Everybody's Business

Jill Carlson and other presenters San Juan College October 1, 2009 Governor Richardson’s Higher Education Summit

More info will be available here

Student services tend to focus on service, not learning.  But we need to consider students more.  Example:  We can get students loans, but they need financial literacy skills to know what to do with the loan. SJC wanted to focus on learning, not satisfaction.  Bresciani’s work has been pivotal.

Learning outcomes tend to focus on transferrable skills, like reducing no-show rates in appointments (you have to pay for doc appts if you do not show up).

Their effort goes across all departments:  testing, safety, etc.  Need to link to institutional priorities.  Goal is to design programs with specific outcomes in mind.

Specific outcomes were categorized into 5 categories (much like NMSU’s common LO’s)

Staff training

• 4 ½-day sessions
• Started with defining assessment (on handout)
• Each department created an assessment plan related to one common outcome based on 2–3 formative and 2–3 summative outcomes.  Their audience related well to having the half-way formative assessment check – useful for people without an education background.
• Need to have additional training for front line people – they might work most closely with students but they are not necessarily in the training sessions.  Important to make sure they have the needed knowledge.

Helpful to focus on areas that are challenging for students (can see growth in problem areas rather than in areas where students already do well).

They ditched surveys because they are so hard to get meaningful feedback.

Assessment plan example shared from career services has a 4–6 year forecast. 

Testing example:  remind that definition of ‘student’ is very broad.  In testing, work most with students taking GED exam.  Turned requirements for test-taking into contract — dropped no-show from 33% to 10%. (test requirements:  no hoodies, cells, other papers, must have ID, etc.

This effort has been very low cost, but should have a good return.  Example:  staff can expect less time needed for correcting incorrectly done forms, applications, etc.

Not looking at this point at any of the commercial products for tracking learning outcomes.

Did a clicker assess at the end to see if we learned anything.   Last question was:  This presentation was a) awesome b) more than awesome c) all of the above.