Reading Learning Reconsidered and attending the Learning Reconsidered Institute taught us many lessons, grossly simplified here:

Start Small

Our initial understanding of student learning outcomes is that we had to assess and document student learning or risk losing our programs. In response each program area scrambled to come up with over 100 student learning outcomes for the department. These outcomes where then reduced to a “manageable” 30. What we learned from trying to collect data on these 30 and what we learned fro LR2 is that this number was neither manageable nor necessary.

We have since taken a more quality approach to SLOs and are attempting to manage and collect more meaningful data on just a few outcomes, which are listed on these pages. We learned the importance of keeping it simple and starting small to make the data more meaningful. Most importantly we are starting smaller to build capacity for assessment among the professional staff.

Share Ideas

As we have all learned in our professional experience, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. In most cases an outcome that you are considering assessing is already being assessed somewhere in the world and in a lot of cases on your campus. Look for assessment tools such as tests or inventories that have already been found to be valid and work them into your SLOs.

Collaborate

Look for places in which the skills you are teaching complement the material learned in specific class. Look for academic departments that may have a need to measure what you are trying to measure. Try and find ways you can incorporate the active learning that you offer with classroom instruction.

Writing an SLO

Learning Reconsidered helped us learn the difficult process of writing a simple SLO. We’ve borrowed some thoughts to come up with a template that helps us define the necessary parts of an SLO and literally fill in the blanks to create new SLOs:

Wording a student learning outcome:
__________ first year students, graduating seniors,
WHO

__________ participate in, complete
THE FOLLOWING

__________ activity, program, course
WILL BE ABLE TO

__________ identify, list, describe, discuss
TO THE DEGREE OF

__________ at least ¾, 70% accuracy, more/fewer than
AS DEMONSTRATED BY

__________ interview, observation, journaling, survey.

SLO’s vs. Assessment

Stay on top of your practitioners and make sure they can appreciate the difference between SLO assessment and program outcome assessment. We have all been very good over the years about measuring the success of a program and that piece is still very important. It is equally important to realize the difference in measuring student learning. Stress the fact that SLOs measure the effectiveness to which you teach a particular skill not the “goodness or badness” of the students performance. If you or a program you are offering fail to teach the skill that you are assessing, it is a reflection of that program or your teaching, not on the student.

SLO’s and Science

Many times the more academic among us tend to get hung up on the causality and validity of the measures. There is currently no effective way to control for all the variables, so causality is very difficult. You can do things like a pre and post test, but do not get hung up on them. Just measure what you can measure, collect data, and try and make the most sense out of it for you.

There is almost never going to be irrefutable proof that you are having that direct effect. What we are trying to do is prove our contribution to student learning. There are many domains to student learning and each individual brings their own unique self to the process. What you can prove is that what you are doing is inserting a vital piece to the overall puzzle. The more pieces you can show an impact on the better it is for your department.

Looking Up and Looking Down

It is important to ensure that the things you are trying to measure matter. Look up to make sure that the elements you are trying to assess are in line with your mission.

Look around to see that the professionals involved in teaching and implementing the assessment want to be teaching and measuring that skill. If they do not feel it is important you will not get buy in from this important group. Get input from staff about what it is they teach and then decide from that list what things are measurable with the least amount of personal anguish for them.

Look down at the students that you are trying to impact. Do they see the value of what you are trying to teach? Can the students see the value of the learning that is taking place? Are they able to articulate the value? Implementing this type of assessment is all about setting the expectations. If the students expect that they are in a learning environment similar to an academic class then they will expect to be tested on what they have learned.

Creating Culture
As with anything creating a culture of assessment takes time. You can start by being transparent. It should not be a secret to any of the parties involved that student learning is a priority in your organization. Staffs need to take time to build the capacity to incorporate SLO assessment into their daily walk. Students need to be informed as early as possible as to what you are trying to teach them and how you will try to measure it. Think of this as passing out a syllabus on the first day of class.

One simple way we have found is to incorporate SLO assessment into the employee evaluation process already taking place in many of your program areas. It is a good time for professionals to collect data. It is also a great opportunity to have conversations about the teaching and learning environment.

There will always be stragglers in implementing such a drastic change of thought. Be patient. Changing organizational culture takes time.

Continue the overview with the current process...