Students Engaged in Research and Assessment
Loretta Awuku, Sylvia Page and Johnson Akano—three graduate students pursuing linguistic studies master’s degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences—spent the past year researching and contributing to assessment and curricular development processes.
The research team’s project, Peer-to-Peer Student Outreach in Linguistics MA Curriculum Assessment and Development, was led by faculty mentor Amanda Brown, professor and linguistic studies program director in the College of Arts and Sciences. Brown received a Student Engagement in Assessment Mini-Grant, which aims to enhance student assessment knowledge and skills, develop a sense of agency to inform curricular decision-making and provide invaluable insight about the student learning experience.
The research project engaged 14 current students and six graduates in a mixed methods approach to answer the project’s three research questions:
- Do students know about current program learning outcomes?
- How do student feel about the master of arts (MA) focus areas?
- Should a psycholinguistics focus area be added?
“The participants felt more comfortable sharing their perspectives with their peers and the project has revealed a number of insights around which important faculty discussions and program innovations will follow,” Brown says of the benefits of engaging with students in the assessment.
The mini-grant opportunity gave the student researchers the assessment knowledge and skills to advance their future success. Akano pointed to the personal development this project offered as he pursues postgraduate opportunities.
“I’m really interested in assessment and one of the major reasons I got involved in this project was to learn more,” Akano says. “I plan to pursue a Ph.D. in the area of language assessment and I think the skills and the knowledge that I’ve acquired from this program will be very valuable for me when I start my doctoral studies.”
Page was pleasantly surprised by the amount of responses they received to the survey. “Their engagement showed they were invested in the program even though they had completed it and they actually wanted their voices to be heard,” Page says.
The students presented their research at the 9th Annual TESOL/Applied Linguistics/Foreign Languages (TALFL) Conference and Syracuse University’s One University Assessment Celebration this semester.
“It’s a great experience to present at a conference to different people from across the country and build the skills needed to communicate data collection and analysis,” Awuku says, highlighting the presentation skills she developed through these opportunities.
For this research team, the Student Engagement in Assessment Mini-Grant experience and findings benefitted them directly and also benefits future students in the program. Applications for 2025-26 mini-grant are open through Aug. 8. Interested? Apply today.
Story by Naimah Rahman
