Additional FAQs

The purpose of program learning outcomes assessment is continuous improvement. Programs can use learning outcomes assessment results to inform curricular changes, pedagogical change or professional development initiatives, program policy changes, or advising practices.  Assessment results might also help identify or address unmet student needs, improve the assessment plan itself, or to further explore questions raised by data. Programs should use the results of program learning outcomes assessment to demonstrate the need for resource allocations if needed to help the program meet their assessment targets.  The value of the assessment process is in yielding results that faculty find valuable and in using those results to improve learning.

Each college has a different person, the Assessment Liaisons, charged with collecting and evaluating assessments. Please see the included in the Assessment Liaisons information above.

Each program should have its own program learning outcomes and assessment plan. Programs must assess whether students are achieving each program learning outcome. If you need copies of your units' assessments plans, they can be found on the Assessment Clearinghouse website. For additional assistance please contact Wendy Adams (adamsw1@ohio.edu), Associate Director for Assessment in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment.

Plans and assessments scale with program types and scopes. For instance, a certificate program assessment plan may contain only two program learning outcomes (PLO), but an undergraduate degree program’s plan would generally require more PLOs. In comparison, a minor program assessment plan may be more generalized than an BA or BS plan and possibly have fewer PLOs. However, graduate program assessment plans are generally similar in size to undergraduate program assessment plans but will differ in their PLOs.

Each program should have its own unique learning outcomes, but some learning outcomes may be shared by programs. Programs with concentrations or tracks may share some learning outcomes, but at least one learning outcome and direct assessment measure should be unique to each concentration or track.

Each program should have its own unique learning outcomes and therefore should also have separate assessment plans and evidence of student learning and use of student learning.  For programs with concentrations or tracks that share learning outcomes, the report may be combined, but the results for the shared learning outcomes should be disaggregated by the different concentrations or tracks as well as the results for the unique learning outcomes.

Program learning outcomes assessments are performed on students that are currently enrolled in the program or courses tied to specific program learning outcomes (e.g., capstone courses) during the relevant academic year.  If there are no students enrolled in a program in the academic year under consideration, you need to document that information in your annual assessment report under the evidence of student learning and use of student learning evidence sections.

Programs can use learning outcomes assessment results to inform curricular changes, pedagogical change or professional development initiatives, program policy changes, or advising practices. Documenting the results to improve learning is important in the context of providing evidence to HLC to demonstrate that programs are meeting each of the core components for Criterion 4: Teaching and Learning: Evaluation and Improvement.  Programs should consider the following as ways to make it easier to tell the story of how the program is improving based on the assessment results:

• Include the rationale for a decision that you are making. It’s helpful to include who was involved in a decision, what data or information was considered and what was decided.
• When new assessment results are finalized, share them across your department/unit and discuss and document relevant findings.
• Use the assessment results to record your program decisions AND to review progress on what you decided to implement the prior year.
• Programs should document the use of the program learning outcomes assessment results to request any resource allocations to help the program meet its assessment targets.  

All program learning outcomes assessment plans and results can be found in the Assessment Clearinghouse’s Program Learning Outcomes Assessment webpage. Keep in mind that some assessment plans and results will be much more detailed than others because of highly specific disciplinary accreditation standards/requirements for those programs. Please reach out to Joni Wadley (schallej@ohio.edu), Senior Director for Institutional Effectiveness for examples to help meet your program’s specific needs.

The focus of an assessment plan should be direct assessment of student learning.  These are assessments of student work products (papers, performances, presentations, research, etc.) evaluated using a rubric or other set of agreed-upon standards to rate the level of achievement of the stated program learning outcomes. Student satisfaction surveys are indirect assessments.  These surveys or other forms of indirect assessment such as focus groups, self-assessments, interviews, etc., might generate important information from student perspectives and can supplement, validate, and help explain results of direct assessment.

Other supporting measures that do not measure student learning but might provide useful feedback to the program might be course evaluations, course grades, student outcomes (job placement rates), student retention and completion rates, course completion rates, course D,F,W rates, etc., as they might be used to inform program effectiveness processes. Often these types of measures are included in UCC’s academic program review process, but it may be useful for programs to review these data on an annual basis.

Describe the data that you have, describe what it suggests, and point out limitations. If the number of students is too low the program may consider collecting data annually but reporting the aggregated results every other year by combining two years of student assessment results.