City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME II
At the time of this essay, Spring 2005, the Student Development Division is just beginning to grapple with
the multiple challenges and opportunities the new standards present to all of the College’s educational
programs and services. The accomplishments cited in this essay are primarily the result of work by the
various unit leaders including department chairs, selected interested faculty, and administrators; the
broad-based involvement of faculty and staff varies considerably by department. However, these preliminary
efforts have attracted faculty, staff and administrators willing to explore student learning outcomes
as an avenue for program improvement.
IV. Conclusion & Future Directions
This essay has presented strong evidence that, as Alexander Astin contends in Assessment for Excellence,
the values that City College of San Francisco embraces are revealed in “the information about itself that it
gathers and pays attention to.” The College is committed to articulating clear student learning outcomes
and working to improve the programs and services that support these outcomes at the course, program,
and institutional levels.
The College has made great strides in producing useful data on a wide array of major student outcomes
and some faculty, staff and administrators have been actively engaged in reflective dialog on that
information that has led to the development of new and the revision of existing programs and services.
The College has many ongoing initiatives designed to promote student success and provides faculty
and staff with the support and tools needed to improve student learning outcomes. This essay has cited
examples of programs and services that exhibit portions of the SLO model and two case studies that
address this model.
However, as the Standard II Report notes, “there is no institution-wide process for evaluating the effectiveness
of student learning outcomes at the course, program, and institutional level.” That Report goes on
to say that “faculty will need support and training regarding the development and assessment of student
learning outcomes at the course and program level” and proposes the development of a group of faculty
who can act as resource people for departmental initiatives.
The Standard II committee suggests two sources of concern. First, faculty must be assured that when an
assessment produces less than desirable results, those findings will not be used in a punitive manner
but instead will be focused on program improvement. In fact, one of the motivating forces behind the
movement of accrediting commissions toward embracing SLOs as a central component of their standards,
has been a commitment to use assessment for program improvement rather than the type of “carrot and
stick” models proposed by some legislatures and government agencies. However, because the discussion
of outcomes assessment and what it really means is still in progress at the College, it is premature to make
broad generalizations about the acceptance and impact of assessing student learning outcomes. While
many educators view the accountability movement with skepticism, it is important to recognize that
student learning outcomes can provide us with useful information to promote student learning—while
giving our communities clear evidence that we are effective and valuable.
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