Abstract
Despite progress in the development, embrace, and implementation of mass atrocity education, scholars point to a significant oversight of this growth: few programs systematically evaluate or assess their outcomes. Given that the pursuit of evidence permeates all aspects of education in the United States today, this chapter focuses on outcomes assessment in American higher education. To connect this focus to published research on mass atrocity education, it relates exemplary studies from that literature to the outcomes assessment process. The chapter also focuses on the author’s efforts, as coordinator of the 2015–2016 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)/Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) Colloquium Series, “Gender, Mass Violence, and Genocide,” to evaluate and assess the series’ impacts. The chapter concludes by connecting outcomes assessment to the aligned work of faculty across the series’ years.
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Notes
- 1.
Significantly, Americans reports more positive perceptions of community colleges than they do any other sector of higher education (Kelderman 2017).
- 2.
Although Walvoord (2010) uses these words interchangeably, Banta and Palomba (2015) distinguish learning goals from learning objectives/outcomes: learning goals are defined as the general articulation of what students are expected to learn (i.e., critical thinking and problem solving), whereas learning objectives are defined as the precise articulation of what students are expected to learn in specific courses or programs (i.e., solve problems using physics principles and facts; apply the sociological imagination to current events; etc.).
- 3.
For an overview of issues of validity in outcomes assessment/evaluation, see Wholey et al. (2010).
- 4.
Glynn et al.’s (1982) early and exceptional example of descriptive research in the field combines each of the reviewed quantitative and qualitative measures: survey and interview-based research with students, telephone and face-to-face interviews with Holocaust educators, and content analysis of four different curricula.
- 5.
Holocaust educators’ cognitive gains have also been an object of explanatory research. For example, Wolpow et al.’s (2002) pre-/post-test control group design shows that professional development in Holocaust education increases teachers’ confidence and competence in the field.
- 6.
Videos of and resource lists for each of the 2015–2016 NEH/KHC colloquia can be found at http://qcc.libguides.com/colloquia.
- 7.
Consistent with the historiographical silence that has traditionally surrounded the study of gender and the Holocaust (Mühlhäuser 2014), Haynes’ (1998) content analysis of 90 course syllabi reveals how few college-level courses on the Holocaust pay explicit attention to gender. This is despite extensive evidence that gender mattered in/to the Holocaust (see, for example, Mühlhäuser 2014; Hedgepeth and Saidel 2010; Pine 2004; and Grossmann 2002).
- 8.
Since our assessment of the 2015–2016 NEH/KHC Colloquium Series, the AAC&U (2017) has defined community college students’ associate-level learning as a step on the way toward the “capstone” measure of baccalaureate-level learning on the AAC&U VALUE rubrics.
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Appendix: 2015–2016 NEH/KHC Colloquium Series, “Gender, Mass Violence, and Genocide”
Appendix: 2015–2016 NEH/KHC Colloquium Series, “Gender, Mass Violence, and Genocide”
September 30, 2015: Gender and the Future of Genocide Studies
Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Assistant Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
October 28, 2015: Human Rights and Genocidal Rape
Professor Cynthia Soohoo, Director of the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at CUNY Law School
Dr. Natalie Nenadic, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky
November 18, 2015: Multiple Girlhoods: Growing up in Bosnia Before and During the Civil War
Ms. Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic, author of The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet
December 2, 2015: Gendered Experiences in and Memories of the Nazi Holocaust
Dr. Azadeh Aalai, Assistant Professor of Psychology at QCC
Dr. Rochelle Saidel, Founder and Executive Director of the Remember the Women Institute
Dr. Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality
February 17, 2016: Gendercide: Inclusivity in the Study of Gender, Mass Violence, and Genocide
Dr. Adam Jones, Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia
March 23, 2016: Spanish Women and Fascism Under the Francoist Dictatorship
Ms. Luque Delgado, Professor of Phonetics at the Ortega-Marañón Foundation and Middlebury University
Dr. Aránzazu Borrachero, Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at QCC
Dr. Aurora G. Morcillo, Professor of History at Florida International University
April 13, 2016: Forgotten Witnesses: Gender-Based Violence in Asia During WWII
Dr. Jimin Kim, Program Director of the Asian Social Justice Internship Program at QCC’s KHC
Ms. Chang-Jin Lee, Korean-born visual artist and creator of the documentary film Comfort Women Wanted
May 4, 2016: Gender , Genocide, and Justice in Rwanda
Ms. Roxanne Krystalli, Program Manager of the Humanitarian Evidence Program at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University
Ms. Sara E. Brown, Stern Family Fellow at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University
Ms. Samantha Lakin, Ph.D. student at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University
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Traver, A.E. (2018). Outcomes-Based Approaches to Mass Atrocity Education. In: Traver, A., Leshem, D. (eds) Humanistic Pedagogy Across the Disciplines. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95025-9_4
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