Tracking Student Learning Outcomes – Do we have to?

Since joining eCollege, I’ve had the opportunity to discuss accountability and tracking of learning outcomes with university leaders from across the country.  The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS-COC) Annual Meeting this weekend will be yet another opportunity to listen to academic leaders share about the variety of approaches that are being implemented. Interestingly, a majority of workshops for this conference deal with assessment and student learning outcomes management.

In an earlier blog entry I discussed today’s prominent higher education accountability campaigns.  A key challenge for these programs is to find ways to standardize outcomes to provide a means to compare one institution’s performance against another.  This comparison is what potential students, parents, and employers want to see.

Agreeing on learning outcomes is usually more challenging for decentralized programs where individual faculty make decisions about what should be taught as opposed to many online programs where content is standardized and consistent across sections.  Nonetheless, with strong leadership I’ve seen on ground programs come up with creative solutions to this challenge as well.

Accountability is one area where online programs have a distinct advantage over traditional brick and mortar institutions.  Stakeholders from deans to accreditation teams don’t have to wonder what went on in an online class because the content, the discussions, and all deliverables should be readily available in the learning management system.

Even the naysayers would agree that there has been a shift from teaching to student learning in higher education.  More advanced schools are motivated by how an assessment program actually informs improvements in student learning while less mature organizations are simply trying to comply with stricter accreditation criteria.  A second characteristic of stellar assessment programs is that students themselves are aware of their accountability for achievement of learning outcomes at all levels within an institution and can access their progress in real-time or at the end of each term.

I’ll wrap up this week with some questions to ponder along with an invitation to contact me if you’ll be attending the SACS Annual Conference this weekend.  I’d love to meet peers who are engaged in conversations about how to handle management of student learning outcomes on campus.

• Are summative end-of-program portfolios sufficient evidence of student learning for accreditation teams?
• How granular should measurement of student learning outcomes be (program, course, task)?
• Who should ultimately own accountability for student learning on campus (senior leadership, academic leaders, students)?

Brian McKay Epp, M.Ed.

Academic Trainer and Consultant