Letter grades and GPAs are no longer the best gauge of student learning according to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). The regional accrediting body now requires universities to quantify student learning with an objective assessment method outside of the grading system. Professors throughout Pepperdine are to establish explicit educational goals in their course syllabi called Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) clearly spelling out what a student should be able to do upon completion of the course. They are also expected to generate tools for determining the extent to which students are meeting these SLOs.
This initiative is part of the third and final stage in Pepperdine’s accreditation reaffirmation process with WASC — the Educational Effectiveness Review (EER) — that will take place in either March or September of next year. In this phase Pepperdine must show WASC that the institution has established explicit educational objectives and has the ability to generate statistical evidence that these educational objectives are being met.
According to Chris Collins assistant provost for assessment and institutional effectiveness the reaction from professors has been mixed.
For some professors like Communication Professor John Jones the SLO-based assessment method is nothing new as they’ve been using similar systems in their courses for years.
“Even before writing a set of desired learning outcomes I have always structured my courses so that students would leave with a desired set of skills and knowledge Jones said. And I have always tried to gauge whether the students are getting it. Essentially what I am doing is a formal and quantitative version of what many of us have done informally for years.”
Others see the method as a challenge to their tried teaching methods.
“There is a group of professors that will avoid doing this type of thing at all costs and feel that Pepperdine should be fighting against this type of movement and should be unwilling to comply Collins said. They might see the assessment movement as an infringement on academic freedom.”
Collins noted that this group is unlikely to gain much traction as WASC probation could jeopardize many students’ opportunity to attend Pepperdine. Through receiving this stamp of approval from WASC the University is able to receive federal financial aid for students which makes up $100 million of Pepperdine’s $300 million budget.
The bulk of professors Collins said see the method as extra work but choose to make the best of the situation.
“[The professors] see it as something that probably falls outside of their primary duties but feel ‘If it’s something that we need to do we might as well get something out of it'” Collins said.
History Professor Darlene Rivas finds some value in assessment as it will prompt important discussion among teaching faculty.
“Most faculty have been doing this all along — evaluating if students are learning and adjusting their courses when they are not Rivas wrote in an e-mail. And for that reason sometimes faculty do feel like we’re being asked to reinvent the wheel. That said I do believe that a climate of assessment can help faculty engage with each other rather than staying isolated in their classrooms and this can have a positive effect on our students’ learning and our pedagogy.”
The SLO and assessment method is aimed at not only at proving that learning is occurring but also that data-driven reforms are being made to course curriculums.
“It would not necessarily change the way courses are taught initially but you take the evidence that emerges from assessments and if there are deficiencies then you change the way the curriculum educates in order to meet those deficiencies Collins said. You are using data to drive how your curriculum is formed.”
Just as each course will have a set of SLOs each program and school will boast a set of learning outcomes as well as the institution as a whole. The institutional educational objectives resemble Pepperdine’s general mission statement so that at each level the outcomes become increasingly specific. The administration expects the assessment method to be completely integrated in each of Pepperdine’s five schools in time for the EER.
“We’ll be there by the time we go through the next review the EER. You can count on that Provost Darryl Tippens said in reference the inclusion of SLOs in every Pepperdine syllabus. [WASC] doesn’t expect us to reach it over night. They give us time. That’s why there’s a two-year gap between the Capacity Review and the EER.”
Evidence used in the assessment of student learning might include randomly selected research papers group projects or embedded exam questions. WASC calls this direct evidence which demonstrates what students have learned. Indirect evidence such as student satisfaction surveys can be used.
“WASC allows a whole variety of ways to measure [student learning] and they put the burden on us to tell them how we are going to do it but there is not a one size fits all Tippens said. There is a wide variety of things we can do to measure effectiveness in our institution.”
Rivas noted one important objection to the assessment method.
“Some of our goals simply aren’t assessable Rivas wrote. I want my students to cultivate wisdom and empathy and believe historical study — the study of human experience in various times and places —offers opportunities for this. I also believe that students are learning through a cumulative effect of the thinking and conversation they’ve had across their course of study in many classes and outside of class and measuring these mysteries doesn’t make much sense to me.”