Home

Student Learning Outcomes

For the Philosophy Curriculum

1. Holistic Aims of the Philosophy Curriculum

2. Assessable Aims and Learning Outcomes

3. Standards for Essay Assignments

4. Critical Thinking SLOS (Phil 103 and 200)
5. SLOS for Phil 100, 160, 175, 240, 300, 320

1. The Holistic Aims of the Philosophy Curriculum

Some of the most important aims of a philosophy education are holistic, long-

term, and difficult to measure using the conventional tools of grading assignments and examinations. These include:

· Intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, and self-motivated learning.

· Personal enrichment and self-understanding.

· Appreciation of diverse philosophical traditions and intellectual heritage.

· Developing the qualities of leadership or citizenship.

Caveat: The American Philosophical Association Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy cautions against the notion that "education is about 'products' and that the educational experience can be fit into the modes of economic cost-benefits type thinking." (1998, Eastern Division Meeting)

Students are invited to advise the instructor (personally or in writing) about their own expectations: What do you hope to get out of taking a philosophy course? What do you want to learn?

2. Assessable Aims and Learning Outcomes

Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning:
Bloom has identified 6 broad “levels of learning” that correspond to Student
Learning Outcomes.

1. Knowledge

2. Comprehension

3. Application

4. Analysis

5. Synthesis

6. Evaluation

These categories apply to any field of learning. The chart below summarizes
how they can be applied to the philosophy curriculum, and how they can be
assessed using conventional tools of grading assignments and examinations.

Bloom's Levels Outcomes for Philosophy Assessment Tool

Knowledge	Assess student's knowledge of factual information, basic concepts, and terminology in philosophy and critical thinking.	exams and course grades.
Comprehension	Assess comprehension of reading assignments. Assess ability to explain/illustrate a philosophical concept, theory, technique, etc.	exams and course grades writing logic problem sets
Application	Assess student's ability to apply a philosophical concept, theory, or critical thinking technique to a concrete case or novel situation.	writing logic problem sets
Analysis	Assess student's ability to put an argument into Standard Logical Form, and/or to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of an argument.	exams and course grades writing
Synthesis Evaluation	Assess student's ability to "put it all together"—to take a position on a philosophical theory or point of view, and to produce a clear and effective argument for it. Assess the student’s ability to evaluate a philosophical argument or theory using the rigorous critical thinking techniques.	Essays and other major assignments. Essay exams. Course grades. Essays and other major assignments. Essay exams. Course grades.

3. Standards for Essay Assignments

Essays are an important tool for assessing student learning outcomes.
The following chart summarizes the writing standards for philosophy essays.

	D	C	B	A
Quality of Thesis statement / paragraph	No identifiable thesis statement. Essay lacks a central controlling idea.	Thesis statement is vague, or not clearly articulated, or not very challenging.	Essay has an interesting thesis statement, but it could be better expressed.	Clear, precise, concise, and interesting thesis statement. The reader has a good sense of what is to come.
Grammar and Writing Mechanics	Multiple spelling and grammatical errors. No citation or incorrect citation	Some spelling and grammatical errors. Incomplete citations.	Few spelling or grammatical errors. Text is correctly cited for sources.	No spelling or grammatical errors. Text is correctly cited for sources.
Completeness and Development of Thesis	Main ideas are missing or only superficially developed.	Main ideas are present and adequately developed, but incompletely—so the reader has to fill in the gaps	The thesis is developed. The main ideas are present and explained reasonably completely.	Thesis is focused and very well developed. Main ideas are thoroughly and accurately presented.
Structure, logic, and organization of ideas	Poorly structured. Ideas do not logically flow. Premises are given but they are of questionable relevance, or they fail to support to the conclusion.	Generally, the ideas flow logically. There are clear premises and conclusions, but with weak support or lack of detail.	There is a logical structure to the essay. The premises contain information that is relevant to the conclusion and provide some support.	Satisfies the basic criteria of a good argument. The logical structure is clear. The premises effectively support the conclusion.
Overall Effectiveness, Creativity, Style, Content,	Only basic information or common knowledge is presented. The essay shows only some familiarity with the topic.	Main ideas are present with some attempt to make them interesting. The reader at least has some sense of the purpose of the essay. Readable.	Main ideas have importance and are presented in a manner that makes them interesting. The reader is informed of the ideas and is intrigued.	The essay engages the interest of an intelligent and reasonably informed reader. The reader is accurately informed about important matters and wants to read more. Very well written.

4. Critical Thinking SLOS

Philosophy is the discipline that is most concerned with good arguments. Critical thinking (or logic) is the special area of philosophy that deals with the study of arguments, the criteria for justification, and methods for deciding what to believe. It has been developed as a branch of philosophy since the time of Aristotle, but important advances were made in the 20^th century.

Below is a list of student learning outcomes that pertain to critical thinking courses

PHIL 103: Critical Thinking

o SLO 1. When presented with an argument, the student is able to assess the soundness of the argument by assessing deductive validity using appropriate deductive techniques (and assessing the truth or epistemic value of the premises using reliable sources of information).

o SLO 2. When presented with an argument, the student is able to assess the cogency of the argument by assessing inductive strength using appropriate inductive techniques (and assessing the truth or epistemic value of the premises using reliable sources of information).

o SLO 3. When presented with a theoretical hypothesis or a pseudo-scientific claim, the student is able to evaluate it using appropriate explanatory criteria.

o SLO 4. At the end of the course, the student is able to construct a novel, interesting, and logically correct argument that avoids fallacies. The student is also able to represent the logical structure of the argument (in standard logical form), as well as express and defend the argument as a short essay.

PHIL 200: Introduction to Logic

o SLO 1. Ability to represent the form of an argument by translating English statements into a formal language using truth-functional operators and (multiple) quantifiers.

o SLO 2. Ability to use formal techniques to determine logical properties of individual statements and logical relationships that hold between pairs of statements—such as contradiction, contingency, consistency, equivalence, etc.

o SLO 3. Ability to construct proofs for valid arguments and theorems in truth-functional and predicate logic (or show that an argument is invalid) using appropriate techniques—such as truth tables, truth trees, Venn diagrams, natural deduction, etc.

o SLO 4. Ability to apply Bayes’s Theorem, in conjunction with the rules of probability, to determine the probability of a hypothesis (or the comparative probabilities of two hypotheses) given information about antecedent probability and explanatory power.

5. SLOS for Phil 100, 160, 175, 240, 300, 320

PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy

o SLO 1. Ability to formulate some of the core questions of philosophy and understand various philosophical responses to them in their historical context.

o SLO 2. Ability to analyze and evaluate philosophical claims, arguments, and theories using rigorous philosophical methods (such as logical analysis and the identification of fallacies).

o SLO 3. Students will embody the qualities of an open-minded but critical thinker in the examination or formation of their philosophy.

PHIL 160 and 175: History of Philosophy (Ancient and Modern)

o SLO 1. Ability to compare, contrast, analyze, and evaluate the views of the most influential Western philosophers and philosophical movements from a particular historical period—as found in primary or secondary sources—using rigorous philosophical methods.

o SLO 2. Students will embody the qualities of an open-minded but critical thinker in the examination or formation of their philosophy.

PHIL 240: Ethics

o SLO 1. Ability to explicate, analyze, compare, and evaluate a variety of theories in normative ethics or meta-ethics using rigorous philosophical methods.

o SLO 2. Ability to apply moral theories and concepts to contemporary problems—such as war, capital punishment, euthanasia, poverty, etc.

o SLO 3. Students will embody the qualities of an open-minded but critical thinker in the examination or formation of their moral philosophy.

PHIL 300: World Religions

o SLO 1. Ability to interpret ritual practices, art, and writing of a religious tradition—using the methods of scholarship and historical criticism—in order to ascertain their function or meaning.

o SLO 2. Ability to compare and contrast the beliefs and practices of various religious traditions—including variations and disputes within the tradition—in their historical and contemporary contexts.

o SLO 3. Ability to critique the philosophical worldview (metaphysical and moral) of a religious tradition—using rigorous philosophical methods and drawing on the perspectives of alternative philosophies.

PHIL 320: Asian Philosophy

o SLO 1. Ability to compare, contrast, analyze, and evaluate the views of influential Asian philosophers and philosophical movements—as found in primary or secondary sources—using the techniques of critical thinking.

o SLO 2. Students will embody the qualities of an open-minded but critical thinker in the examination or formation of their world view.

Home