01
Feb
2021
Feb
2021
measuring learning outcomes
https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlinelearningcollective/permalink/746716582625709/
a discussion from the Higher Ed Learning Collective:
In my teaching career I worked at two colleges in Wisconsin. One public and one private. Both have Learning outcomes for each course, program/major outcomes for each major, and Institutional outcomes for the college (aka Employable skills, Career essentials, or Abilities).
Recently a friend of mine started teaching an online class at the University in a different state, and she kept asking them to give her learning outcomes for the course. After some back and forth emails it turned out that this other state university doesn’t have them.
It blew my mind 
, how do they know what the scope and depth of teaching should be in that course? How do they get their accreditation?
, how do they know what the scope and depth of teaching should be in that course? How do they get their accreditation?I am curious to know if it is just in Wisconsin or selected states/countries that it is a common practice to have outcomes? Also how do you teach without them?
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Go to the AACU Value Rubric website and adopt several of the outcomes for the course.
https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics
https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics
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We have LOs over here in MN.
My guess is that they’re buried deep in some filing cabinet in your friend’s university and most folks just ignore them.
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Usually the instructor is required to create the outcomes for the class, but they are usually based on meta-outcomes from the department. That’s how it has been at all institutions I have worked at. With that said, I have worked with colleagues, full professors with Ph.D.s that didn’t understand the principle of learning outcomes, and unless forced to put them in the syllabus, they either would not do it on their own or when having them, would not follow them. And forgot about triangulation of LO to activities and assessments.
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Accreditors look for program LOs but not at course level. (We learned this after a faculty member was fired for pushing back on LOs on the syllabus, and when the Uni said “SACS requirements”, SACS responded w/“um no, not really…”) Since then, we’ve collected data as part of our assessment plan & can say w/confidence that students don’t read them…