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HSS Student-Faculty Conference Presentation. April 5 th , 2008. Introduction. Early in the year, the committee identified possible ways to improve the HSS curriculum. These issues were rewritten in the shape of survey questions.
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HSS Student-Faculty Conference Presentation April 5th, 2008
Introduction • Early in the year, the committee identified possible ways to improve the HSS curriculum. • These issues were rewritten in the shape of survey questions. • The conclusions we present today are largely based on this survey. • There were 378 respondents, more than 40% of Caltech undergraduates.
Freshman Humanities • Freshman Humanities have two intended goals: • Introducing students to the various core disciplines • Teaching students to become better writers • In the survey, respondents were asked how strongly they agreed with the claim that these goals were being met effectively. • 33% disagreed with the statement that the first goal was being met effectively. • 56% disagreed with the statement that the second goal was being met effectively.
Freshman Humanities (cont.) • This suggests there is a lack of emphasis on writing skills in the freshman humanities. • Possible solutions: • Assign papers more frequently. There are freshman humanities that assign only 2 papers in a term. • Require students to revise their papers. • Additional problem: Pass/Fail grading for freshman humanities induces minimal effort in writing papers for the class.
Improving Course Offerings • In a small school setting, we cannot afford to offer classes in the entire range of areas students are interested in. • We can, however, try to identify the subject areas which would most benefit Caltech students. • Borda scores were tallied for the following survey question: “In what area would you most like to take humanities/social science courses?”
Improving Course Offerings (cont.) • In the humanities, all the subjects that ranked highly are already offered to a certain extent. • Foreign Languages ranked highest, but this is a vague indicator. • The interest for music far outweighs the number of classes currently offered. • In the social sciences, economics, psychology, and political science ranked highest. • There is also a considerable demand for linguistics and to a lesser extent archaeology, both of which are not currently offered.
Improving Course Offerings (cont.) • 60% of respondents claimed to agree or strongly agree with the claim that they’d like to see more social sciences offered that are less mathematical in nature. • These alternatives exist already though. (potential suggestion bias?)
Organizational Issues • Too many humanities classes are being offered by announcement. • Better scheduling would allow students to plan on taking classes. • A majority of students (51%) prefer the 2 times a week, 1 hour and a half meetings format for HSS classes. • Against only 19% for 3-hour timeslot evening classes. • Evening classes have been the dominant format because they are easier to schedule. • Suggestion: 2 times a week evening classes.
Other items discussed • Freshman humanities: are they even necessary? • It may be hard to keep classes challenging and interesting for HSS majors when there are non-majors in the class. • Minors in the social sciences: little faculty interest. • Breadth requirements in the humanities and social sciences: should they exist?
