Implementing ILO-PLO-CLO Assessment in Your Courses
By Dr. Kenneth Locke, Dean of Administration, and Monica Sanford
Navigation:
- Why Does This Matter? ← YOU ARE HERE
- Learning Outcomes
- UWest’s Institutional Learning Outcomes
- Rubrics
- Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics
- Linking CLOs to Assignments
- Recording CLO Rubrics in Taskstream
- Conclusion
Why Does This Matter?
Implementing the use of rubrics at assignment, course, program, and institutional level is important and useful for two reasons: 1) it will enable UWest to understand, fulfill, and measure how well we are meeting our mission, as well as make changes that rubric-generated data indicate are appropriate, and 2) it will enable us to comply with the requirements and recommendations of our accreditation body, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). The mission of UWest is to provide a whole-person education in a context informed by Buddhist wisdom and values and to facilitate cultural understanding and appreciation between East and West. Using the comprehensive assessment rubrics at the institutional, program, and course-levels allows us to assess how well we are accomplishing that mission. By creating rubrics at each level, we are clarifying how we are to go about implementing the mission. This form of documentation, clarification, and assessment allows all stakeholders (faculty, staff, administration, board, students, alumni, and donors) to better understand what UWest is trying to accomplish and where we stand at any given time in meeting our goals.
Furthermore, assessment is a WASC requirement. In a letter to UWest dated March 7, 2011, WASC expressed concern regarding UWest’s ability to assess student learning.
University of the West’s institutional proposal outlined three themes for the Capacity and Preparatory Review [site visit conducted in December, 2010]: development and implementation of a comprehensive student enrollment and retention plan; improvement of assessment of student learning to ensure educational effectiveness at course, program, and institutional levels; and defining and adopting a “teacher-scholar-service leader” model to improve faculty performance in instruction, assessment, research, mentorship, and service. The team noted that while UWest’s report adequately addressed these three themes, “the data provided with the report [were] insufficient and some of the data [were] inconsistent and inaccurate.”
Furthermore, WASC outlined seven actions UWest should undertake, two of which will be impacted directly by the new assessment system.
4. Provision of adequate resources to meet its mission and support its education offerings … This should include plans to increase enrollment, data on retention and graduation, the publication of data on student achievement, and the availability of accurate and useful data for planning and decision making.
7. Development of the infrastructure for assessment of student learning, including measurable learning outcomes at the course, program, and institutional level; assessment plans that include direct methods for assessing student learning and tools that promote good assessment practices; and the development of the faculty’s capacity to assess and improve student learning.
In light of these recommendations and in order to accomplish our mission, UWest has taken several steps. First, the Mission and Identity Committee (MIC), in consultation with the faculty, staff, administration, students, and the board, has created and published Institutional Learning Outcomes that apply to all academic and co-curricular programs at UWest. Departments have been tasked with creating Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) that explicitly link directly to these ILOs. Second, in order to assess whether and how well we are meeting these outcomes, the MIC created ILO sub-points and a measurement rubric for each of those sub-points. Third, UWest has purchased the “tools that promote good assessment practices” in the form of the Taskstream software. Taskstream will allow data to be collected into a single system that automatically links it to each level of the outcomes, CLO to PLO to ILO. By “data,” we mean everything from assessments of individual assignments and tests to results of student surveys and evaluations of extracurricular activities. Finally, the way we accomplish this assessment is through the implementation of rubrics at not only the ILO level, but also the PLO and CLO levels, as well as for individual papers, exams, exercises, and other forms of direct evidence of student learning. In order to develop “the faculty’s capacity to assess and improve student learning,” everyone must be trained on how to design, implement, and evaluate these rubrics.
We will begin this tutorial by explaining UWest’s four ILOs, their sub-points, and the rubrics used to measure them. This will be followed by an explanation of PLOs, CLOs, and rubrics, using an example from a Religious Studies course being taught this semester (Fall 2011) by Dr. Kenneth Locke.
By the time faculty finish this article, they should be able to create CLOs for their own courses, link them to the PLOs and ILOs, create linked CLO rubrics and assignment rubrics, and have a basic understanding of how data will be gathered into the new Taskstream software. Further tutorials, workshops, and manuals pertaining to the Taskstream software will be available here on the Faculty Development Website. It is important that faculty understand how these policies and procedures will affect courses, programs, the institution, and, especially, students. Finally, and most importantly, we want faculty to understand how this new system affects them and their classes.
If, following this tutorial, you still have questions, please seek guidance first from your department chair and then from either the Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. William Howe, or the Dean of Administration, Dr. Kenneth Locke. Also, please be aware that there are further tutorials and articles relating directly to Taskstream on this Faculty Development Website. In addition, Taskstream offers telephone and online customer/user support. You may also submit questions or leave comments to be addressed by your peers here on the Website.
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