If Assessment Goals Were In Any Way Honest...

So I was just writing an e-mail talking about a class and an assignment I'd given off the cuff, and why that course is a challenge for me. And on the side of the path of that particular conversation, it occurred to me that the assessment goals I've been forced to develop and refer to aren't really honest.

The course is an intro class. I'm loving teaching it, honestly, though it has all the major drawbacks that go with teaching an intro class (only skimming the surface, students who aren't interested in the topic, etc). But the course isn't entirely mine. It's got all sorts of mandates on it from the department and the University at large. And it has high-fallutin' assessment goals with phrases like:

• "demonstrate key distinctions in the historical emergence..."
• "enable students to become critical consumers..."

And these are lovely, even if I have been forced to use the word "consumers" as part of my vision for students.

But they're big, fat, honking lies.

The course is my department's intro course, but it is also meets a general education sort of requirement. And while, in theory, those sorts of things are the goals for this bunch of freshmen, if I was allowed to say what the goals my department really has for me teaching this course they would look like this:

• to provide a dog and pony show of the discipline
  
• to entertain so that prospective students will join the major
• to (while doing an entertaining dog and pony show) establish the department's minimum standards
• and, oh yeah, if there's time, to help you learn to think critically and such