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PHIL 2320
Ethics and Society

Fall 2005

Goals and Objectives

Goal A: Students should become familiar with the historical development of Western ethical theory as well as at least one theory that challenges the basic assumptions of that cultural tradition.

Blue Ribbon Competencies: Social and Cultural Awareness, Historical Consciousness, International Awareness, Aesthetic Experience, Verbal Literacy

Learning Objectives in relation to Goal A -- Students should be able to:

• recognize the central concepts and claims of the following theories:
  • Ancient: Virtue Ethics
• Medieval: Natural Law
• Modern: Kantian Ethics , Utilitarianism
• Contemporary: Emotivism, Cultural Ethical Relativism, Feminist Ethic of Care
• a theory that challenges the basic assumptions of the above cultural tradition (e.g, a non-western ethical theory)
• identify a given theory as Consequentialist, Deontological , or as representing a theoretical departure from these two standard categories
• recognize how a thinker from one of the theories listed above might approach moral decision-making about a particular case

Goal B: Students should understand the notion of an argument in the reasoning sense and develop the critical thinking skills required for the evaluation of ethical theories and arguments.

Blue Ribbon Competencies: Verbal Literacy, Critical Thinking

Learning Objectives in Relation to Goal B --Students should be able to:

• identify a simple argument--including its components-- contained in a prose passage
• identify what kind of objection is being made to a particular argument
  • an objection challenging the truth of a premise
  • an objection that the conclusion does not follow appropriately from the premises
• recognize the type of considerations that count for and against the theoretical approaches discussed under Goal A

Assessment Method

We use a multiple-choice instrument given to all students at the end of the semester as a component of their final exam. Prior to that, a portfolio strategy was used that proved unreliable given the great variation in decisions faculty members made regarding content and the nature of writing assignments. Verbal literacy is assessed in a limited way by requiring students to read and interpret short passages in order to answer several of the questions. The virtues of the multiple-choice instrument are that it makes it practical to assess the course based on the largest possible sample (all students) and ensures reliability across the 7-10 sections typically taught each semester. Finally, we’ve found that embedding the instrument in the final exam motivates students to perform well.

Each learning objective is assessed every semester (though all the ethical theories mentioned under objective A.1 are not tested by the instrument every semester). This ensures that we have a measure of achievement for both goals A and B each semester.

Each of the objectives listed above were targeted by at least one question. For example, the following question targeted the second learning objective under Goal B:

A common argument for the view that almost all abortions are morally wrong rests on the claim that innocent persons have a right to life such that it is wrong to kill them except in self-defense. To this is added the claim that the fetus is an innocent person. From these considerations, plus the observation that very few abortions involve a fetus that threatens the life of the mother, the conclusion is thought to follow that abortion is almost always a serious moral wrong. A popular objection to this reasoning challenges whether the fetus is a person. Were one to make such an objection, one would be:

• claiming that even if the premises were true, the conclusion wouldn’t follow.
• raising an irrelevant issue.
• questioning the truth of one of the argument’s premises.
• none of the above.

Definition of Success -- We consider the course objectives to have been met under two conditions: a) the average score on the instrument for all sections is 70%; and b) the average score on questions for any particular objective does not fall below 40%. We would like scores on questions linked to individual objectives to also approximate 70% but do not insist on this as a measure of success. Sometimes an objective is addressed by only one question, so to demand a high level of performance on it would lend too much significance to an individual question. Though we have entertained the possibility of using an instrument with more questions to address this, we have to date rejected this option since it would demand greater conformity in choices faculty members make about course content.

Results

We continue to be pleased that the average score on the instrument has continued to rise (almost steadily): From Fall 2004 ­ Fall 2005 the scores increased from 60% to 66% (70% if question 9 is removed); and from Spring 2005 ­ Spring 2005 the scores increased from 70% to 79% (83% if question 9 is removed). The Spring 2005 scores are well above the criteria for success, and the highest scores to date.

We attribute this rise in performance to three principal factors. First, part of the increase is due to further refinements in our instrument. We have tried, last year and this year, to improve our assessment instrument by evaluating the discrimination index for each question. The discrimination index measures whether the question tends to be answered correctly more often by those students who performed better overall on the instrument than those who performed poorly (the top and bottom 1/3 of the class). What we discovered is that the questions discriminated properly in some sections but not in others and that typically both questions discriminated properly in a section or neither of them did. This suggests that when a class is taught a certain way, the questions did what they are supposed to do. However, this was true in only a little over one third of the sections. Moreover, for the first time, the discrimination index results showed that many of our questions are not as discriminating as we would like them to be.

Although the student performance is up on the questions we rewrote (in light of this evaluation), question #9 was particularly disappointing (the average score was 32% and 45% during the fall and spring semesters respectively—which is well below our success mark of 70%). Question 9 is:

Paul, a business sales executive, says that “honesty is the best policy” in dealing with customers because they are more likely to return and again buy from you, whereas if they discover that you’ve lied to them, they not only will not return but may badmouth you and so keep others from being your customers in the future. Paul is thinking like:
1. A Utilitarian
2. A Natural Law theorist
3. An egoist
4. Kant

This was the only new question added this round. We feared that students might pick a) instead of the correct answer c), but the incorrect answers were fairly evenly distributed. Moreover, the discrimination index was the lowest for this question by a wide margin.

A second likely reason for improved performance is that faculty members have continued to discuss and to share strategies and materials in order to better to teach critical thinking skills. To aid in this process, a portion of departmental meetings is now set aside to discuss pedagogical issues.

We have notice a trend (reflected by our choice to compare results with the same term during the previous year rather than the previous term) that indicates a lower average score during the Fall term than during the Spring term. This may be due to a higher number of under-prepared students entering in the fall, or an improvement in student skills after having completed at least one semester at college. Although we will have to wait for a couple of years to see if this continues, the curve of scores is more explicable if the scores are indexed by term. For example, the scores listed in succession for each term are:

54 ­ 56 ­ 58 ­ 62 ­ 62 ­ 65 ­ 60 ­ 70 ­ 66 ­ 79.

If separated by term, the scores are:

Spring: 56 ­ 62 ­ 65 ­ 70 ­ 79 Fall: 54 ­ 58 ­ 62 ­ 60 ­ 66.

Another aspect of the data we have been monitoring is the variance in scores across sections—i.e., the gap between the highest and lowest performing sections. We would like there to be no more than a 25% gap between them and have been hovering close to that ever since the Fall of 2001 (see table below), a sign--we believe--that faculty have made the changes necessary to bring their courses into line with the department’s shared learning objectives. In other words, assessment seems to have generated greater consistency in content and pedagogical success.

Plans for the future

Given the progress we’ve been seeing toward our student performance goals, we plan no changes in the course’s curriculum or assessment plan. We will continue to expand our bank of assessment questions. In particular, we will take a look at question #9 to see if it indicates that we need to change the question (to avoid ambiguity) or if we need to draw the distinction between these ethical theories more clearly in our classes. It remains evident that teaching quality would be improved significantly by reducing dependence on adjunct and non-tenure track faculty. As mentioned above, 50-70% of the sections of this course are typically taught by adjunct and annual contract faculty. There is tremendous turnover in this process. For example, we were able to retain only half of these from the previous year. Widespread cumulative experience—an important ingredient for real success—is impossible to develop on this model.

Data

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