Organizers:          Nicole Mills, Stacey Katz Bourns, & Virginia Maurer (Bok Center)

 http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/languageprogramevaluation/home

Registration Deadline is October 25th

This symposium will establish a forum of experts, Harvard faculty, and students who will present new ideas, diverse perspectives, and innovative models of language and literature program evaluation, followed by a collaborative discussion among experts and attendees regarding future initiatives. The main objective of the symposium is to share and explore contemporary approaches, tools, and recommendations that can make evaluation a valuable means for identifying and acting on a program’s strengths and weaknesses, thus enabling congruence across institutional, departmental, and professional goals, and contributing to the vitality of foreign language and literature programs in higher education. Although an understanding of learners’ experiences and their development is, perhaps, of greatest importance, it is equally crucial to gain information about other key players in the program evaluation process: institutional goals; department agendas; language and literature teachers' and teacher trainers' beliefs, oversight, and coordination; and the instructors’ and teaching assistants’ perspectives and performance.

The symposium will include topics such as: 1) the integration of professional standards; 2) university benchmarks, departmental goals, and outcomes assessment in language program evaluation; 3) models for language program evaluation practices; and 4) discussion of the perspectives of language learners, course heads, and faculty within language and literature programs.

 Sponsored by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT)