The evaluation of the initiatives will include three types of assessment. Diagnostic assessment will be used to examine existing programs and establish a base point for student performance. Ongoing formative assessment will inform and guide the development process. Summative assessment strategies will be implemented to examine the impact of the QEP initiatives on student learning outcomes. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to assess and improve the effectiveness of the initiatives.

In order to assess Initiative A, increased collaboration among faculty and between disciplines, evidence of attaining Action 1 will require written documentation of the time, place, attendance, and subject of faculty discussions regarding ethical issues or pedagogy. Such documentation is to be housed in the school or college hosting the discussion. This evidence will be measured by means of a Feedback Survey, the results of which will be examined by the university Provost and members of the Ethics Education Council. Evidence of Action II, developing one or more interdisciplinary ethics courses as part of the new ethics minor, will consist of documentation of course development meetings, of course proposal consideration beyond the development stage, of syllabus and actual course offering post approval as well as number of students enrolled, different disciplines involved in the teaching of each of these courses, and specific modes of participation by each of these disciplines. These materials are to be housed in the Logsdon School of Theology in conjunction with records concerning the development of the minor in ethics. To accomplish Action III, the university President intends to appoint Dr. Bill Tillman as the Chair of the Ethics Education Council (See Appendix J: “Resume of Dr. William Morris Tillman, Jr.”). The appropriate dean in consultation with the university Provost will appoint a representative from each of the schools and colleges while a student representative will be appointed by the Dean of Students in consultation with the Provost. The Chair and Council will report directly to the Provost. Evidence of these steps will be available in the Provost’s office.

To fulfill Initiative B, Action I will develop an Extracurricular Assessment Plan (EAP) which will initiate a two-fold approach. First, a record will be kept of each training session, along with a record of those attending, to ensure that all faculty and staff sponsors receive the training. Second, the effectiveness of the training will be assessed by observing the results of external surveys (described in assessment for Action II) regarding the ethical behavior of students in actual situations. Action II will be assessed in several ways. First, after the council of sponsors and students is selected to serve (the selection will be done by the Senior Vice President for Student Development, the Dean of Students, or their representatives), the charter and roster of the council will be maintained in the Dean of Students office. Second, the SVPSD and the Dean will review any decisions made by the council regarding ethical questions regarding student behavior, and a record of such decisions will be maintained by the Dean. Finally, the council will oversee the development and administration of surveys to be administered to groups and persons who regularly observe the behavior of students during their activities. The surveys will focus on the issue of ethical student behavior, and the SVPSD and the Dean will work with the council in determining any action to be taken as a result of the surveys.

Assessing the enhancement or incorporation of ethics curriculum into selected courses, Initiative C, will begin with a comprehensive curriculum review as a part of Action I. This review will result in documentation identifying ethics curriculum in existing courses for pre-professional and professional programs and identifying those programs with little or no current ethics components. In response to this review, individual schools and colleges will be asked to develop plans for addressing the enhancement or incorporation of ethics into the curriculum of each pre-professional and professional program in that school or college. These plans are to become an additional section on each area’s annual Institutional Effectiveness Committee [IEC] report and must be submitted to the appropriate school or college dean, the Ethics Education Council, and the university Provost. The Ethics Education Council will respond where appropriate.

Evidence of attainment of Action II, asking for student demonstration of knowledge in ethical philosophy, will be written record of the completion by each pre-professional and professional undergraduate program of a discipline-specific project requiring demonstration of knowledge in ethical philosophy. Each discipline will determine its own measuring device for this project and must record this assessment strategy as well as an annual report of the students’ demonstration of knowledge reflected in these projects as part of the added QEP section of the area’s annual IEC report. In addition, the IEC report must contain the discipline’s evaluation of overall demonstration results and indicate any resulting curriculum changes. Copies of this report should be submitted to the appropriate school or college dean, the Ethics Education Council, and the university Provost. The Ethics Education Council will respond where appropriate

The quantitative testing of ethical ability might be characterized as still undergoing healthy developmental discussion and resulting alterations. The Measure of Moral Orientation [MMO], for example, while affirmed as a reliable “standardized assessment of moral voice” by Debora L. Liddell in The Journal of College Student Development, is unable to gage “the specific nature and context of students' moral dilemmas” unless “educators…engage in meaningful, direct dialogue with students” outside the quantitative testing process. ¹ To the degree, however, that such testing has developed up to the present time, HSU’s QEP Steering Committee decided to examine external testing as a means for assessing Action III, students evaluating real-world context ethical scenarios. Three possible measuring devices were investigated: the National Survey of Student Engagement [NSSE], the Measure of Moral Orientation [MMO], and the Defining Issues Test [DIT].

The NSSE’s focus, according to its published objectives, ² centers on “obtain[ing], on an annual basis, information from scores of colleges and universities nationwide about student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development” in order “to estimate… how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college.” Although growing in usage by universities across the country, the NSSE’s concentration on measuring student activities and leadership development encompassed too broad an area of evaluation and lacked the ethics-centered measure HSU sought.

The MMO, though directly exploring moral judgment, was eventually removed from consideration because of its current unavailability; a new version of the MMO is not expected to be ready for initial pilot testing for at least another year.

The DIT then became the central consideration for external testing. The DIT-2, developed by the Center for the Study of Ethical Development at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is the newly revised version of the original DIT and attempts to assess moral reasoning by asking students to choose from a list of potential answers to a set of hypothetical dilemmas. Based on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, as is the MMO, the DIT-2 offers each student a set of four moral dilemmas, each followed by 12 questions. Scoring is based on the student’s ranking of the top 4 of these 12 questions in relation to significance to making a decision regarding that dilemma. (See Appendix L: “Review of the Defining Issues Test” for evaluations of the DIT’s initial test by Burrows Mental Measurements.)

Thus, each applicable discipline at HSU will require pre-professional and professional students to take the Defining Issues Test 2 [DIT-2] as part of the discipline’s capstone course or a course specified by the discipline. No grade will be assigned for the DIT; however, its completion will be necessary for the student to receive credit for the course. ³ Results of the DIT-2 will be made available to all of the participating pre-professional and professional programs, the Ethics Education Council, university administration, and the student test takers.

1 Liddell, Debora L. “Comparison of Semistructured Interviews with a Quantitative Measure of Moral Orientation.” Journal of College Student Development 39.2 (Mar-Apr 1998): 169-78. Compares the MMO “to semistructured interviews with college students. Results support the validity and reliability of MMO as a standardized assessment of moral voice.”

2 http://nsse.iub.edu/html/quick_facts.cfm

3 More information may be obtained by examining the following printed material and websites:Rest, J.R.. DIT Manual.., Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 1990. Rest, J. R., Darcia Narvaez, Muriel J. Bebeau, and Stephen J. Thoma. Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1999. http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/medschool/OIG/documents/2003-10-22%20J%20Club%20-%20Rest's%20Defining%20Issues%20Test.doc. http://cstl-cb.semo.edu/cherry/Research/DIT_ Four_Scenario2.htmhttp://www.prenhall.com/whetten_dms/chap1_2.html; http://wbarratt.indstate. edu/dragon/saroi/sa-dit.htm. http://www.prenhall.com/whetten_dms/chap1_2.html. http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/dragon/saroi/sa-dit.htm