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Cultivating Common Ground: Determining Division-Wide Student Learning and Development Outcomes

Cultivating Common Ground: Determining Division-Wide Student Learning and Development Outcomes. Sara J. Finney Randy L. Mitchell Peter J. Swerdzewski. Overview of Program. The Call for Common Outcomes Creating a Strategy to Uncover Common Outcomes

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Cultivating Common Ground: Determining Division-Wide Student Learning and Development Outcomes

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  1. Cultivating Common Ground: Determining Division-Wide Student Learning and Development Outcomes Sara J. Finney Randy L. Mitchell Peter J. Swerdzewski

  2. Overview of Program The Call for Common Outcomes Creating a Strategy to Uncover Common Outcomes The Logistics of Implementing the Strategy The Final Product Epilogue: How this Benefits the Division

  3. The Call for Common Outcomes • Divisional history of departmental objectives based on learning outcomes • Lack of knowledge about outcomes across departments and across the university • Divisional strategic plan objective • We will identify, articulate and communicate throughout the campus community shared divisional learning outcomes for students. • Objective came from staff, not leadership • Associate VPs suggested use of annual retreat for workshop to identify common outcomes • Long-term relationship between departments and CARS

  4. Importance of common outcomes • Strong desire to have something in common • Opportunities for collaboration • Criteria for decision-making, planning, and budgeting • Opportunities for assessment • Increased accountability for use of resources • Increased credibility for the division regarding its contribution to student learning and development, internally and externally

  5. Creating a Strategy to Uncover Common Outcomes • The need for division-wide communications • It was important that all programs heard about all other programs • Full-day retreat • Important that the facilitators had the outcomes prior to the retreat • Forced divisions to think about their outcomes months prior to retreat • Essential to the discovery of common outcomes by facilitators • Aided in ordering presenters • Important that the facilitators uncovered what they believed where the common outcomes prior to the retreat

  6. The Logistics of Implementing the Strategy • The Outcomes Template • Instructions • Examples • Preliminary examination of received outcomes by facilitators

  7. Blank template / directions

  8. Examples Example: Orientation

  9. Example from Judicial Affairs Example: Judicial

  10. CMSS

  11. Preliminary Examination of Outcomes by Facilitators • Four assessment specialists initially reviewed all outcomes • Task was to find commonly-held outcomes across programs • A commonly-held outcome does not need to be shared across all programs • Program-specific outcomes (those not shared across more than one program) were not the focus of this activity • Individual examination of outcomes to uncover commonalities • Group discussion and comparison of findings • Took one full day • Majority of individually-defined common outcomes were common across reviewers • Importantly, some programs had undeveloped or poorly-worded outcomes that could not be grouped with other programs’ outcomes

  12. The Retreat • Morning Session: • Each program was given five minutes to discuss their outcomes • Outcomes were projected behind them • Commonalities were mentioned as the morning session progressed • Over Lunch: • Assessment specialists “uncovered” the commonalities • Made some minor adjustments to our preliminary list of common outcomes • Afternoon Session: • List of common outcomes and programs that support them shared with group and discussed • Final list of agreed-upon common outcomes

  13. Uncovering Three Broad Types of Outcomes Learning outcomes Attitudinal / developmental outcomes Behavioral outcomes

  14. Common Outcomes and Programs that Support Them • Created document with all programs’ outcomes • Grouped common-sounding outcomes from various programs • Named each general outcome

  15. Learning Outcomes How to Learn Alcohol-related

  16. An Example of Shared Attitudinal Outcomes Feelings of relatedness Academic motivation

  17. An Example of Shared Behavioral Outcomes Behavioral Outcomes Decrease in maladaptive behaviors Civic engagement

  18. The Final Product

  19. Epilogue: How These Common Outcomes Benefit the Division Identification of outcomes was the first objective in the divisional strategic plan to be completed Divisional directors meet regularly to operationalize the outcomes Departments are using the common outcomes to develop objectives Outcomes will be published on the division’s website, distributed to all division staff, and shared with campus public relations for dissemination in the fall Outcomes have been utilized as a part of new employee orientation along with vision, mission, and values Outcomes have been used in planning and decision making

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