Developing and Assessing General Education Learning Outcomes: A Collaborative Commitment across The Institution

1. Developing and Assessing General Education Learning Outcomes: A Collaborative Commitment across The Institution Workshop at Miami Dade College November 21, 2005 Peggy Maki PeggyMaki@aol.com

2. Workshop Foci • Building a Culture of Evidence across The Institution • Grounding Assessment of GE in Teaching and Learning • Collaboratively Developing Learning Outcome Statements-- Claims about Student Learning

3. Validating Learning Outcome Statements through Maps and Inventories of Educational Practice • Designing or Selecting Valid Assessment Methods that Align with Students’ Educational Experiences • Developing Standards and Criteria of Judgment

4. Analyzing and Interpreting Results of Student Work • Closing the Inquiry Loop

5. Gather Evidence Interpret Evidence Mission/Purposes Learning Outcome Statements How well do students achieve our outcomes? Enhance teaching/ learning; inform institutional decision- making, planning, budgeting

6. Your Learning Outcomes • Articulate some GE learning outcome statements that align with what and how students learn in your programs and services • Map GE outcome statements to assure students have diverse and multiple opportunities to learn • Identify some direct and indirect assessment methods to capture student learning

7. Develop some standards and criteria of judgment to score student work • Identify when and where to assess and how to collect evidence of student learning • Identify when and who will assess evidence of student learning

8. Identify possible times across the institution when colleagues can come together to interpret results and reach consensus about ways to improve student learning • After implementing changes, identify when you will reassess the efficacy of changes.

9. Building a Culture of Evidence

10. R.W. Emerson, “Intellect,” Essays (1841) “How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known.”

11. How do you learn? List several strategies you use to learn: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

12. Grounding Assessment of GE in Teaching and Learning • Learning is a complex process of interpretation-not a linear process • Learners create meaning as opposed to receive meaning • Knowledge is socially constructed (importance of peer-to-peer interaction) National Research Council. Knowing What Students Know, 2001.

13. Learning involves creating relationships between short-term and long-term memory • Transfer of new knowledge into different contexts is important to deepen understanding • Practice in various contexts creates expertise

14. People learn differently—prefer certain ways of learning • Deep learning occurs over time—transference • Meta-cognitive processes are a significant means of reinforcing learning (thinking about one’s thinking and ways of knowing)

15. Integration of learning and development over time….

16. Specific Questions that Guide Assessment • What do you expect your students to know and be able to do by the end of their education at your institution? • What do the curricula and other educational experiences “add up to?” • What do you do in your classes or in your programs or services to promote the kinds of learning or development that the institution seeks?

17. Questions (con’d) • Which students benefit from various classroom teaching strategies or educational experiences? • What educational processes are responsible for the intended student outcomes the institution seeks? • How can you help students make connections between classroom learning and experiences outside of the classroom?

18. Questions, con’d: • What pedagogies/educational experiences develop knowledge, abilities, habits of mind, ways of knowing/problem solving, and dispositions? • How are the curriculum and co-curriculum designed to develop knowledge, abilities, habits of mind, ways of knowing, and dispositions?

19. How do you intentionally build upon what each of you teaches or fosters to achieve programmatic and institutional objectives—contexts for learning? • What methods of assessment capture desired student learning--methods that align with pedagogy, content, curricular and instructional design?

20. Common Categories of GE Learning • Writing • Speaking • Quantitative Reasoning • Problem solving, critical thinking

21. Leadership • Lifelong learning • Ethical awareness; social responsibility • Team work • Global perspectives; multiple perspectives

22. Mesa Community College Categories (AZ) • Written and oral communication • Critical thinking/problem solving • Numeracy • Arts and humanities • Scientific inquiry • Information literacy • Cultural diversity

23. Inventory from MDC’s Student Services Last Friday: • Writing • Speaking • Reading Comprehension • Critical thinking/problem solving • Quantitative reasoning/problem solving • Technology • Application of knowledge • Proficiency in a chosen field

24. Cultural literacy • Globalism • Teamwork/solo work • Self-initiative/independence • Social responsibility • Ethical awareness • Leadership • Ability to adapt to environments/changes

25. Categories under which students learn and develop • List several categories under which you believe students learn or develop as a result of MDC’s GE program? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

26. Inventory Based on Nov. 21 Cross-Campus Group Work • Writing • Speaking • Listening • Quantitative reasoning, including ability to assess and evaluate • Critical thinking • Ethical awareness • personal/social responsibility, including cultural dimensions

27. Environmental ethics • Computer/information literacy • Cultural Literacies • Problem solving • Problem posing • Financial responsibility • Workforce skills • Knowledge about self, others, community, world

28. Leadership • Active learning (self) • Teamwork • Ability to link across the curriculum and experiences • Time management • Global perspectives/diversity • Cultural sensitivity • Interpersonal skills • Adaptability

29. Scientific thinking/methods • Appreciation of the arts, including a global perspective • Life skills

30. Collaboratively Developing Learning Outcome Statements Learning outcome statements describe what students should be able to demonstrate, represent, or produce based on how and what they learn at the institution through multiple, varied, and intentional learning opportunities.

31. Rely on active verbs, such as create, compose, calculate, develop, build, evaluate, translate, etc., that target what we expect students to be able to demonstrate • Emerge from what we value and how we teach or students learn; that is, they emerge from our educational practices and are developed through consensus • Are written for a course, program, service, or the institution

32. Can be mapped to the curriculum and co-curriculum • Can be assessed quantitatively or qualitatively

33. Levels of Learning Outcome Statements

34. Distinguishing between Objectives and Outcomes • Objectives state overarching expectations such as– Students will develop effective oral communication skills. OR Students will understand different economic principles.

35. Mesa Outcomes under Arts and Humanities • Demonstrate knowledge of human creations • Demonstrate an awareness that different contexts or world views produce different human creations • Demonstrate an understanding and awareness of the impact that a piece has on the relationship and perspective of the audience • Demonstrate an ability to evaluate human creations

36. Capital Community College (CT) • Communicate effectively • Reason scientifically and or quantitatively • Think critically • Develop a global perspective (See handout)

37. Ethics—Students should be able to… • Identify and analyze real world ethical problems or dilemmas, and identify those affected by the dilemma. • Describe and analyze the complexity and importance of choices that are available to the decision-makers concerned with this dilemma

38. Articulate and acknowledge their own deeply held beliefs and assumptions as part of a conscious value system • Describe and analyze their own and others’ perceptions and ethical frameworks for decision-making • Consider and use multiple choices, beliefs, and diverse ethical frameworks when making decisions to respond to ethical dilemmas or problems. California State University Monterey Bay: University Learning Requirements, 2002

39. Example from ACRL Literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge and value system. ONE OUTCOME: Student examines and compares information from various sources in order to evaluate reliability, validity,accuracy, timeliness, and point of view or bias.

40. Quantitative Literate Graduates according to MAA Should be Able to: 1. Interpret mathematical models such as formulas, graphs, tables, and schematics, and draw inferences from them. 2. Represent mathematical information symbolically, visually, numerically, and verbally. 3. Use arithmetical, algebraic, geometric, and statistical methods to solve problems.

41. Estimate and check answers to mathematical problems in order to determine reasonableness, identify alternatives, and select optimal results. • Recognize that mathematical and statistical methods have limits. (http://www.ma.org/pubs/books/qrs.html) The Mathematics Association of America (Quantitative Reasoning for College Graduates: A Complement to the Standards, 1996). See also AMATYC draft, 2006.

42. Writing • See NCTA Guidelines • See WPA Outcomes in attachments for outcomes at the end of the first year of writing

43. Ways to Articulate Outcomes • Adapt from professional organizations • Derive from mission of institution/program/department/service • Derive from students’ work

44. Derive from ethnographic process • Derive from exercise focused on listing one or two outcomes “you attend to” • Consult taxonomies

45. Taxonomies That May Help You Develop Outcome Statements • Bloom’s Taxonomy—cognitive, psychomotor, affective • Webb’s Taxonomy—depth of knowledge • Shulman’s Taxonomy—table of learning

46. Depth of Knowledge (Webb) • Recall and recognition • Processing skills and concepts • Strategic thinking • Extended thinking (complex reasoning, planning, design)

47. Dimensions of Knowledge • Facts • Procedures—series of step-by-step actions and decisions that result in the achievement of a task • Processes—flow of events or activities that describe the big picture

48. Concepts—class of items, words, or ideas known by a common name • Principles—guidelines, rules, parameters • Metacognitive—knowledge of one’s own cognition

49. Shulman’s Taxonomy • Engagement (active learning) • Knowledge and understanding • Performance, practice, or action (act in and on the world) • Reflection and critique (cease action to discover or “make progress”)

50. Judgment and design—consider context—even restraints • Commitment and Identity—move inward and connect outward http:///www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/docs/printable/ making_differences.htm