Effective Practices in Program-Level Learning Outcomes Assessment

We use this list to guide us when we provide feedback to program’s learning assessment reports.

SLOs specify what students should know, do, and/or value upon successful program completion.
SLOs are meaningful and feasible to assess.
SLOs use verbs that express an action and the grammatical subject is students.
SLOs make the knowledge/skill/value to be assessed evident and demonstrable.
SLOs are publicly available and known to students and faculty.
Some (or all) program SLOs align with the institutional learning objectives (ILOs).

Each SLO is addressed in a set of required courses and/or activities.
Each required course/activity addresses at least one SLO (but typically a course does not address all the program SLOs).
Students have enough learning opportunities so they can meet exit-level standards of performance.

The type of evidence collected is appropriate given the assessment question/goal/SLO.
Pieces of evidence were reliably and fairly evaluated.
Multiple types of evidence are collected over time.

Results are summarized in a clear, concise manner using counts and percentages, if appropriate.
Standards of performance are available, e.g., samples of unacceptable, acceptable, and exemplary student work are available.
Criteria for success are established, e.g., the percent of survey responses needed to declare an outcome/goal has been achieved.
The (planned) actions and/or changes are congruent with the results.
A specific improvement plan (who, what, when) is given if action has not yet been taken.
There is a plan to monitor the implementation of the improvement plan and the impact of the actions/changes.