Sometimes faculty, program managers, and department chairs don’t understand the difference between these two very different types of outcomes. Nobody’s fault really, but knowing the distinction and knowing how to teach faculty about the differences is critical to an easier path to making a compelling case for compliance with a number of standards.
First, Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) should represent discrete bits of knowledge, skill, or ability (KSA) taught in the program that is critical to student success after program completion. The program may be a certificate, an associate degree, a bachelor degree, or a postgraduate degree. All should have SLOs. How do we find them? Well, that is in the eye of the beholder and the beholder is the faculty teaching the program. Sometimes these critical bits of student learning can be identified with the assistance of a program advisory board. Sometimes it is difficult to get a straight answer. Not here. How many? Five or six for an associate, baccalaureate, or postgraduate degree. Three to five for a certificate. Usually. What should they look like? Use this formula: Common leader, appropriate action verb, narrowly defined KSA. Try this.
Common Leader: Upon successful completion of the program the student will
Action Verb: assemble
KSA: a working computer from its component parts.
Second, program outcomes. In the language of the DOE’s push to “fix” accreditation, most of these are called student outcomes. These are metrics like retention, completion, program financial performance, course success, etc. These are not SLOs because they are not tied to specific KSAs. These are program outcomes and should mirror the institutional measures of student achievement. In SACSCOC, these are the metrics used in core requirement 8.1. Whatever metrics are used in CR8.1 should also and almost exclusively be part of any meaningful program review. How is program X supporting the institutional goal for retention and completion? This brings me to one last thought. I often see institutions using program licensure pass rates as a measure of student achievement in CR8.1. I don’t like this. Typically, the programs with a required licensure exam that students must pass are in the minority and only capture a small percentage of the student body. Can it really be an institutional-level measure of student achievement if it only includes 1.5% of the entire student body. Licensure pass rates should be a program outcome, not an institutional one.
Finally, mingling these two processes is not a good idea. They are typically reported in different accreditation standards and mingling the processes will further muddy the waters in terms of the two types of outcomes. We should not be doing these things because accreditation requires it, but because we want to provide good service to our students; however, in SACSCOC SLOs go to 8.2.a or 8.2.b and program review goes in 8.2.c or 7.1. If you want to make these standards easier to write, don’t mingle the two processes.