AFTER THE ACADEMY... HLC POSTER SESSION (April 2018)

Link to Google Drive with handout, samples, etc.: https://bit.ly/2GQnqVY

South Mountain Community College joined the HLC Academy of Assessment in February 2009. As we prepared for our HLC visit a few months later, SMCC recognized that we needed help in our assessment efforts. Our strategy consisted of voluntary formative and summative assessment by our faculty in their classes, and a solely quantitative program review process based on enrollment, retention and FTSE/FTE metrics.

At the Academy, we identified our instructional outcomes:
• Critical and Creative Thinking
• Quantitative Analysis
• Information Literacy
• Written and Oral Communication
• “The SMCC Experience” (a holistic approach to student engagement, satisfaction, and success involving both academic and student services divisions)

For our cohort project, we chose to work on identifying student learning outcomes for our top ten enrolled courses, to measure the attainment of those outcomes and improve our courses accordingly. As we delved into the numbers, we quickly learned that our top enrolled courses were developmental, and modified the project to be the “Top 10/10” (i.e. top 10 enrolled developmental and top 10 college-level courses). We also had goals of creating a capstone course to assess the instructional outcomes for our graduates, and to develop a culture of assessment. And of course, we created a newsletter to communicate to the campus.

Within a couple months, the Academy team was faced with changing job responsibilities. The vice-president co-chair of the team left SMCC for a presidency at a sister college. The assessment co-chair got heavily involved in a grant and was spending one day a week off campus to oversee student interns and serve a programming externship with an aerospace industry leader. Two of the four faculty members became division chairs. Another took on a greater class schedule and department coordinator role. South Mountain’s entire administrative team quickly became known as the “iTeam” for the president and all three vice presidents were interim. As a result, the faculty was lackadaisical in any pursuing any new initiatives with a concern that the next administration would scrap everything in favor of another approach. As for the capstone course, the faculty member who was going to lead that initiative backed out and we realized that students likely would not choose to take a course that was not part of their program.

At the exit roundtable in June 2013, SMCC humble reported that they had failed to reach many of their objectives. Our exit poster, “Happy Cats” (a parody of the popular Angry Birds) showed our “score” as being much lower than hoped. (see our poster below)

However, at that culminating Academy roundtable, our team of three (two members from the original team and one new first year faculty) used the opportunity to revamp and develop a five year plan to not only achieve the intended twenty courses, but to lead the campus in writing Student Learning Outcomes for all our 400+ courses. A plan to recruit and train assessment champions in each division was hatched. We created forms for gathering data in a three-phase approach of 1.) Identifying three course-level Student Learning Outcomes (cSLOs); 2.) Creating or adopting instruments to measure one of the three cSLOs each year, 3.) Improving the course and/or modifying the cSLO or assessment instrument as dictated by the results. It was, and still is our belief, that faculty are most likely to support assessment at the level they care most about – their courses! From there, we would map the cSLOs to our iSLOs (institutional) and utilize the cSLOs in our program review and eventually identify pSLOs (program-level).

“Why only three outcomes?” was an oft asked question. Our district curriculum is competency based and a course may have as many as twenty competencies. The cSLOs were intended to capture the big picture agenda, i.e. what could a student expect to do the rest of their lives after finishing this particular course? As one of the team remarked, “This is the elevator conversation. If a student gets on the elevator with the faculty member and asks ‘What will I learn in your course?’, we are not going to rattle off all the competencies, even if we could remember them! Instead, we would give them the three big ‘umbrella’ items that capture the essence of the learning. “ We limited the faculty to identifying three to make it manageable and memorable.

We also rebranded the assessment team, going from APRASL (Academic Program Review and Assessment of Student Learning) to a more memorable iTeachSMART, with the SMART standing for South Mountain Assessment Resource Team. Division champions were given branded polo shirts. iTeachSMART swag was given out at faculty/staff events and the logo was used on all forms, the website, etc. We created a form for identifying the cSLOs for each course and mapping them to the iSLOs. Subsequent forms were created for gathering information on the assessment plan for a cSLO and the analysis of the results and action plan for improvement.

Faculty in every discipline has written cSLOs for each of their courses. As of February 2018, cSLOs have been identified in 415 of our 451 offered courses (just over 92%). These have been captured in a database and an in-house application was created for accessing the data and mapping these to the four academic iSLOs. Faculty are asked to communicate the cSLOs to their students and to include them in their syllabi. The application provides an easy means to mark and copy the cSLOs to be pasted from the clipboard. While some classes have done all three phases of identify, assessing, and analyzing the results to make improvements, the vast majority of classes are now in the assessing phase.

This past year, the iTeachSMART worked with the Vice President of Learning office to restructure our Program Review process, following an aborted district level process. A new template was created along with a rubric. A pilot of programs from every division was implemented to iron out the wrinkles, discover what was needed (or not needed) and develop processes for gathering data. A schedule was created for each of the divisions to go through program review in a three-year cycle. The Math, Science and Engineering division became the first earlier this year and now our mCLCTL (myCareer, Library, and Center for Teaching and Learning) is currently at bat. A panel was assembled to review the final reviews and to make recommendations.

We are also now seeing the fulfillment of “The SMCC Experience”. The hallmark of this is our Student Success Initiative (SSI) cohort. All incoming students identified as new to college and on a transfer track are required to take CPD150 – Strategies for College Success. In this three credit course, students explore their Gallup Strengths (SMCC is a Strengths-based campus), take the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and the Holland Code career test. These are looked at holistically to give students direction in career choice, personalized study skills, etc. In the past year, over 60 faculty and staff have gone though mentor training to volunteer as coaches for the CPD150 students. The coaches help students further discuss and apply their strengths, identify and pursue personal and academic goals, and connect students with other campus resources. Each student is also required to meet with an academic advisor and a campus counselor.

What’s next? The iTeachSMART team is currently developing a process for assessing the institutional outcomes through a campus wide approach, focusing on one iSLO each year. Courses that have cSLOs that map to the chosen iSLO will be asked to do an assessment towards understanding how our students are performing in that outcome. This may involve options for suggested shared assessments or an activity of the instructor’s design.

HLC ACADEMY PROJECT (2009-2013)

CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO "NEXT STEPS" VISUALS.

South Mountain Community College (Phoenix, AZ)

Campus Website: www.southmountaincc.edu

Our Final Report Roundtable:

• Our Final Report: (as a PDF) : South Mountain Results Forum Impact Report (text provided below)
• Our Results Forum Handout (as a PDF): - SMCC Academy handout v2

Other Documents:

• Our original planning proposal (as a PDF): Gen Ed and the Top 10/10 Courses
• Workshop ("From Objectives to Outcomes") - Powerpoint slides (as a PDF): From Objectives to Outcomes (slides)
• OUTCOMES Newsletter - Issue 1 (as a PDF)
• OUTCOMES Newsletter - Issue 2 (as a PDF)
• SLO Worksheet 1: Course Overview (as a PDF)
• SLO Worksheet 2: Assessment Strategy (as a PDF)
• SLO worksheet 3: Results Analysis (as a PDF)

Higher Learning Academy for Assessment of Student Learning
Results Forum Impact Results Report
South Mountain Community College
June 2013

Our Need

South Mountain Community College (Phoenix, Arizona) entered the Higher Learning Academy for the Assessment of Student Learning at the February 2009 Roundtable. In the year prior to this, we had a change in both faculty and administrative leadership of the assessment committee known as APRASL (Academic Program Review and Assessment of Student Learning).  As we became better versed in current assessment trends and needs, accompanied with an impending HLC peer review, we became aware of the institution’s lack of identified general education outcomes and began to champion the need for South Mountain to identify, define and develop assessment practices for its general education outcomes. Research was conducted in the form of faculty surveys, examination of peer institutions, a survey of literature on assessment trends and consultation of workforce and state educational documentation on sought after skills in the workplace. Out of this investigation, APRASL was able to recommend five areas of general education emphasis: Critical Thinking, Analytical Thinking, Information Literacy, Written and Oral Communication, and Personal Development. As we moved forward, however, the faculty body, invited in fall 2008 to further define the five general education outcomes and identify the outcome standards, was unable to come to agreement on either their definition or their suggested outcomes.

In our Academy application, we identified our most pressing need as “defining our general education outcomes, incorporating them into our curriculum across the disciplines, and devising or obtaining institutional level assessment instruments to measure our students’ success against an identified standard. Furthermore, we must become better versed in how to extract meaning from the data and utilize it in our budgeting and strategic planning initiatives alongside the data gathered from our program review processes.” We recognized that we had limited knowledge about assessment practices, and looked to the Academy experience to provide direction, insight, and best practices. We also recognized that we were staring at a window of opportunity to revise the campus culture as a large percentage of our full-time faculty members were nearing retirement. Our application stated, “As we bring new faculty on board over the next two to five years, we anticipate being better equipped to foster commitment to our assessment practices, provided those processes are well-understood and valued as worthwhile endeavors.”

As a result of our Academy participation, we identified three issues needing attention:

• We had to define our general education outcomes for the college.
• Our current assessment techniques were more class-level focused. We needed to move to course-level assessment across sections to gain a better handle on student learning, especially as it related to general education outcomes.
• Our curriculum was competency-focused and lacked Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). If we were to gather meaningful data, we would first need to write SLOs for our courses.

Our Academy Plan

As a result of our participation in the initial Roundtable, our Academy team simplified the general education outcomes for SMCC as:

• Critical and Creative Thinking
• Quantitative Analysis
• Information Literacy
• Written and Oral Communication

These will be left as broad sweeping areas without further restrictive definition. A fifth outcome, “The SMCC Experience” focuses on personal growth of students, through engagement in learning and personal development both in and outside of the classroom.

As a our primary project, we chose to focus on writing Student Learning Outcomes for our top ten enrolled courses, with the assumption that these would be primarily our general education courses, and then locate or develop assessment instruments around those SLOs, analyze the data and use it improve the student learning in those courses. The idea was that these would be pilots for eventually doing this across all our courses. What we discovered in looking at the enrollment data was that most of our top ten enrolled courses were developmental courses. The project was quickly expanded to “The Top 10/10.”  That is, we would tackle the top ten enrolled developmental courses and the top ten enrolled college-level courses.

Secondarily, we wanted to work on the formation of “The SMCC Experience,” addressing such things as empowering the learners, increasing global awareness, enhancing civic awareness and responsibility, and helping our students set educational, personal and career goals. We also planned to create a capstone Humanities course that would serve as a summative assessment instrument on how well our students were attaining the general education outcomes. Finally, we aimed to increase faculty dialog and awareness of issues related to student learning and assessment practices. This would be accomplished through special training workshops, division meetings, newsletters, and brown bag discussion groups.  

Changes to the Plan

It became apparent very quickly that our plans for a capstone course were not thoroughly thought out. While it seemed like a great idea, the capstone course was not in our current course bank, shared by the ten colleges of our district, Maricopa Community Colleges. That wasn’t necessarily an insurmountable problem, as we could create the course and offer it at our college. The greater issue was that such a course was not part of our degrees, also shared by our sister colleges. Would students enroll in a course that didn’t count toward their degree? We thought not, but simultaneously the faculty member who was going to lead the development of this course withdrew from the commitment. We discussed using our Honors Forum participation activities as an alternative, but obviously this would not be a fair representation of our student population.  Thus we decided to eliminate the capstone Humanities course from our Academy plan.

Challenges

One of the inherent challenges in writing Student Learning Outcomes for our courses is that our campus is one of ten colleges in a county-wide district.  Curriculum is developed in a central and shared environment, while each college is independently accredited. The current curriculum templates and processes utilize and promote detailed competencies, but not broader-based learning outcomes. Efforts to have the various discipline-specific instructional councils consider designating outcomes in the centralized curriculum has been met with aloofness and in some cases disparagement. While our faculty is free to add outcomes, it would be sensible to also have this done at the district level with all colleges participating. And while this was not part of our intended scope, the rejection of these efforts in the broader community has led some faculty to abandon the notion of writing outcomes. Obtaining faculty buy-in and enthusiasm was been hampered, especially as we faced personnel changes in administration and the assessment team.

A second challenge was that our initial Academy team went through numerous changes. Within months of the initial Roundtable, our Vice President of Academic Affairs, and one of the principal champions of our project and our Academy participation, left for a college presidency position at another campus. Two others moved into division chair positions. A fourth felt consumed with his teaching load, which suddenly involved being a visiting lecturer at a nearby university. The fifth member also took a greater teaching load as his program expanded and he was also asked to participate in an internship with Honeywell on the NASA Orion (space shuttle replacement) project involving both students and faculty. The leadership team of the Academy project was suddenly rather hobbled. We have just recently re-grouped, retaining two members from the initial roundtable while adding two new faculty members to the team, as we look to the sustainability and expandability of the project. In like manner, while only two members from our broader assessment committee remain, we have re-structured that team as a subcommittee of a much larger Learning Team under the direction of our new Vice President of Learning. One huge advantage is that many more faculty and all division chairs are subject to hearing about the assessment efforts at our monthly Learning Team meetings.

South Mountain also went through major administrative changes. For most of the years of our Academy participation, our entire administrative team from the president to the three vice presidents was serving in an interim capacity. While a new president was in place in the fall of 2011, the three vice president offices were not permanently filled until this past academic year. Beyond the personnel changes, this long gap in administration contributed to a viewpoint amongst some of the campus of “why bother doing something that a new administration will want to do differently.” Changing the culture suddenly became more difficult. In addition, with an interim administration came many role changes as coverage needs arose, and the accompanying difficulty of financially challenged economic times and declining budgets stretched faculty and staff alike in taking on more responsibility.

During this time of administrative changes our office of Institutional Research was also undergoing major changes, not only in personnel but more importantly in increased workload with less staff. Changes to the organizational structure and direction have led to exciting improvements in our strategic planning processes, which will ultimately benefit the sustainability of our Academy project in the long run. But in the short run, we realized that our project had the potential of overtaxing this key departmental partner.

A final distraction to the project was the additional focus of the APRASL assessment committee to overhaul our Program Review process. Much effort was put in the past two years to developing a process that would be useful in strategic planning as well as facilitating our move to the Open Pathways accreditation process. The proposed process largely mirrors that of Open Pathways, albeit in a much shorter scope. It includes both a quality assurance portion and a quality initiative project for each program in a three year cycle. The proposal suggests each program choose as their initial project a focus on writing student learning outcomes for their courses along with assessment instruments to measure their attainment. We saw this as a great opportunity to extend the impact of our Academy project. Unfortunately, implementation is currently on hold as our district examines implementing a standardized program review process across all ten of its campuses.

Current Status of the Top 10/10 Project

Despite the challenges of personnel changes, increased employee workload and various distractions, progress was made in our primary focus of writing Student Learning Outcomes for our top 10/10 enrolled courses. Fourteen of the twenty tagged courses now have SLOs written by the collective faculty teaching those courses. These are largely concentrated in our Math/Science and Language Arts divisions. Most of those have also created rubrics and assessment instruments as well.  The following chart identifies the status for each of our Top 10/10 courses:

Student Learning Outcomes and rubrics have also been created for a number of courses in the Language Arts and Math/Science divisions that were not part of our top twenty enrolled courses. Some assessments are being implemented this semester with data analysis to transpire this summer.  While we have not met our goals, it is believed that we are gaining ground and that processes developed in the past two years and now in place will help us to not only achieve the work we set out to do as far as developing SLOs for our highest enrolled courses and implementing improvements based on collected data, but to go far beyond scope over the next three to five years. We also have a few classes that have completed the cycle and analyzed the data towards improving student learning, such as MAT082, MAT091, and MAT121/122. These courses will serve as key models as we move forward with completing the process not only for the other seventeen courses, but as we strive to do this for all courses over the next five years.

Sample Student Learning Outcomes

Sample Assessment Results

Current Status of “The SMCC Experience”

Without a doubt, the greatest campus successes in fulfilling the Academy plan lie in the secondary focus on “The SMCC Experience.”  Though not solely directed by the Academy team, continuous improvements to enhance the campus life for faculty, staff, and especially students is something that is near and dear to all those who call South “home.” It is an easy buy-in to improve processes that make registration easier, reduce frustration and confusion, and promote general well-being.

In 2011, South Mountain received a five year Title III grant to create a Foundations Academy to improve student success in developmental education courses and subsequent college courses. This included a renovations project of transforming our old library into a Learning Resource Center as a one-stop resource for developmental students including tutoring, better access to developmental faculty at one location regardless of discipline, and a greater sense of ownership/investment in the students by the campus community.  The LRC’s mission is “To enhance the academic success of South Mountain Community College students by reinforcing and supplementing classroom instruction; creating learning communities; providing a dynamic, student-centered environment; and improving learning efficiency and effectiveness.” The grant also provides for the creation of a Foundations Training Academy for faculty and staff “to promote continual improvement of student learning through a biannual cycle of program review, evaluation, recommendation, and implementation” and provides for student success coaches and student success workshops. Obviously this dovetails nicely with our Academy project. It is not surprising that our greatest successes in terms of developing SLOs and assessments for our top enrolled courses are in the developmental courses and subsequent courses in both English and mathematics. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UjlJlnDny4).

During the period of the project, South Mountain Community College in partnership with the City of Phoenix realized a dream to build a new state-of-the-art library that serves not only our students, but the surrounding general community of South Phoenix.  Recipient of numerous architectural awards, the library is co-staffed by SMCC library services faculty and staff, but also staff from the city. It has created many new gathering niches for students studying together, as well as ministering to families through events aimed at children and promotion of community services.  With a coffee shop inside the library, it is truly focused on community gathering while promoting information literacy in an area that is economically challenged. The library provides extended access to information and technology on weekends, something our students have requested for many years. Likewise a recent remodel of our cafeteria introduced a small cyber café for students to access the internet during those “working lunches.”  While these were not a direct outcome of our Academy project, these changes play a role in our goal of creating a rich SMCC experience for our students as well as our employees and community.

The SMCC Experience sought to help students grow personally both in and outside of the classroom. A key element of bringing this to fruition is the focus on Strengths and Well-Being implemented by our new president, Dr. Shari Olson. She brought a campus focus on South Mountain becoming a strengths-based campus. (http://strengths.southmountaincc.edu/index.php/strengths/smccs-strengths-journey/) In her first year, almost all faculty, staff and administrators completed the Gallup Strengths assessment tool (http://strengths.gallup.com/default.aspx) and participated in three seminars to better learn how to operate in their strengths and assist students and co-workers to do the same.  Now the effort is being extended for students to learn their strengths and to understand how they can utilize strengths to improve their academic and personal success. That began this summer with an Upward Bound Student Enrichment Program.  “The students were questioned at the end of the program about how effective they felt their learning had been and if they were more focused on continuing their education. To a person, they all said that they were much more interested in attending college after seeing how much support was available and that they had within themselves the ability to succeed.” (http://smccvoice.southmountaincc.edu/index.php/movin-on-up-upward-bound-gets-student-on-the-path-to-success/) 

Sixteen sections of AAA115 (Creating College Success) were conducted this semester, impacting approximately four hundred students, with over five hundred students completing the course last fall. In this class, students take the Gallup’s strengths measure and learn how to operate in their strengths. Students from fall offerings of the course shared their experience in the AAA115 at our campus-wide Spring Convocation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D84a1_Cm9ao&list=UUrZ_2BQ4OQKdNVBT50Z7_AQ&index=2). A page on our campus website helps students identify success tips, best study techniques, relationship guidelines, class selection ideas, prompted career choices, and suggested extracurricular activities based on their specific strengths.  http://strengths.southmountaincc.edu/index.php/students-strengths/applying-talents-in-academics/)   Faculty may now obtain student rosters for their courses listing the top five strengths of each student who has completed the Strengths Finder assessment. This can be of great benefit in understanding the values and motivations of individual students, how they likely process information, and how they can best work with other students on class team projects.

Civic Participation

Another aspect of The SMCC Experience was to engage students in civic participation. The Student Life & Leadership office has promoted opportunities for both students and staff to serve the community. Examples include serving the homeless and economically disadvantaged population in our backyard in partnerships with St. Vincent De Paul of Phoenix, The Andre House, and St. Mary’s Food Bank. Participation includes home visits, providing food assistance and various outreach programs.  The Civic Engagement team of the SMCC President’s Community Advisory Council has been hard at work developing new ways to engage our students in community endeavors. Eighteen students, faculty and one community member recently completed training to become moderators at an upcoming series of Student and Community Forums.  In April 2012, South Mountain Community College hosted its first Relay for Life benefitting the American Cancer Society. An overnight event, this powerful annual walk includes memorials for those who’ve been lost to cancer, a tribute to survivors, and an opportunity to really make an impact toward research for the cure. 

Student Satisfaction

A third aspect of The SMCC Experience is improving student satisfaction. The “Passport to the Mountain” orientation event helps incoming students tour the campus facilities, become better familiar with the support services available to them, and get guidance and advice needed for success. Students are introduced to student clubs and learn how to use the community library and Learning Resource Center. The annual “Cougar Day” provides many of these insights to area high school juniors and seniors. Current students provide testimony to inspire these high schoolers to pursue a college education.

A Veteran’s Services department was established and SMCC was recently designated a military-friendly college. (http://www.militaryfriendlyschools.com/search/profile.aspx?id=105792&year=2012). Veteran-specific counselors and advisors are available, as well as veteran-specific networking opportunities. 

The “SMCC Experience” was one component of the Academy plan for South Mountain, and it has been one of the overwhelming successes of our project.  It has supported and reinforced our commitment to creating SLOs, fostered a communal commitment to creating and streamlining processes to promote student engagement and success, and increased our focus on civic engagement and student satisfaction. Lessons learned in these processes, along with relationships built and established between departments and divisions will help us move forward with other continuous improvements, including the greater realization of our primary project in better assessing and strengthening our courses.

Current Status of Developing a Culture of Assessment and Continuous Improvement

Each January of the past four years, our spring semester has begun with a “Day of Learning” featuring guest speakers and workshops including sessions on strategic planning; and writing Student Learning Outcomes.  The SLO workshop has also been repeated and customized for some division and departmental meetings.  Brown bag discussions have included topics on the Completion Agenda, becoming a Learning College, facilitating student learning, and Classroom Assessment Techniques.

Two recent projects focused on efficiency:  Twenty-four faculty and staff (largely from our campus leadership team) as well as three students earned Six Sigma white belts. This is part of continuous improvement training to utilize tools and techniques designed to enhance efficiency and productivity.  In addition, many of our faculty, administrators, and staff participated in training to equip them with LEAN processes and tools, borrowed from manufacturing industries. Four LEAN continuous improvement projects were launched in January and are ongoing. All of these process improvement projects stand to be of further benefit to our HLA project.  One project had to do with improving the process for making requests for data.  This will be of great value as we move forward with our SLO initiative.  Another project dealt with the student experience as SMCC.  This project will allow for marked gains in our students’ experiences at SMCC.  A third project involving division chairs, department heads, and key academic leaders focused on improving course scheduling to assure any student wanting to complete an Associate’s Degree that they can do so in two years (creation of  a “guaranteed schedule”).

Are we making an impression in the assessment area as well? One positive sign is that there has been more than a three-fold Increase in faculty participation of formative evaluations in their courses between Fall 2010 and Fall 2012. There seems to be a greater interest in faculty and staff attending the annual Higher Learning Commission conference over the past few years as shown by the table at the right. One first-year faculty member chose to use her own professional growth monies to attend an assessment conference in Orlando last February.

Lesson Learned . . . Our Advice

What would we do differently? For those institutions entering the Academy, we offer the following suggestions:

• In choosing a project, verify that the infrastructure to support the project is in place and healthy.
• Obtain faculty buy-in and support for undertaking an assessment project even before fully identifying the project. Have campus-wide meetings about potential projects, needs, and resources even before attending the first round table.
• Delegation and timely follow-up are key skills for the manager(s) of the project.
• Identify project champions beyond just the group that attends the round table.
• Expect change and distractions. Have contingency plans in place.
• Getting others involved is as important as accomplishing the project.
• Strive to always keep the project on the front-burner.

Next Steps and Project Sustainability

Admittedly, we have fallen far short of our goals in the primary Academy project of writing student learning outcomes for our highest enrolled courses, developing accompanying assessments, and using data from those assessments to enhance student learning. But we have learned much along the way and we recognize the project does not end with our completion of the Academy timeline. If anything, the project is just beginning as key foundational pieces for success are now put in place.

Much effort has been put in to improving our strategic planning process the past two years, resulting in an overall strategic plan with division and department-specific action plans that focus on achievement of the identified goals.  President Olson posted in a letter to the campus, “I’m also very excited to see the great progress we’ve made on our college-wide strategic planning process. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating—strategic planning is perhaps the most critical part of our operation, and once our plan is in place, it will serve as a road map for literally everything we do. . . . This is where the rubber meets the road—you were able to define the key tasks that we will be undertaking within the next year to support the big picture directions and priorities for our college.” Dr. Olson has presented strategic planning as one leg of our foundational stool. The other two are becoming a strengths-based institution and focusing on student success. Institutionally, we seem have to have a much clearer direction now as it relates to the big picture than we did four years ago. This will help us gain momentum in both the development and assessment of SLOs in our courses and further strengthening of “The SMCC Experience.”

The divisional action plans, developed as part of the strategic planning process, largely accomplish what the assessment team had hoped to achieve with the quality initiative projects of our new proposed Program Review process. The overall campus strategic plan calls for Student Learning Outcomes to be created for ALL of our courses over the next three years! We now have administrative support and a campus-wide mandate for not only completing our initial project but going far beyond it.

The next steps:

1. Broaden the SLO project team to include representatives from each of the divisions who will champion the project.
2. Further develop and implement SLO workshops for each division and/or the campus as a whole. Promote! Promote! Promote!
3. Develop a timeline for completion of SLOs within each division. Focus first on those courses that are required for degrees or certificates of completion and that have the highest enrollment. Then work on those that are only utilized as electives.
4. Suggest that the SLO project continue as our “Open Pathways” project for years 5-8 (we are in year 3). This would lend further impetus to the project.