Eventually, and on an on-going basis, General Education, Student Support Services, Workforce Development & Continuing Education, and every Academic Area at the College will be required to assess student academic outcomes for key academic experiences offered within their area. In general, such assessments should reflect a college-wide, not campus based, perspective and thinking.

In assessing academic experiences the College distinguishes between two types of academic outcomes:Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and Student Progress Outcomes (SPOs) .

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) describe what students take away from program/activity/experience, in particular:

1. Knowledge gained
2. Skills and abilities acquired and demonstrated
3. Attitudes, values, behaviors developed or changed

The purpose of assessing student learning outcomes is not to assess or evaluate the performance of individuals, but rather the effectiveness of programs, activities, and services. This process in not complete until the data collected is used to improve these programs/activities/experiences as necessary and appropriate. Data will never be reported in a way that will permit the results to be associated with any individual, faculty or student.

Each round of discipline-based SLO assessment is expected to take about 3 full years to complete:

Year 1: Planning and piloting the assessment
Year 2: Full-scale implementation of the assessment and analysis of the data
Year 3: Discussion of the results leading to conclusions and recommendations

Disciplines will participate either as part of General Education Outcomes Assessment process or as part of the Academic Area Outcomes Assessment.

The Assessment Approach

In assessing student learning outcomes, the College is committed to:

1. obtaining as reliable, consistent, unbiased, and useful information as possible
2. involving as many faculty as possible in the process, not just volunteers or a selected sample.

To these ends, all instructors will be expected to use the same assessment instruments, i.e., assignments and/or exams to assess a set of common outcomes agreed to by the discipline. All instructors also will be expected to use common rubrics when scoring the assessments. With regard to a student’s final grade in the course, individual faculty may choose to score or weight these common assignments as they wish.

The intent of the General Education Outcomes Assessment process is to evaluate the effectiveness of the General Education Program in developing the broad-based academic skills and values that exemplify a degree in higher education. The process is course-based, with only the largest, multiple-section general education courses selected to participate. For the purposes of general education outcomes assessment only, such courses are referred to as "leading general education courses." These courses have been selected and matched with competencies based on discipline faculty responses to the General Education Competency Survey. For additional information about the Outcomes Assessment General Education process, please visit OA General Education.

Academic Areas that do not offer a "leading general education course" (see definition above) will be expected to conduct an SLO assessment project commencing in the year following their College Area Review. At least three student learning outcomes must be assessed as part of each such project. For additional information about the College Area Review process, refer to the CAR webpage.

Each faculty member will enter assessment scores for each student on an Excel spreadsheet provided by the Outcomes Assessment Team. It is the responsibility of the Outcomes Assessment Team to analyze the data and report the results. It is the responsibility of the discipline to draw conclusions and make recommendations based on this report, as well as to then implement those recommendations. Student performance on general education competencies will be aggregated within each discipline, as well as across all disciplines assessing the same competency. This information will be reported as well to the College-wide General Education Committee.

Student Progress Outcomes (SPOs) speak to whether an academic program/activity/experience positions a student to succeed at the expected or logical next level. Typically these arise within:

1. Course sequences
2. Transfer, certificate, and degree programs
3. Majors
4. Workplace experience

The usefulness of SPOs will vary by the discipline type. Faculty should consider assessing student progress outcomes for any academic experience that is intended to directly position students to succeed in some subsequent endeavor. In particular, disciplines, for example, math and science, that offer course sequences in which success in one course is strongly tied to success in a prior course should be regularly assess student progress outcomes for these courses.

Assessing SPOs – Key Steps

In developing a plan to assess student progress outcomes for your discipline, the following steps are required:

1. Identify all significant academic experiences offered by your discipline.
2. For each academic experience, identify key intended student progress outcomes, if any.
3. For each intended outcome, identify at least one outcome indicator; i.e., specific information to be tracked and collected that will tell you whether students are achieving the outcome.