Assessing Student Knowledge of and Attitudes toward the Humanities

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Assessment of student learning outcomes is becoming de rigueur within American col leges and universities. Many institutions conduct the assessments in their general education component by examining stu dents' skills in areas such as writing, speaking, critical thinking, and quantita tive analysis. Although we have included such skills as a part of our assessment of student academic achievement in general education at Western Illinois University, we have also gone beyond them and developed assessments of student learn ing within content categories. The humanities are one of five cate gories beyond the basic skills require ments that students must take to meet the goals of general education. The philoso phy and goals specific to the humanities requirement (Mann and Jos wick 1994) were articulated by faculty members on the original team to assess student learn ing. Assessment of student outcomes in humanities has relied primarily on a pro