Vanguard Learning College: Critical Problems and Issues

Solutions to Problems and Issues

I. Learning Outcomes

Part A. Defining and Teaching Learning Outcomes

1. At what levels (course, program, institution, other) have learning outcomes been identified and defined at your college?

•  At the course level, faculty members have identified learning outcomes for each credit course in the curriculum. Courses approved in the last three years also specify a menu of assessment options for identified outcomes.
   
• At the program level, all of the professional technical curricula have identified learning outcomes, which we will publish in program listings in the 2002-03 catalog. However, we are not yet systematically assessing those outcomes. Programs with outside accrediting agencies or state licensing provisions have stronger systematic assessment in place; we have been working on an initiative to implement outcomes assessment in every professional technical program. 
   
• At the institution level, we have identified general education outcomes after a three year process with faculty, staff, and students. We have begun discussions to inventory which courses support each outcome, and to find cross-disciplinary ways these outcomes can be measured. Because the Oregon transfer degree agreement is course-based, rather than outcomes-based, we are seeking to find ways to bridge from the existing paradigm to the new.

2. In what ways are stakeholders at your college involved in identifying and teaching learning outcomes, and which stakeholders are involved? 

• Faculty have been most involved, first at the course level, and second at the program level with advisory committees.
   
• Classified staff have also been involved in developing the outcomes for general education, and in assisting with the inventory of our general education outcomes as they are reinforced throughout the curriculum.
   
• Our managers and administrators have provided leadership and support for this work, and have participated in discussions of general education outcomes. Their partnership in the Strategic Learning Initiative Assessment Project has also provided meaningful support for faculty efforts in identifying, teaching, and assessing outcomes.

3. In what ways do learning facilitators throughout the college design learning activities that provide students with opportunities to achieve these outcomes, and what training do they receive?

• Increasingly, faculty and staff have designed activities that involve collaborative learning, problem-based learning, service learning, and learning communities. In general, faculty are also encouraged to shift from passive lecture-based teaching to active learning with individual engagement, group work, and team work.
   
• Training opportunities have included inservice days, Strategic Learning Initiative project areas, professional development through short courses and conferences, discipline contact, and faculty collaboration and mentoring.

4. What strategies (e.g., outcomes-based curriculum design models, alignment of learning outcomes with institutional mission and values, outcomes-based professional development activities) have been used to embed outcomes-based learning and teaching in the culture of your college?

• In the past seven years, the outline of every course in the curriculum has been revised to articulate learning outcomes, with the net effect being increased faculty consciousness of outcomes-based curriculum issues. Additionally, most of the professional/ technical faculty have used outcomes-based learning in their programs, either because it is required by professional accrediting agencies, or is part of state licensing requirements.
   
• While there is not a set of state-mandated outcomes for community colleges in Oregon, there is strong K-12 outcomes-based education, with the PASS  entrance requirements for public universities and PREP entrance competencies expected for each of our professional/technical programs. We feel the effects of the K-12 reform efforts, and our learning and teaching culture is shifting toward systematically verifying competencies.

Part B. Assessing and Documenting Learning Outcomes

1. What plans or processes are under way at your college to build or adopt assessment methods capable of determining, with consistency across the institution, the level at which each student achieves each relevant course, program, and institutional learning outcome?

• There are discussions at the state level in Oregon on shifting from a course-based transfer degree to a competency-based degree transcript, prompted by K-12 work to identify knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for entrance into public 4-year institutions, as well as work in community colleges to identify the skills necessary at entrance to professional programs. Minutes of the most recent meeting of the state-wide articulation transfer committee included the following observations: 
 
With PASS, OUS is moving from an "assumptive model" of college admission (assumptions about student achievement based on seat time) to a "demonstrative model" (under which students demonstrate proficiencies achieved and skills developed). There are implications under this system for placement of students at the postsecondary level. And, further, a proficiency model of education in the secondary schools and used for college admission by OUS has implications for the movement of students from the community college sector to the four-year campus sector. PASS is currently in its initial stages of implementation, gradually phasing in with different disciplinary areas being added each year (to parallel the implementation of the CIM in K-12).

Thus, the "PASS" model provides a transcript of competencies for entry into college, as well as advanced mastery that may be certified for college credit, similar to Advanced Placement credit.


• Some of our professional/ technical programs have printed checklists of competencies on folders which store samples of student work. We are discussing possibilities for systematic storage of that information in a database, including scanned documents.

3. In what ways is your college addressing faculty, staff, and student resistance to and fear of assessment and documentation of student learning?

• We completed an initial qualitative study four years ago, designed to elicit faculty knowledge, concerns and questions about assessment. We learned faculty have strong concerns and fears about how assessments might affect teaching, whether the results will be used, for what purposes the results will be used, and the additional workload involved in assessment projects. We have fostered faculty professional development projects designed to respect those concerns and empower faculty ownership of assessment projects.
   
• Our approach has relied upon these guidelines: 
• separation of program assessment of learning from the evaluation of instruction
• encouraging use of assessment information to inform budget decisions, but not tying assessment to performance funding 
• empowering faculty to design assessments and use the results to identify program strengths as well as areas needing improvement
• encouraging faculty to provide evidence of externally valid measurements. 
   
• We have promoted faculty use of archival data in longitudinal studies, defining a cohort of students and looking at which courses seem to be hurdles rather than ladders in the learning sequence. Our institutional researchers produce reports on student successes over time, helping faculty identify weak sequences in the curriculum.
   
• We have provided design and data entry support for faculty who want to use focus groups or surveys to elicit qualitative or quantitative data about student learning. This has been an intentional institutional effort to support faculty-initiated projects, based on faculty questions about the quality of courses and programs. 

4. What strategies have been effectively used to promote development of a culture of evidence at your college?

• We advocate and honor faculty ownership of outcomes assessment because the form of assessment affects what is taught and how learning occurs. At the same time, we have promoted wide discussion of the importance of designing assessments which validly measure significant, complex instructional objectives that are difficult to measure, such as critical thinking and problem solving skills.
   
• We have effectively worked with faculty "early adopters" of outcomes-based learning, rather than imposing assessment requirements on colleagues with reservations about outcomes or assessment. We have built momentum by inviting faculty who are interested, and honoring this important work with release time or additional pay for faculty and/or staff doing the work.
   
• We promote qualitative evidence as a rich source of information about learning.
   
• Our curriculum approval form asks all proposals to provide evidence that a new course is needed, or that a course revision is necessary. This simple administrative strategy conveys the importance the college places on planning the outcomes of a course, and helps us track curricular changes that result from outcomes assessments.