Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment Parameters
I've just spent the day in a general education council retreat looking at the gen. ed. framework and student learning outcomes.
My mind is a little frazzled from a day-long meeting, but I wanted to share a few notes and ideas.
First, assessment parameters are hard. When does general education end? Does it end with the capstone? Do students in the capstone need to meet general education student learning outcomes (SLOs)? If yes, how many? All of them? These are similar problems I was mentioning before about information literacy program assessment. Can I measure IL SLO in a capstone that doesn't have IL SLO? The short answer is no. So how do I demonstrate students are graduating with information literacy skills? What happens when we run into the majors? Are they responsible for university student learning outcomes? (Yes.) At the expense of content SLOs?
Second, we have a competency-based general education framework, which I like a lot. The state guidelines are discipline/course based (e.g. 2 humanities courses). I think (and there's research - which I will get around to linking to), that competency based models are better and more flexible. Right now ours is a little confusing, because it needs to map to so many other things (like the state general education requirements).
One model we've looked at is similar to what San Jose State College is doing, and grouping general education requirements into basic skills, basic knowledges, and university-specific experiences. University-specific experiences is the category that we find the most important - it's where all the courses or competencies live that students must all take, regardless if they started here as freshmen or transferred in (and we have a large transfer student population). These are things like ethical reasoning and advanced communication, and should include something about experiential learning. Then we start scaffolding down to competencies that students might be transferring in with, but are part of liberal education, like inquiry, global and intercultural knowledge, humanistic and aesthetic thinking; and then we finally end up at the beginning, the basic skills of a college student, that include mathematical concepts, personal and professional skills (research, financial literacy, technical skills), and written communication.
I like this model, because even though our information literacy course is not part of general education, but is instead a degree requirement, the 100-level course is something students take with 45 or fewer credits. If they have more than that, they can still take the intro to information literacy course, or they can complete it in their majors. However, those classes are all over the place, and I still need to figure out what is happening in them.
Cue student learning outcomes, which I think need to be more universal and intentional for our IL program.
My mind is a little frazzled from a day-long meeting, but I wanted to share a few notes and ideas.
First, assessment parameters are hard. When does general education end? Does it end with the capstone? Do students in the capstone need to meet general education student learning outcomes (SLOs)? If yes, how many? All of them? These are similar problems I was mentioning before about information literacy program assessment. Can I measure IL SLO in a capstone that doesn't have IL SLO? The short answer is no. So how do I demonstrate students are graduating with information literacy skills? What happens when we run into the majors? Are they responsible for university student learning outcomes? (Yes.) At the expense of content SLOs?
Second, we have a competency-based general education framework, which I like a lot. The state guidelines are discipline/course based (e.g. 2 humanities courses). I think (and there's research - which I will get around to linking to), that competency based models are better and more flexible. Right now ours is a little confusing, because it needs to map to so many other things (like the state general education requirements).
One model we've looked at is similar to what San Jose State College is doing, and grouping general education requirements into basic skills, basic knowledges, and university-specific experiences. University-specific experiences is the category that we find the most important - it's where all the courses or competencies live that students must all take, regardless if they started here as freshmen or transferred in (and we have a large transfer student population). These are things like ethical reasoning and advanced communication, and should include something about experiential learning. Then we start scaffolding down to competencies that students might be transferring in with, but are part of liberal education, like inquiry, global and intercultural knowledge, humanistic and aesthetic thinking; and then we finally end up at the beginning, the basic skills of a college student, that include mathematical concepts, personal and professional skills (research, financial literacy, technical skills), and written communication.
I like this model, because even though our information literacy course is not part of general education, but is instead a degree requirement, the 100-level course is something students take with 45 or fewer credits. If they have more than that, they can still take the intro to information literacy course, or they can complete it in their majors. However, those classes are all over the place, and I still need to figure out what is happening in them.
Cue student learning outcomes, which I think need to be more universal and intentional for our IL program.
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