Introduction

The Speech Communication major, an LAS Cross-Disciplinary program, was formed out of the break-up of ISU's Communication department in the mid-1990s. The major has a core of six required courses, with an additional 15 credits chosen from 13 electives. Most courses are taught by a team of four tenure-line faculty and one lecturer, who also acts as advisor to the major.

When we began the process of assessing our program, we judged that we possessed the following areas of strength:

• a cohesive faculty committed to excellence in undergraduate education, with a strong if implicit shared sense of "what we're here for" and active projects in the scholarship of teaching & learning.
• a tradition of helping undergraduates throughout the University develop their communication skills, as represented by our responsibility for Sp Cm 212, Fundamentals of Public Speaking, a course required for approximately one third of ISU undergraduates, by our involvement with ISUComm at the entry and upper level, and also by our curriculum, which enrolls students from cognate communication disciplines and from across the University.
• a small, intimate major, characterized by a high degree of mutual respect among students and teachers.

We also acknowledged that we faced challenges, including:

• the small size of our program, which we believed to be caused in part by our lack of visibility among students, by the split-up of the former Communication department, and by the elimination of the teaching certificate in Speech.
• a relatively low level of "definition" and recognition with administrators and cognate discipines.
• a curriculum which, having been formed out of a break-up, was in need of a routine check-up.

Our main goals in this round of the assessment process have been:

• to clarify our programmatic identity to ourselves and our constituencies.
• to check our program for basic intellectual coherence.
• to better understand our students' needs.
• to identify areas of existing programmatic strength and weakness.
• to begin development of ongoing outcomes assessment procedures.

For more, see the Speech Communication factbook

Articulating program goals

Through a series of meetings, and after collecting goals statements from previous program assessments and from course syllabi, the faculty came to a consensus about the three core goals of the Speech Communication program. In summary, we expect our students to exhibit:

• Excellence in Rhetorical Theory & History: understanding and applying technical vocabularies, theories and perspectives to analyze contemporary problems and their own practice.
• Excellence in Rhetorical Practice: being able to speak and listen well, and having the self-confidence to become active leaders in their communities.
• Excellence in Rhetorical Criticism & Critical Thinking: being able to recognize persuasive strategies, assess reasoning, and perform research in the discipline.

For more, see Speech Communication Program Goals

Curricular alignment

We then compared our actual courses with these program outcomes. We found that all but two of our program goals were also central goals in at least one of our required courses, and those two were covered among our electives.

Looking across our courses, hallmarks of our curriculum include:

• the intensive practice in effective communication that students undertake in almost every course we teach.
• an emphasis on students' understanding and applying theory in their practice.
• a consistent focus on students' personal growth as self-reflective and self-confident individuals capable of leading their communities.
• a "networked" structure, in which students encounter the above themes repeatedly as they move through a flexible curriculum at their own pace.

For more, see Curricular Alignment Report.

Who are our students?

We next undertook to survey our students, focusing on the paths that brought them to the Speech Communication major, and on their experiences with us. Key findings include:

• Students come to Speech Communication typically as juniors, after having experimented with 2 other majors.
• Students find us from taking our classes, from friends and family, through advisors, and in ISU publications.

Why do students select Speech Communication as a major? Because they find it:

• relevant: the major serves their career needs, whether they are committed to a specific profession (e.g., ministry), or whether they have more open career plans.
• appealing: students enjoy the courses in the major and the experiences they offer.
• flexible: the major offers them an opportunity to graduate within a reasonable time.
• a good fit: complementing their other majors.

For more, see Who are the Speech Comm Majors?

What do our students experience?

In the same survey, we invited students to respond about how majoring in Speech Communication changed them, and what they would report about the major to university administrators. Students report that as Speech Communication majors they experience growth in:

• skill in speaking: Students stressed the variety of the skills learned, the diversity of contexts in which they could be used, as well as their particular importance for career success.
• understanding of theory: Students spoke of their enlarged understanding of communication and their sharper abilities to analyze messages. Often this theme was coupled with the first, as students explained how understanding theory had contributed to improving their practice.
• self-confidence: Students spoke of their personal growth and their enlarged sense of their own powers.

The survey also revealed:

• Some concerns about the availability of courses.
• Some need for more career advising.
• A perception that Speech Communication is a challenging major.
• A perception that Speech Communication is a supportive major, with a high degree of collegiality among students and between students and faculty.
• A high degree of overall satisfaction with the program.

For more, see Student Learning Outcomes Survey

Reviewing our service mission

We continue to support the development of communication skills by students throughout the University. Particular improvements in the past two years include:

• More intensive use of technology in Sp Cm 212, Fundamentals of Public Speaking, including classrooms with Powerpoint and video recording capabilities, and an enhanced course website.
• Extensive participation in support of the ISUComm initiative to include communication activities in upper-division courses throughout the University.
• Increased cross-listing of our courses into other programs which wish to enhance the communication experiences of their students.

For more, see Reviewing our Service Mission

Overall reflections

The assessment results suggest that our curriculum has the potential to meet the needs of three groups of students in particular: those wishing to complement their first major with intensive communication practice; those who enjoy public speaking and want to pursue it further; and those who have had difficulty in finding a major "home" at ISU. For each of these groups, our focus on communication skills and the flexibility of our "networked" curriculum provide a challenging yet feasible program of study in depth. We should obviously not be relying on such students' social networks to get the word out about Speech Communication, however.

The assessment showed a high degree of satisfaction with our program, and revealed some of the reasons why. Majors in Speech Communication are persistently challenged to apply their learning in practical contexts they know are relevant to their personal needs; they experience these challenges in a supportive environment. In other words, the Speech Communication program is already in line with the best practices of active learning supported by contemporary learning theory. Having inherited many of our practices from the traditions of rhetoric stretching back to classical times, we tend to take them for granted; but this is a feature of our program which we should embrace and promote.

The assessment results also suggest that students largely experience in our curriculum the benefits we hope to provide them. There is a close alignment between the hallmarks of our curriculum--practice, theory and self-transformation--and students' reports of increased skill, changed world-view, and self-confidence. This, coupled with the high degree of satisfaction reported by our students, indicates that our program is basically sound.

Finally, we note that our work aligns well with the goals and needs of the College and University. Our "networked" structure is an innovative way of implementing the broader, more flexible learning experiences called for by the LAS New Horizons initiative, as well as with ISU's announced objective of improving the educational experiences of open option. students. Similarly, our focus on communication practice in both our major and our service work contributes to achieving excellence in communication skills, a key learning goal of the College, and one mandated by ISU's forthcoming strategic plan .

Responses

The most valuable outcome of the assessment process has been increased self-understanding. In response to some of the concerns revealed through the assessment process, we have or plan to improve our program in the following areas:

Outreach

In order to reach more students who could benefit from a Speech Communication major, we have established a web presence, have begun a mailing to potential freshmen, and will work with the advisors within and beyond LAS to bring the strengths of our program to the attention of open option, LS and other students.

Curriculum changes

To improve the coordination of our courses, we have established a list of key technical terms, which we expect to be used in almost every course, and have increased the saliency of listening skills and public address in courses not specifically devoted to these topics.

Continuing assessment

We plan to continue the student survey, gathering both information on why and how students seek us out, and their own assessments of their learning in our program. In addition, we plan to deliver a NSSE-like instrument to our students, to verify that they are experiencing active, engaged learning in their Speech Communication classes. We also will be forming on an experimental basis an undergraduate Speech Advisory Board, who we expect to both propose and help carry out needed changes.We will begin collecting exit data from graduating seniors, in order to make it easier to locate them for alumni surveys. Finally, we plan to begin direct assessment of student learning by examining student work-product in the senior seminar. As a preliminary step, we need to be able to offer the seminar every year, so it can be focused on the needs of graduating seniors.

Service

We plan on continuing to incorporate new technologies into Sp Cm 212, Fundamentals of Public Speaking.