September 12, 2012 Flex Day
Afternoon Breakout Session
CRN: 511
Title: Assessing Interdepartmental and Interdisciplinary Program SLO’s
Facilitators: Lauren Muller and Sheri Miraglia
Attendees: Chris Lewis, Darrel Hess, Michael Needham, Carole Meagher, Steven Klot, Leslie Simon
Key Workshop Objectives:
l How do we foster interdepartmental dialog and collaboration on SLO assessment for courses that are part of Program SLOs?
l How should we share course SLO data upwards through programs and across departments?
l What would we consider successful steps to have taken in the spring towards authentic assessment of program SLOs?
This workshop was spent initially reviewing the above objectives as well as discussing a case study from Lauren Muller’s IDST Department illustrating some of the challenges in developing authentic program SLOs. Ultimately, we were able to articulate some of the things that we feel are necessary and/or useful in collaborating college-wide on the assessment of program SLOs.
Accessibility:
1. We agreed that the results of course SLO assessments that map to higher-level Program SLOs need to be available online. This meets the primary goal of making assessments available to those implementing degree/certificate programs.
2. A systematic methodology for communicating to departments and instructors that their courses are mapping to degree/certificate program SLOs will be very important.
3. Some general system whereby specific course assessment data can quickly retrieved online (something systematic, and the same for all courses) would be ideal.
Questions:
1. Can instructors (in other departments) be required to implement program level SLO assessments if requested? The degree/certificate programs would presumably develop these assessments. There was some interest in having the same program SLO assessment done in every class that mapped to particular programs. This may not be realistic for larger programs.
2. How do we get all of this online? In many departments there is not someone who has the time and/or web literacy to put course assessment data online. Will the college be providing systematic methods for this to be accomplished?
3. Will someone from the college be available to help departments link many of the existing websites (Google Sites for example) to the college CMS and CCSF website?
4. Could we combine faculty flex days in such a way that we had three days (in a row) every year to focus on interdepartmental collaboration and communication with respect to the development and assessment of SLOs (in general) and program SLOs (in particular)?