Assessment

Traditional gauges of learning – grades and test scores – may indicate how much knowledge a student has retained over the course of a semester. But such metrics fail to measure the enhancement of intellectual curiosity or the evolution of a young person’s self-awareness. As new pedagogies emerge that combine academics and experiential learning – including service learning in general and Research Service Learning specifically – a number of studies are underway to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data to assess the most effective methods and practices in place.

We are currently involved in three such studies:
• Assessment of Scholarship with a Civic Mission
• The Forum for Excellence and Innovation in Higher Education
• The Political Engagement Project

Assessment of Scholarship with a Civic Mission
Scholarship with a Civic Mission, Duke’s campus-wide Research Service Learning initiative, is structured to foster intellectual, ethical and civic engagement among students and faculty, and to show that service-learning and civic engagement can be integrated with the university's mission to generate new knowledge. Learn more.

In the evaluation component of this initiative, a team of faculty, students and staff have been examining:
• learning outcomes for students,
• teaching and research outcomes for faculty,
• the impact of RSL on the community and host agencies, and
• the potential for institutional transformation that results from the implementation of the Research Service Learning model.

The evaluation pays particular attention to measuring how the RSL initiative affects the intellectual, ethical and civic development of students. Initial findings will be disseminated in the 2006-2007 academic year, and posted on this website.

The four-year initiative was initially funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for Improvements in Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), and co-sponsored by the Hart Leadership Program, Kenan Institute for Ethics, and Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke. At the conclusion of the Scholarship with a Civic Mission initiative this year, a new Office of Service Learning at Duke's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences was established to oversee continuing Research Service Learning efforts across the curriculum.

Forum for Excellence and Innovation
in Higher Education
How can institutions of higher education help undergraduate students with their critical thinking and moral reasoning? A new five-year initiative brings together fourteen top-tier institutions, including Duke, to explore innovations in teaching and learning to help answer this question. Coordinated by Professor Richard Light of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Education, the Forum consists of 14 colleges and universities, including Duke, Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Middlebury and Wellesley. Learn more.

The ultimate goal is to prompt colleges and universities to assess on a continuous basis the most effective methods for helping students with their critical thinking, and their quantitative and moral reasoning. The Duke team is comprised of Dean of Trinity College and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Robert Thompson, HLP director Alma Blount, assistant professor of sociology and director of undergraduate studies Suzanne Shanahan, and assistant professor of the practice in economics and director of EcoTeach, Michelle Connolly.

The Hart Leadership component of the Duke project includes an evaluation of a Research Service Learning pathway in the department of Public Policy Studies. The three-stage pathway includes a gateway course, a community-based research experience through the HLP's Service Opportunities in Leadership (SOL) program or another departmental project, and a capstone project through which students can further develop their research project into an independent study course or honrs seminar, and present their work publicly.

Assessment Instruments include:
• The Collegiate Learning Assessment to provide common measures of intellectual skills (critical thinking, analytical reasoning, written communication);
• The Reasoning About Current Issues questionnaire to measure reflective thinking and epistemological development;
• The Defining Issues Test to assess moral judgement.

Assessment measures will analyze both between groups and within groups. Other specific measures of critical reflection and social/personal integrity are in the process of being developed.

Political Engagement Project
Sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education, the Political Engagement Project (PEP) is a high-profile, national study of leadership education. PEP examined the impact of 21 undergraduate courses and extra- or co-curricular programs “designed to foster informed political engagement, broadly defined to include community engagement with a systemic dimension and other aspects of public policy, as well as electoral politics at local, state, and national levels.”

Duke has been an integral part of the three-year project, which focused on key dimensions of students’ political development, such as knowledge and understanding, active involvement, sense of political efficacy and identity, and skills of democratic participation. Students completed a survey before and after the course/program, and a subset of students were interviewed in depth. Faculty leaders were also interviewed and completed a survey.

PEP is currently preparing a book manuscript for faculty and administrators interested in promoting undergraduate political engagement. The book outlines key goals and pedagogies of education for political engagement -- structured reflection, research and action projects, outside speakers, and external placements. The book spells out the specific purposes these pedagogies serve and offers guidelines for using them, caveats about challenges they present, and suggestions for overcoming those challenges. The book also addresses the importance of open inquiry and diversity of opinion in education for democratic participation, along with strategies for ensuring open-minded consideration of alternative perspectives. Learn more.

Other Faculty Research

Publications
Alma Blount, director of the Hart Leadership Program and lecturer in public policy studies, has an article in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Political Science Education. The article, "Critical Reflection for Public Life: How Reflective Practice Helps Students Become Politically Engaged," discusses the critical reflection component of the HLP pedagogy, and how its three distinct developmental sequences help students acquire knowledge and skills for public service.

Blount also has an essay in Democracy and Civic Engagement: A Guide for Higher Education, a monograph published by the American Democracy Project, sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and The New York Times. Blount's contribution, "How Does a Campus Link the Curriculum and Co-Curriculum for Student Engagement?" examines the design, implementation and outcomes of the HLP's Service Opportunities in Leadership program and Duke's Scholarship with a Civic Mission initiative, and how they help infuse civic engagement into the campus culture.

Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy studies and history, has written a number of books and articles about twentieth century U. S. history, labor history, African American history, and contemporary social policy. Publications include: Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth South (University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (coeditor, University of North Carolina Press, revised edition, 2000); Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Talk About Life in the Jim Crow South (The New Press, 2001). He has published articles in the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, and Social Science History.

Korstad says his work as a historian -- and as a faculty mentor to Hart Leadership students and Benjamin N. Duke Scholars -- ultimately comes back to his belief that all citizens have an obligation “to understand the limitations of the status quo and be able to imagine a more just society. I think it is vital that we have more people exercising leadership who have a commitment to making the world a place were all people have an opportunity to live full and meaningful lives.”

Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs look for innovative ways to solve social problems. At Duke University, students who have a passion for bringing about social change flock to Tony Brown's courses. Brown, a professor of the practice in public policy studies and sociology, joined the Hart Leadership Program in 1994. Through his courses and close mentoring, Brown introduces students to ways that organizations combine a social mission with commercial strategies, and then guides students through the process of designing and implementing their own social enterprise projects on the Duke campus and in the local Durham community. Consequently, ethics, citizenship and public policy are important course themes. Click here to read a profile of Brown and his teaching style.

Brown's research activities and plans to date include:

• An assessment project to evaluate the 180 community leadership projects that student teams have conducted Brown's PS146 course during the past nine years. The research objectives are to identify the variables which affect project success. The research design is to evaluate each of these projects followed by focus group discussions with community clients and an automated survey of my alumni. Data from approximately 50 projects has been collected to date.
• A study of how college experiences affect the development of successful social entrepreneurs. The research design is to conduct a series of in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs and then compare the data with the existing literature on how college affects students. Brown has completed 10 in-depth interviews to date.

Results from these assessment projects will be posted here in the 2006-2007 academic year.