Eastern Oregon University
General Education Assessment
2008 Spring Pilot Project:
Critical Thinking Outcome
Course Prompts
ART 101: FOUNDATIONS OF VISUAL LITERACY
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
Art 101 Midterm Paper
For this project you will be writing a 4-5 page paper that examines the work of one contemporary artists and compares it with that of an artist from the Renaissance.
The contemporary artist must be chosen from the attached list and the artist from the Reniasance should be one of the following artists, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Leonardo Da Vinci, or Caravaggio. (I recommend doing a quick Google image search to find which artists’ works you are more interested in.)
Deadline: Midterm Papers are due May 1st
Each paper should include the following:
1) A brief biography of both artists. This should contain only relevant and contextual information and should comprise only a minor part of the paper/presentation.
2) A brief but thorough description of the artists work. ( what materials are used, what type of marks are used, what design elements are evident, what is the subject matter, what other characteristics does the artist work have?)
The bulk of the paper/presentations should deal with analysis of the content of the work.
Think about:
1) What formal choices does the artist make to convey his/her content? (line, color, light, texture, space, size, etc.)
2) Why do the artists make what they make?
3) What are their influences?
4) What is the primary interest of the artist? (Is it personal, political, psychological, formal?)
5) What is the context of the work? (How does it reflect the time period, culture, or geographic location?)
6) What is your personal reaction to the work?
The last part of this paper should compare the artists’ work and content.
Try and find meaningful similarities and differences beyond the superficial. (For example, think beyond big vs. small, 3-D vs. 2-D, oil paint vs. acrylic)
Reminder: A good paper has a good thesis, organized structure, and summary or conclusion.
Research and Documentation: Information for the papers/presentations must come from at least three sources. Use the library for books, and periodicals (Art in America, Art Forum) and/or the internet. (a maximum of 1 of the 3 sources may be from the internet)
As always your paper should contain a bibliography and your sources should be correctly sited.
PHIL 102: Ethics, Politics, and Law
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
PHIL 102
Jeff Johnson
Analytical Paper
ANTH 101: INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
I showed a 25 minute video segment from “In the Light of Reverence” that presented multiple belief systems concerning the historic monument and park at Devils Tower. The tower is a religious site for the Lakota Sioux and is also used by tourists and rock climbers. The film portrayed the competing interests for the tower including those of Native Americans, rock climbers, private landowners and government employees. Students were asked to count off and their number corresponded to a specific perspective. They were asked to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper stating their perspective on how Devils Tower should be managed. The students were required to present the general situation as well as providing specifics that would support their position.
CHEM 206: GENERAL CHEMISTRY
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
QUIZ # 3
[8 points]
1) Compare the similarities and differences in the strategy you use to find the pH of each of the following solutions. Show your calculations step by step.
Ka of CH3COOH = 1.8 x 10-5
Kb of NH3 = 1.8 x 10-5
a. 0.10 M sodium hydroxide
b. 0.10 M sodium acetate
c. 0.10 M ammonia
d. 0.10 M hydrochloric acid
[4 points]
2) Consider 0.10M solutions of the following substances. Without doing any calculations, decide which would have the lowest pH. Explain your reasoning.
a) NaCl b)NH4NO3 c)Na2CO3 d)KCN e)NH4F
[8 points]
3) Consider the following four titrations:
a. 100.0 mL of 0.10M HCl titrated by 0.10M NaOH
b. 100.0 mL of 0.10M NaOH titrated by 0.10M HCl
c. 100.0 mL of 0.10M CH3NH2 titrated by 0.10M HCl
d. 100.0 mL of 0.10M HF titrated by 0.10M NaOH
Without doing any calculations, rank the titrations in order of:
e. increasing volume of titrant to reach the equivalence point
f. increasing pH initially before any titrant has been added
g. increasing pH at the halfway point in equivalence
h. increasing pH at the equivalent point.
ENGL 316: APPROCAHES TO GRAMMAR
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
English 316
Donald Wolff
Reflection 3: Sentence Expansion
Write a 250-500 word reflection on what you learned from the Sentence Expansion Exercise. Include your own expanded sentence from the in-class exercise. Briefly discuss what you did and what you learned from doing it.
In responding, you might address these questions: What conclusions do you draw from the results? What conclusions do you draw from your own performance on the exercise? Did you learn anything about sentence structure (subjects and predicates) from this exercise? According to Peterson, what are such exercises supposed to accomplish? According to Peterson and the other researchers we read for this week, what is the theoretical foundation for this approach? In your estimation, what would such an exercise likely achieve for students, at what level, with what abilities?
You wouldn’t necessarily have to answer all these questions, although you must include references to Peterson’s rationale for this approach and, perhaps, what other authors we’ve read have said that would support it, like those statements we examined in class. But be sure you end up with a coherent, carefully edited short essay that discusses concepts in a specific way. Turn in your Reflection next Thursday, April 24.
PSYCH 335: COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Prompt: Assignment students were responding to:
Note: detailed information about writing research reports was distributed with the first assignment; this is the second assignment of the same type. Also, the statistical analyses and graphing were done in class as a computer exercise.
The second research report will be based on the remember/know Coglab experiment. After you complete a Coglab exercise, you can go back through the procedure again in order to note the instructions, numbers of trials, etc. In this way, you can get accurate information for your Method section. Once the data are submitted for that lab, I will give you a summary file of the results and we will do some descriptive and inferential data analysis in class. The information here is the same as for Research Report 1. Your research report will be about 5 to 7 pages, double-spaced, for the body of the paper (not counting the title page, abstract, and reference page). You must follow the format of a research report as detailed in the Mitchell, Jolley, and O’Shea (2007) chapter, and include a title page, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and references. For this paper, you must find one primary research article that is relevant to the remember/know topic. See my web page on primary research articles
http://www.eou.edu/psych/mb/primaryres.html. If you are not sure whether the article you found is a primary research article, according to my definition, ask in advance of the deadline. Student papers that do not include a primary research article source will not receive a passing grade.
You should also cite the Coglab manual as the source for this study (probably in your Method section) and include that source in your reference list. If there is relevant information from the textbook or other sources, you can cite those in your paper and include those sources in your reference list.