Student Learning Outcomes:
Where are We Now?
Interview with Cynthia Murdoch
Editor's Note: In the interview below, Cynthia Murdoch, coordinator for Student Learning Assessment, describes the current state of the SLO effort at the University. The SLOs were passed by the Faculty Senate for the Twin Cities campus on May 3, 2007. The interviewer is Paul Baepler, editor of Transform.
Q: The student learning outcomes (SLOs) were adopted by the Faculty Senate about a year and a half ago. What's happened since then?
A: A lot has happened. We created an implementation timeline with ambitious goals for this year and for the foreseeable future. We see departments implementing the SLOs in three progressive phases.
The first phase involves mapping the SLOs onto the existing curriculum. That's what our pilot departments are doing right now. We asked our pilots to look at their existing courses and identify which SLOs are being addressed in each course. They simply record this information on grids we give them or in another fashion. That course information is consolidated in a master document-this could be a master grid, say-that reflects the major as a whole. At that point, departments are able to see how students will encounter the SLOs as they progress through the major. The insight from this collection of information is what we're calling "the map."
The map is integral to the second phase. That's when we'll ask the pilots to create their own assessment plans based on what they see in the map. The plan will just be a way to begin to measure how students are doing on each of the 7 SLOs. We're just beginning to enter that phase with some of the departments.
The third phase will concern looking at the data that the plan generates. It essentially asks departments to focus on 1 or 2 of the SLOs every year and evaluate how their students are doing. What adjustments might need to be made to make the targets set in the assessment plan? Or do the assessments need to be revisited? This is the phase that will be iterative and incorporated into general course design over a period of years. It's meant to start conversations within the department about teaching and learning.
Q: Who are the pilot departments? What do you think faculty can learn from their experience?
A: The pilot departments are Applied Economics, all the departments in the Carlson School of Management, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Family Social Science, Food Science and Nutrition, Nursing, Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, and Sociology.
One of the lessons is that while this undertaking seems daunting on an institutional level, it's not as time consuming as it was originally perceived. What people are finding is that completing the course grid can be as simple as taking 10 or 15 minutes per course to identify which SLOs are a goal of that course. We're not asking for long or technical explanations of anything. Pretty simple, really.
We also learned that some departments had a head start on this because they were already starting to rethink their curriculum. This process is a natural outgrowth or even stimulant for that kind of work.
The last lesson is more of a gift really. Not everyone followed the same process that we imagined. Now, because of the pilot departments, we have some good examples of what people are doing. That should make it much easier to imagine what the work actually looks like in the end. Another thing we found is a confirmation that departments are already doing a lot of assessment, and that's what we expected to find. To some degree, what we are doing is asking people to literally sort their curriculum into the larger bins that we are calling learning outcomes. When you step back and look at what we're doing, we're really saying, "Let's look at what we're already doing and talk about it."
Q: It sounds like those pilot departments are getting along to the next phase. Will you be recruiting a new cohort to move through the initial mapping phase?
A: Oh yes, but I would also add that departments shouldn't wait for us to contact them. Consider this an open call! We're not envisioning actual "cohorts" of departments working hand-in-hand. We can certainly learn from each other's experience, but we're very cognizant that these are topics that should be discussed within a department. So there is no starting deadline. A department can start at any time, and we're actively seeking departments who want to begin.
Q: Okay, what about that second phase that the pilots will start. What should those assessment plans look like?
A: Well, we know that the assessment plan should be a more discipline-specific elaboration of the SLOs. What does each of the SLOs mean in a particular discipline? Do majors encounter all of them in their coursework for the department? What would make good direct and indirect measures for each SLO? For instance, would the best direct measure be a review of a student's work in a capstone course? Would the best indirect measure come from a student survey or focus groups or additional questions on a SRT form? These are all questions that should be deliberated upon at the department level. And there also needs to be some plan for discussing the findings of these measures and taking any suitable actions within the curriculum.
Q: Let's shift and look at the larger picture for a moment. The Higher Education Opportunity Act was signed into law in August, and it basically defangs a lot of the accountability measures proposed by the Spellings Commission report. In fact, the language explicitly states that colleges and universities have responsibility for student achievement, not the government. In the light of this development, what importance do the SLOs really have?
A: Well, we have to remember the history of the SLOs. The conversation about these learning outcomes grew out of conversations about pedagogy long before Spellings. On the Twin Cities campus, discussion about the outcomes were initiated within the Provost's Council for Enhancing Student Learning (CESL), originally under the leadership of Robin Wright and later with the ongoing leadership of Arlene Carney. And while the pressures that surround the Spellings Commission have diminished, the SLOs were passed by the Faculty Senate for the Twin Cities and are here to stay.
All that being said, by 2013 we need to start preparing the self-study for our next accreditation in 2015. There are clearly stated criteria for outcomes based assessment that we are required to meet when the Higher Learning Commission comes to the Twin Cities. That seems like a long time in the future, but departments need to demonstrate that they have been engaged in ongoing assessment by then.
Q: Can you say something about all the acronyms we hear about now: VSA, CLA, CAAP, MAAP, and NSSE?
A: Sure. It's best to start with the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA). The VSA is a recent development that is the public and land grant institutions' response to the federal and community call for greater accountability and a commitment to public reporting of comparative institutional data. (The private colleges have their own system for this called the University and College Accountability Network (UCAN).) The VSA makes data available to the public through a common web reporting template called the College Portrait. Within the portrait, there is a lot of information that has been commonly available, including graduation rates and tuition costs, etc. We also report scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and on one of three standardized tests (the CLA, the CAAP, or the MAAP). Currently, the Twin Cities campus hasn't selected any of these standardized exams. You can view the College Portrait for the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities at: http://www.irr.umn.edu/portrait.
Q: Do you have anything else you'd like to say?
A: Just that all undergraduate programs will need to go through this process, and we'd really encourage people to get started. Don't wait for us to contact you. We'd be happy to meet with you and help you get the ball rolling. We now can say from experience, at least for the first phase, that this effort won't absorb too much time. Please contact us, and we'll help you get started. In the end, assessing SLOs is really about improving teaching and learning. And it's an enterprise the entire University is undertaking. As part of the Liberal Education course recertification, for instance, faculty are asked to be explicit about the SLOs their course addresses. So, we'll see the SLOs in a lot of our work in the future.
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