Linking Outcomes Assessment with Teaching Effectiveness and Professional Accreditation.

Abstract

One of the most important purposes for the teaching function in a graduate professional school is to foster students' mastery of the programmatic learning outcomes that have been agreed upon by faculty as part of the strategic planning process. Students' learning is a composite of courses they have taken. If the contribution of each course to the achievement of program-level outcomes is an important purpose of teaching, then why is that contribution not routinely assessed as part of annual evaluation of teaching effectiveness? The purpose for this paper is to describe a rationale for viewing course-level learning outcomes as one measure of teaching effectiveness and a component of programmatic outcomes assessment. This paper includes a model for unit-level outcomes assessment that links an individual faculty member's coursework contributions with programmatic outcomes, and describes a strategic planning process for developing faculty consensus on accurate statements of unit-level student learning outcomes and corollary methods of assessment.

Introduction

It is difficult to tune into a political discussion about education in which the term accountability is not used. Although the current debate is primarily centered on public K-12 education, the accountability movement in the past ten years has extended to higher education as well. Regional accrediting agencies and professional societies have refocused their assessments of institutions and professional schools from checklist-style evaluations, toward evaluation of an organization's process for determining desirable outcomes, measuring how well those outcomes are achieved, and using results for improving programs. The general term now applied to this continuous-improvement cycle is outcomes assessment, and for clarity we repeat the idea that it is more than the act of measuring outcomes; it is a system that includes defining programmatic outcomes, measuring programmatic effects, and applying results for guiding and improving programs.

The School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida is engaged in a Pilot Study on Alternate Measures of Teaching Effectiveness as a participant in the USF Harvard Grant Project, "Innovations in Faculty Work Life." The School is the only unit in the USF Harvard Challenge Grant Project that is concentrating on the assessment of student learning outcomes and teaching effectiveness for graduate professional curricula. Faculty in the School proposed participation in the Challenge Grant Project for several reasons.

First, faculty were investigating alternatives to the School's process for annual review of teaching and were curious about whether students' learning outcomes could be related to the evaluation process. Second, a revision had been undertaken in the School's comprehensive examination process, and that necessitated a review of programmatic content frameworks and corollary mission, goals, and objectives. These reviews were timely given upcoming professional and regional accreditation visits from the American Library Association (ALA) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Both accrediting agencies require a system of outcomes assessment and continuous programmatic improvement, so the Challenge Grant Project was an opportunity to accomplish multiple strategic planning priorities within the School.

The paper provides a brief review of outcomes assessment in higher education and examines the potential for meaningful linkages among student learning outcomes, programmatic outcomes assessment, and teaching effectiveness. The paper includes a model for unit-level outcomes assessment that links an individual faculty member's coursework contributions with programmatic outcomes, and it concludes with a strategic planning process for developing faculty consensus on accurate statements of unit-level student learning outcomes and corollary methods of assessment.