Overview

Title 5 §55000(g) defines an educational program as “an organized sequence of courses leading to a defined objective, a degree, a certificate, a diploma, a license, or transfer to another institution of higher education.” However, for the purposes of program review, colleges often define programs to include other areas such as administrative units or student service programs.

Frequency of Assessment

PLOs should be assessed at least once every three years to coincide with the Comprehensive Program Review (CPR). Each course in the program should be assessed before the PLOs are assessed.

PLO Assessment Tools

Your department may use a portfolio, a capstone course(s), an essay, a licensure pass rate, or any other assessment that yourdepartment chooses. For example, in the Spanish Department, they use an essay that is assigned in an upper-level Spanish course (Span 225) to assess the program learning outcomes. The evidence of the SLOs will be linked to program learning outcomes during the mapping phase (on the next page of this document). Evidence can be the result of quantitative and qualitative approaches to gathering information. Some examples:

comprehensive or capstone examinations and assignments
performance on licensure examinations
performances or demonstrations portfolios of student work
representative samples of student work

Listed above are direct measures. Faculty can also use indirect measures such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and student reflections to supplement direct measures. Review of the validity and reliability of comprehensive examinations or capstone projects should be part of the program assessment. Based on the evidence collected and analyzed, the PLO report should include conclusions about the extent to which students have achieved theprogram learning outcomes and identify program strengths and weaknesses.

Options

Each department decides how it will assess PLOs. Typically only the department chair has the necessary access in Nuventive tocomplete PLOs and map them to align with ILOs. However, the chair can request the assessments tool and results from the contentexperts in each program in order to complete the PLOs. Some examples of discussion questions

What is the data from the SLOs telling us?
Is the data helpful? Are there any course-level SLOs that need to be updated on the COR to better assess student success?
What are the strengths and weakness in the programs? What improvements could be made?
How should we implement those improvements? Do the PLOs align with ILOs?

Examples