Mission Possible: A Systematic Approach to Program Development, Learning Outcomes Assessment, and Continuous Curriculum Improvement
Colleagues:
I hope that the fall semester has been a good one for you. As we approach the holiday season, I want to thank each of you for the commitment you demonstrate to our students. As I visit with students, I am hearing about responsive faculty who are engaged, knowledgeable, and supportive of adult students with all the outside demands they bring to their education. Thank you for being the engaged faculty that our students need.
I would like to describe, at the conceptual level, the important projects our assistant deans and program directors in the School of Undergraduate Studies (SUS) are working on this academic year. We want to establish a systematic approach to developing new academic programs, which will in turn inform how we conduct learning outcomes assessment to continuously improve academic programs. And this all starts with the mission of the program.
Mission-Focused Curriculum
Like organizations everywhere, SUS is refining its focus by sharpening its mission at every level. We have a SUS mission, and each academic department has a discipline-based mission statement that aligns with the SUS mission. Finally, each program has a mission statement so that staff and faculty are clear about how the program should serve the needs of our students. The directors for your programs will be sharing these and asking for your input.
In SUS we take our mission(s) seriously, and build all our programs and initiatives on them. Our mission is our guiding light by which we make decisions. For example, if we are considering a new program for development, we explore its need among adult students, its value to their lives, and the viability of offering it in flexible and accessible ways.
Program Outcomes Derive from the Mission
From the program mission, it is relatively easy to then develop program-level outcomes. This is very important for a number of reasons. Program-level outcomes are the highest level set of outcomes that we expect our students to achieve by graduation. These outcomes help us develop an integrated, logical program that is more than a list of vaguely-related courses. Adult students do their best work when they understand the entire program, what we expect of them at each step, and can see the use of prior work in their current courses.
From the program-level outcomes, we can then select and design an integrated, inter-connected set of courses that support the program-level outcomes as well as meet the learning objectives of the individual courses. We refer to this as “mapping” the program outcomes to the individual courses.
Learning Outcomes Assessment is Built into the Process
As the courses are selected and designed, learning outcomes assessment activities are integrated at the beginning, so that we are not playing catch up at the end, trying to figure out how to collect relevant assessment data. Program directors have begun this work, and will be continuing it through 2009. But they can’t do it alone.
We Need and Invite Faculty Input
In early December you will be invited to review program mission statements, program outcomes, and the mapping to individual courses in the discipline-specific 999s. The program directors will seek input and then communicate the final mission, program outcomes and the like. Although some of this work was accomplished in the past, the directors are taking this opportunity to review and focus their efforts. Most importantly, this initiative must be a collaborative exercise with input from all faculty in Europe, Asia and the U.S.
Outcomes
What is the ultimate outcome of all this work? Simply put, faculty and staff involved with each program will have a clear sense of its purpose, its goals for student learning, and a mechanism to gather data to continuously improve the program so that students are achieving higher levels of learning more effectively. Once the model is in place, future rounds of data collection, revision, and review will be automatic and part of our regular work. It is continuous improvement in the educational sphere.
I thank you for your involvement and urge you to look into the discussions in the 999s so that you are aware of this undertaking. As you teach your individual courses you will need to understand the program, the students’ needs, and the role your course plays in the curriculum. This initiative should help you be a more informed faculty member.
You will soon be hearing more about these initiatives from your associate dean, your assistant dean, and your program director. They will be working closely with Dr. Cynthia Davis, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, who is leading these initiatives for SUS. We welcome your participation and comments.
My warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season.
Marie Cini
Vice Provost and Dean
School of Undergraduate Studies
