Pasadena City College Summer Institute on SLOs and Assessment
Janet Fulks and Kate Pluta June 24 & 25, 2005
Faculty, staff, administrators, and a student representative attended a 1 ½ day institute to learn about SLOs and Assessment. At the completion of the institute participants were supposed to be able to :
1) Draft SLOs for a course program incorporating at east two learning domains (cognitive, psychomotor, or affective), consistent with their teaching goals, appropriate to the course, and modified through dialogue.
Or
Draft SLOs for a student services that support students taking more responsibility for their own learning so that it equals a framework for action.
2) Prepare for assessment
3) Coach another faculty member to write SLOs.
It was obvious during the interaction that PCC has benefited greatly from the ongoing, healthy, funded staff development including the On Course training and the Writing Across the Curriculum projects. PCC exudes student learning centeredness and this provided for an engaged and active workshop.
The PCC participants are focused on student learning, and have a good background working on TMO's and writing across the curriculum, which made for an engaged and active workshop. At the beginning of the workshop a self assessment was conducted regarding the participants own evaluation of their skills in SLOs, course assessment, and program assessment N=54
2. Rate experience and knowledge concerning the following: |
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Expert |
Experienced |
Immediate |
Beginner |
Novice |
Totally Unfamiliar |
Student Learning Outcomes SLOs |
2% |
6% |
31% |
15% |
6% |
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Course Assessment |
4% |
11% |
39% |
13% |
0% |
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Program Assessment |
4% |
17% |
19% |
17% |
2% |
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At the completion of the workshop, participants were asked to reassess their skills in these same areas.
Final SLO Workshop and Assessment Survey N=47 |
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1. Rate experience and knowledge concerning the following: |
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Totally |
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Expert |
Experienced |
Immediate |
Beginner |
Novice |
Unfamiliar |
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Student Learning Outcomes SLOs |
15% |
15% |
51% |
19% |
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Course Assessment |
9% |
21% |
40% |
30% |
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Program Assessment |
11% |
13% |
40% |
26% |
6% |
2% |
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The largest gain in self-reported skills involved SLOs and Program Assessment, although all areas experienced some net gain in self reported expertise.
Comments from the participants on the last day, and recorded on sheet three of the spreadsheet, included numerous comments on:
• the intention to use rubrics and SLOs in courses
• many people intended to complete the SLOs for their courses
• several comments included student feedback in modifying SLOs
• faculty commented that linking SLOs to assessment was a goal for the next semester
There are numerous other comments that will be useful for future in-house staff development. PCC faculty voiced a strong desire to work collegially on the SLOs and to continue the work begun on the institutional SLOs.
Comments to improve the workshop included the desire to have information ahead of time, which was sent, but evidently did not reach everyone. Some voiced a need for more group work and others for less, some wanted more time or an additional day – these most likely relate specifically to different learning preferences.
Overall the faculty were engaged, active, knowledgeable and dedicated to student learning. Attached you will find a complete report with the survey information and comments. Having conducted numerous workshops on California community college campuses we felt that the level of sophistication, planning, and vision are very advanced on the PCC campus. We look forward to seeing the campus assessment model that develops as we know it will be a useful example for other campuses.
