GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS Program Goals and SLOs For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Program Goals The next step in the assessment process is to identify the goals we have for students in the program Goals should be the articulations of things we intend students to still carry with them five years down the road Programs have multiple goals. For our purposes now, one or two goals per program will be sufficient Goals arise from the primary functions and activities laid out in the mission statement For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Program Goals In the last program, we examined this mission statement: The mission of the Lee College Vocational Nursing Program is to prepare students to successfully complete the vocational nursing certification licensure examination and gain employment by providing quality instruction in the knowledge, application, and creation of skills essential to nurse practitioners. This mission statement suggests several goals. Here are two: Students will be able to use the nursing process to provide safe, effective patient-centered care among culturally diverse service recipients Students will be able to prepare employment documentation For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Program Goals Program goals can be general, or specific They CAN be measurable, but don’t need to be They will serve as our sources for the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that we’ll discuss next And a special tip: Don’t use verbs like “understand” or “learn” in your goals because they will lead to SLOs that are very difficult to measure For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Student Learning Outcomes Student Learning Outcome: An unambiguous, specific, observable and measurable performance statement. Describes what a student will be able to do at the end of a program Each goal can be quantified by a collection of student learning outcomes. For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Example Goal: Students will be able to solve quadratic equations by a variety of methods This can translate into three distinct SLOs: 1. Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using factoring 2. Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using the completing the square method 3. Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Another Example Program Mission The mission of the Humanities Program is to explore the ideas and arts of human cultures. Program Goal Students will have an understanding of the traits of art done in each major period Student Learning Outcome Students will be able to examine a series of works of art, literature, music and architecture and place 70% of them in their proper period of origin For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Writing the SLO One effective way of writing the SLO is to be certain you address each of four issues: Audience Behavior Condition Degree We call this the ABCD Model for writing SLOs Let’s look at these four more closely For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Writing The SLO: The ABCD Model A (Audience) Who is your audience? Who is performing the action? Describe the intended learner or end user of the instruction B (Behavior) What will the student be able to do? Must be observable and measureable C (Condition) How will students accomplish this task? Give the conditions in which performance will occur D (Degree) Describe the minimum criteria for acceptable performance Define expectations regarding accuracy, quality and speed For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Let’s look at that last SLO again, from the perspective of the ABCD method.. Audience “Students… Behavior …will be able to examine a series of works of art, literature, music and architecture… Condition …And place …them in their proper period of origin. Degree …70 % of... For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos

Be Careful of Your Choices The SLOs you articulate here will limit your options for evaluation methods substantially. Certain questions require certain types of measurement tools. You can limit your risk by studying the next lesson in this program (Assessment Tools) and, once comfortable with that information, come back and consider your SLOs again. For Instuctional Learning Outcomes Council (I-LOC) Created by Michael Gos