Welcome to

1
Welcome to

• The Zen of Program-Level Student Learning Outcomes

part of The Student Learning Outcomes Assessment
Cycle (SLOAC) Project
El Camino College 2006-2007
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The Big Picture
Program vision, mission, and goals
El Camino College institutional mission, vision
and goals
Related professional expectations
Program SLOs and Assessments are caught in the
middle!
Community expectations and needs
Student expectations, needs and goals
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Course Level SLOs Program Level SLOs
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Part I Program Goals Program Level SLOs
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Example Respite Womens and Childrens Shelter
Mission Statement To provide safety and shelter
to women and children who are victims of domestic
violence through crisis intervention,
therapeutics and education, and to reduce
societal violence against women and children.
Continued funding is based on evidence that the
shelter is meeting its purported outcomes.
Individual Work Spend three minutes writing a
draft of an outcome for the Shelter that reflects
their mission statement.
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Example Respite Womens and Childrens Shelter
Mission Statement To provide safety and shelter
to women and children who are victims of domestic
violence through crisis intervention,
therapeutics and education, and to reduce
societal violence against women and children.
After consultation among the shelters board of
directors, staff and clients, the following
outcome was proposed Actual Outcome Following
the services and therapeutics of the womens
shelter, battered women will make a choice to
leave their violent relationships as a major
strategy to protect themselves and their children.
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Example Respite Womens and Childrens Shelter

• Some Questions
• Has their been consultation among the
  stakeholders?
• Does the outcome focus on what women can do
  following the program? Does the outcome define an
  action women can take?
• Is this outcome measurable?
• Is this outcome valid and appropriate for the
  shelter?
• Is this outcome understandable to the intended
  audience?

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Working with your own program

• Task 1 On your Program Goals and Program-Level
  SLOs handout, name and briefly describe your
  program in one sentence that contains the
  following information
• who you are
• what you do
• for whom
• and why

Example Pre-Allied Health Biology Program The
pre-allied health biology program
prepares students for vocational health programs
by providing rigorous courses and hands-on
experiences in human biology.
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Working with your own program
Task 2 Describe one student-centered goal of
your program.
Example Pre-Allied Health Biology
Program Goal Students leaving our program will
possess the content knowledge of human anatomy
necessary to succeed in vocational healthcare
training.
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Working with your own program
Task 3 Exchange your paper with another group
nearby. Task 4 Review the description of the
program and the student-centered goal of the
paper you received.
Example (Do you really need an example for
these two tasks?)
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Working with your own program
Task 5 Answer to the best of your ability
the following question. Be as specific as
possible As a well-educated skeptic, what
sorts of evidence would you need to see before
you would be convinced that students in the
program have attained the stated student-centered
goal?
Example Pre-Allied Health Biology
Program Direct Measure Student Portfolios
containing results from hands-on summative
assessments. Indirect Measure Success rates
of former students in local healthcare vocational
training programs.
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Working with your own program
Task 6 Pass the paper back to the original
owners. Task 7 Review the recommendations for
the types of evidence needed to show that your
students have attained your student-centered goal.
Example (Again, do you really need an example
for these two tasks?)
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Working with your own program
Task 8 Write a Program Level SLO that measures
how well your students attain your
student-centered goal. Use the questions on the
next slide to guide you (these are also on your
handout)
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Working with your own program

• Guiding questions
• Does the outcome focus on what students can do?
• Does the outcome address more than one domain
  (knowledge, skills, attitudes)?
• Does the outcome emphasize the big picture?
• Does the outcome suggest a context and
  appropriate manner in which it may be assessed?
  
• Does the outcome have value for the student, the
  faculty, the school?

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Working with your own program

• Task 9 Record the following information on one
  of the half sheets of paper provided
• The name of your program
• The name and email of a contact person for your
  program
• The one-sentence description of your program
• The draft of the SLO you wrote
• The example of a direct measure and an indirect
  measure
• Once you have recorded all of this, carefully
  separate the white sheet from the yellow. Keep
  the yellow sheet and hand in the white copy.

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Part 2 College Level Core Competencies
Program Level SLOs
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A working, incomplete list of Core Competencies
(Institutional Level Student Learning Outcomes)
Critical Thinking Community and
Collaboration Communication and Comprehension
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Working with your own program
Task 1 On your Core Competencies handout, list
the key courses in your program in the column on
the left-hand side of the table. If there is not
enough room, deal with it imaginatively. Task 2
For each course, briefly describe how the goals
of the course might contribute to student
attainment of each of the three core
competencies. Be as specific as possible in the
spaced provided.
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Working with your own program
Task 3 Looking at the results of Task 2, which
of the three core competencies does your program
best support? Task 4 Draft a Program-Level SLO
related to the core competency you selected in
Task 3. Again, use the questions on the next
slide and on your handout to guide you.
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Working with your own program

• Guiding questions
• Does the outcome focus on what students can do?
• Does the outcome address more than one domain
  (knowledge, skills, attitudes)?
• Does the outcome emphasize the big picture?
• Does the outcome suggest a context and
  appropriate manner in which it may be assessed?
  
• Does the outcome have value for the student, the
  faculty, the school?

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Working with your own program

• Task 5 Record the following information on one
  of the half sheets of paper provided
• The name of your program
• The core competency you selected
• The draft of the SLO you wrote
• The possible direct and indirect measures for
  assessment
• Once you have recorded all of this, carefully
  separate the white sheet from the yellow. Keep
  the yellow sheet and hand in the white copy.

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Resources

• Assessing Student Learning, Section 6, of the
  online SLO tutorial at Bakersfield College
• http//online.bc.cc.ca.us/courseassessment/Default
  .htm
• There is a link for this site at the El Camino
  College SLO Website
• http//www.elcamino.edu/academics/slo