Assessment of ARTH 1121 Renaissance to Modern Art

Spring 2008

There were four exams.

Summation of cumulative scores

Objective #1: to become familiar with important works of art. Students met this objective through slide IDs.

Exam #1: 90% Exam #2: 92% Exam #3: 90% Exam #4: 93%

Objective #2: to develop the ability to analyze the formal properties of works of art. Students met this objective through various short answer questions.

Exam #1: 82% Exam #2: 86% Exam #3: 87% Exam #4: 84%

Objective #3: to develop an understanding of the relation of art to its social context. Students met this objective through various short answer questions.

Exam #1: 61% Exam #2: 84% Exam #3: 78% Exam #4: 81%

The students’ performances in all areas were fairly steady and pretty good. The one dramatic dip in performance (regarding objective #3 on exam #1) had to do with a particularly difficult question that I had never used before on an exam. Now that I have a better idea of how students misconstrued the question and misinterpreted the ideas necessary to answer it correctly, I can adjust the way I teach and review those ideas.