City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME II
The responses to this inventory provide a snapshot of where the Student Development Division was at
the start of its efforts to implement the Student Learning Outcomes paradigm. More important, these
preliminary analyses provide insights into the benefits and challenges this paradigm poses for the diverse
programs and services represented in the Division. The discussion in this essay seeks to reflect on the work
done thus far as a guide to work that will be done in the future.
Defining the skills and competencies. Defining measurable outcomes has been an essential component of
curriculum development in California community colleges for over 20 years. Behavioral or performance
objectives for courses attempt to define learning in terms of cognitive outcomes that can be measured
using a variety of traditional assessment devices such as tests, written assignments, and group presentations,
etc. However, many of the services and programs in student development are not delivered
through traditional instructional modes. More importantly, the name given to the Division—Student
Development—suggests that while the desirable outcomes for these programs should include measurable
cognitive competencies, they also must include affective changes and personal development that are not
easily measured, particularly in the relatively short time some students spend at a community college.
The initial feedback on skills and competencies from the departments and offices, completed in Spring
2004, reflects a mixture of traditional cognitive learning outcomes and more abstract developmental goals.
For example, the Continuing Student Counseling Department (CSCD) developed a list of 14 skills that provide
insight into the complexity of this issue for all counseling services. They start with a simple, obvious,
and measurable outcome: “Students achieve their goals within their expected timeline.” Education plans
are a core part of the counseling services provided to students, and each student’s progress, as well as the
aggregate progress of groups of students, could be used as a measure of this outcome. However, CSCD’s
second competency is much more complicated, but no less important: “Students are confident in their
academic abilities.” If community colleges are going to prepare students for academic success, then developing
a student’s confidence in his or her academic abilities is a crucial component of the student’s
community college experience. However, “confidence” is a personality characteristic that can be difficult
to gauge in individual students and even more challenging to assess across groups of students as a measure
of departmental effectiveness.
The Continuing Student counselors define several “enabling” skills that are crucial to student success.
For students to “achieve their goals within their expected timeline,” students must “successfully navigate
through the educational system and bureaucracy” and, more significantly, “reproduce the decision-making
process in other areas such as career, academic, and life planning.” These outcomes for counseling services
reflect learning that may mirror the cognitive processes involved in the higher levels of the taxonomy of
traditional course-based learning skills. However, these competencies involve the students applying critical
thinking and reasoning skills to themselves rather than to the issues and concepts presented in traditional
college-level courses. Thus, it embodies the core mission of the Division: student development. The challenge
that CSCD and other departments and programs will face as they continue to develop their SLO
initiatives is how they can systematize the development and assessment of these skills.
A brief look at the outcomes established by other departments reveals a similar mixture of specific
enabling skills with profound personal development. Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSPS) calls
for students to be able “to anticipate needs and make requests for accommodation in a timely manner”
but also to develop the “ability to advocate for themselves.” The African American Scholastic Programs call
for “understanding the educational planning process and relevance to their [students’] successful matriculation
through CCSF” as well as “development and dedication to their own academic, career and personal
goals.” The Learning Assistance Center (LAC) addresses the “use of computers to complete assignments
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