outcomes assessment cycle

Bienniel Skyline College SLOAC Academy

Through this online asynchronous workshop,  participants determine how to put a "culture of intentionality" into their outcomes assessment practices. Specifically, participants will deepen their understanding of how to

  • craft and critique student learning outcomes,
  • design and critique assessment plans that strengthen student learning, and
  • make meaning from and act on assessment results, including configuring results that lend themselves to analysis and dialogue.

All participants can apply the SLOAC Academy toward flex credit; adjunct faculty also qualify for a mini-grant. For Skyline College faculty, please contact Karen Wong if interested in participating. The Fall 2023 cohort is wrapping up. The next online cohort will be in Fall 2025. 

Student Affairs Assessment Leaders' Applying and Leading Assessment in Student Affairs

This FREE online course provides self-paced curriculum materials and activities that address several learning outcomes.

This course aims to provide participants the opportunity to:

    • review concepts that contribute to sound, sustainable assessment practice;
    • explore the development of foundational assessment components including planning, articulating goals and outcomes, and providing feedback;
    • identify strategies for guiding assessment efforts across multiple functional areas and teams;
    • discover ways to translate data to a story of student success with a plan for action.
 

 

Rubrics

  1. American Association of Colleges and Universities: Broken down into 3 sections, these value rubrics were developed to help create a shared understanding of student learning at colleges and universities across the country: (a) Intellectual and Practical Skills, (b) Personal and Social Responsibility, and (c) Integrative and Applied Learning. 
  2.  RCampus’ iRubric is a free online resource that helps assessors to create rubrics in a collaborative learning environment.

 

Mary Allen's Workshop Handout   (2006)

This handout provides a helpful overview of program level SLOs and the benefits and drawbacks of various assessment methods.

 

Classroom Assessment Techniques

Have you ever reached the end of a unit and realized that you could have better taught one step that would have helped students to better perform on their culminating project or exam?

Using the simple assessment tools, CATS (Classroom Assessment Techniques), faculty can gain insights into how to improve the quality of student learning earlier on in instruction, which leads to more formative feedback for students as well as more immediate feedback into our teaching effectiveness. Available in the library and at Skyline SLOAC, CATS workshops are copies of Angelo and Cross' book on CATS.

To identify the techniques best suited for assessing your particular teaching goals, University of Iowa has a link where you can take the TGI online and it will generate a report for you.

 

Assessment Organizations

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

The mission of NILOA is to discover and  disseminate ways that academic programs and institutions can productively use assessment data internally to inform and strengthen undergraduate education, and externally to communicate with policy makers, families and other stakeholders.

The Research and Planning Group of California Community Colleges' BRIC Inquiry Guide

This brief guide provides an overview of the student learning outcomes (SLO) assessment cycle and presents a framework to use in order to improve student learning through evidence-based assessment and analysis. All who interact with students and desire to foster student learning can benefit from the methods and practices presented in this booklet. It is designed to be a concise, easy-to-read summary of the essential principles of student learning outcomes assessment. For those professionals seeking more in-depth coverage of specific outcomes assessment topics, pedagogies, and practices, the hyperlinks within the text offer additional resources.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities' Assessment Resources

AAC&U develops and advances assessment practices that deepen, integrate, and demonstrate student learning, through advocacy of learning-centered assessment policies, support for campus work to develop meaningful assessment approaches, and experimentation with common e-portfolio frameworks.

 

Books Available in the Skyline College Library

  • Angelo and Cross' Classroom Assessment Techniques
  • Komives, Woodard & Associates' Student Services
  • Nilson's The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating Your Course
  • Schuh, Upcraft & Associates' Assessment Practice in Student Affairs
  • Walvoord and Anderson's Effective Grading
  • Walvoord's Assessment Clear and Simple
  • Wiggins' Educative Assessment