Language Institute 2007-08 Lecture Series: Assessing Language Learning
Making the Most of Assessment and Evaluation in College Foreign Language Programs
John Norris
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
12:00 pm, Monday, September 10, 2007
254 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Avenue
Abstract:
In college foreign language (FL) education, we face considerable—and increasing—demand to assess our students’ learning outcomes and evaluate our programs. However, while these processes are fundamental to effective and worthwhile education, their present utility in many tertiary FL settings may be limited at best. In this presentation, I first trace a few received traditions of assessment that have set the mold for current practice in college FL education; I also reflect on the constrained roles played by program evaluation to date. I then report key findings from a recent survey of college FL program administrators, highlighting their perceptions on the potential utility of evaluative processes, as well as their concerns and the constraints they face in getting useful assessment and evaluation done. In response, I propose a reconceptualization of how we go about assessing and evaluating by beginning with the more fundamental question of why we are doing so in the first place. I then demonstrate the kinds of supportive, even transformative, roles that assessment and evaluation can play in FL programs, in particular as heuristics for dealing with the inevitable changes that are taking place across higher education and within our FL disciplines.
All lectures in the series are free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Language Institute, with funding from the College of Letters and Science Anonymous Fund.
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