What’s With These Rubrics? 5: Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics

Implementing ILO-PLO-CLO Assessment in Your Courses

By Monica Sanford

Navigation:

  1. Why Does This Matter?
  2. Learning Outcomes
  3. UWest’s Institutional Learning Outcomes
  4. Rubrics
  5. Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics ← YOU ARE HERE
  6. Linking CLOs to Assignments
  7. Recording CLO Rubrics in Taskstream
  8. Conclusion

Creating Course Learning Outcome Rubrics

Every program will provide a CLO template for download.  The template contains the ILOs and PLOs and indicates how they relate to each other.  Professors then must enter their own CLOs for their courses  (These documents are available below.  Some are still being written and will be made available here when finalized.)

MBA CLO Template

BA Business CLO Template

Psychology CLO Template

English CLO Template

General Education CLO Template

The following instructions for filling out a CLO Rubric are adapted from the Religious Studies CLO Rubric.

 

Blank CLO Rubric (Religious Studies)

The first section of CLOs, under Knowledge, should derive from and be conceptually linked to a given PLO, though it might also reflect the course objectives listed in the section 8 of the course outline approved by the professor’s department (EXAMPLE: REL612 Course Outline).  It is then up to the professor to determine which other PLOs are or should be linked to the course.  Some courses will quite naturally have many links between PLOs and CLOs, while other courses will quite naturally have fewer.  Professors should examine each PLO and determine whether or not their course has conceptual links with it.  Note: Multiple CLOs can be linked to a single PLO, but a single CLO should not, given the deductive logic informing the university’s learning outcomes system (from the more general ILOs to the increasingly more specific PLOs and CLOs), be linked to multiple PLOs.  (EXAMPLE: REL612 Course Rubric.) Some CLOs are generic and already have rubrics that were developed by the university at large and apply to every course, such as those pertaining to attendance and cheating.  Do not remove these as they always apply.

Once the CLOs are determined, they should be elaborated through rubrics.  The easiest way is to look at the PLO rubric and rephrase them to be specific to their CLO.  Repeat this process until the entire rubric is filled out.  For example, the course REL612 Nicene Creed is taught as part of the MA in Religious Studies Program.  There are three PLOs relating to the ILO sub-point for Knowledge in the MA program (listed above).  The course has no CLOs relating to the first PLO, three CLOs pertaining to the second PLO, and no CLOs pertaining to the third PLO. In order to fulfill the second PLO (i.e. to summarize and explain the ideas, texts and history of non-Buddhist religions) students must 1) explain Gnosticism and how it shaped the Christian understanding of a Creator God; 2) summarize the issues and concerns that shaped the Christian idea of the Christ’s two-natures; 3) describe the role the Crucifixion and the Resurrection play in the Christian belief system, and 4) Student can explain the content and meaning of the Nicene Creed.

 

CLO Heirarchy (Partial)

The language describing the CLOs should be similar to that of their parent PLO.  For example, a “poor” rating (number 1) in the student’s ability to “summarize and explain the ideas, texts and history of non-Buddhist religions” means that the student demonstrates “Little to no knowledge of the ideas, texts and history of non-Buddhist religions.”  Therefore the language for the CLO which measures a student’s ability to “explain Gnosticism and how it shaped the Christian understanding of a Creator God” starts with a “poor” rating (number 1) that says “Little to no knowledge of Gnosticism.  Cannot explain how it shaped Christian understanding of God.”  This should be repeated until all the boxes are filled.  You can see in the graphic below how the language shown in bold changes to become more and more specific at each level.  For each ILO, PLO, and CLO, similar language is used to fill in each rubric from 1 to 5.  Another resource for CLO rubric language is Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains.

 

Changes in language from ILO to PLO to CLO Rubric.

A completed CLO rubric looks something like this one for REL612 on the Nicene Creed.  Only the first PLO and its related CLOs are shown. (ILO, Assessment Methods, and Target Outcome columns omitted for space.  See the entire example of the REL612 Course Rubrichere.)

 

REL612 Course Rubric (partial)

Once your CLO rubric is filled in, it should be submitted to the Department Chair for evaluation and approval.  The Department Chair will notify the professor if revisions are necessary. The Dean of Academic Affairs has final authority regarding course rubrics.

New faculty may join the university to teach a course for which CLOs are already in place.  They should familiarize themselves with the CLOs, the CLOs should inform their course design and syllabus, and they must also fill them out at the end of the semester.  If existing CLOs present difficulties for the new professor, they should see their department chair.

4. Rubrics Last Section ← Last Section ¦ Next Section → 6. Linking CLOs to Assignments