified by the assessment may simply reflect weaknesses with the assessment itself.  For example, we offer a few courses that focus on regional geography (World Regional Geography, Regional Geography of U.S. and Canada), that would naturally focus more directly on “places and regions” than would the courses incorporated in this assessment. In the future we will embed assessment questions within the comprehensive finals associated with these regional courses.  The most critical weaknesses identified from this assessment remain in the areas of learning major geographic principles and critical thinking, although student performance in these areas improved considerably from the previous year.  We plan to continue to experiment with ways to enhance critical thinking in both lab and lecture formats, and will make concerted efforts to incorporate assignments and methods found to be successful in GEOG 1321 at generating positive learning outcomes.    

As we endeavored to address the weaknesses identified by the previous year’s assessment we implemented the following changes.  First, GEOG 1321 was redeveloped as part of the effort to propose the course for inclusion into the new Core Curriculum scheduled for implementation in 2014. Considerable effort was made to ensure that the course addresses critical thinking and that it focuses on basic geographic principles. At the same, assignments and methods found to be successful at generating positive learning outcomes in the past were given even more attention. Second, a new faculty member was hired whose responsibilities will include offering new courses that will directly strengthen the Environmental Geography concentration.  These new courses will offer considerable potential to increase student knowledge of physical geography and other concepts related to physical systems.  Finally, both World Regional Geography courses (GEOG 2355 and 2356) were also redeveloped for inclusion into the new Core Curriculum. The redevelopment of these courses made it difficult to generate consistent assessment measures during the course of the academic year.  Now that the courses are fully developed, both of them will be incorporated in future assessments.  

Some of the program weaknesses identified by this assessment will be mitigated by the offering of a new course; Environmental Geography. This new course will directly focus upon material pertaining to the awareness of physical systems and the relationships between the environment and human society.  The addition of new faculty member will also enable us to strengthen our concentration in Environmental Geography via the offering of new courses focused on this subject matter. Certain other learning gaps identified by the assessment may simply reflect weaknesses with the assessment itself.  For example, we offer a few courses that focus on regional geography (World Regional Geography, Regional Geography of U.S. and Canada), that would naturally focus more directly on “places and regions” than would the courses incorporated in this assessment. In the future we will embed assessment questions within the comprehensive finals associated with these regional courses.  The most critical weaknesses identified from this assessment remain in the areas of learning major geographic principles and critical thinking.  The scores from students enrolled in one course (GEOG 1321) did improve for these areas, We plan to continue to experiment with ways to enhance critical thinking in both lab and lecture formats, and will make concerted efforts to incorporate assignments and methods found to be successful in GEOG 1321 at generating positive learning outcomes.