awareness

Throughout the quarter you are required to maintain a portfolio documenting all aspects of your work in this course.  Sections should be clearly designated for the preceding components.  Each section should have a cover page listing the contents of the sections (mind map questions, essay titles, etc.).  Additional sections may be created for things like notes on readings, lectures, films, seminars or an image collection, etc. A peer and faculty review of portfolios will take place in class during week 6 and week 10.  Although your portfolios will be on display during these review sessions, you may choose to restrict access to specific portions of your work that is highly sensitive or of a purely personal nature using paper clips, rubber bands, ribbon, etc.

When Evergreen began, student self-evaluations were mandatory and faculty evaluations were optional; now we have almost reversed that situation.  In keeping with the wisdom on which Evergreen was founded, the focus of assessment in this course will be your self-assessment.  We begin during week 1 with a self evaluation of where you want to be at the end of the quarter.  This writing is your chance to think about why you enrolled in Awareness and what you imagine accomplishing this year or this quarter.  You will also work with Academic Advising’s first-week, self-assessment form.  During week 5 mid-quarter self-evaluations will be shared and revised in peer groups.  During week 9 final self-evaluations will be shared and revised in peer groups before being submitted to faculty for review.  See the evaluation handout.

We—the faculty—intend to use your self- evaluations to assess our overall, three-year long work in this program.  This means that we may want to use your evaluations as data in publications and discussions about this program and we want future students to be able to read your evaluations as data for our assessment of this work.  In addition, we want to be able to use your evaluations from this quarter to inform students enrolling in subsequent quarters about our work in “Awareness.”  So, we would like everyone to agree to have their evaluations made public in this way.  We’ll be doing a “human subjects review” to provide you with the opportunity to make an informed decision to do this.  You will have several opportunities to opt out of this participation (which would leave your self-evaluation’s  privacy protected to the extent it is in any college program).  We’ll have more to say about this as we go along.