Program Goals and SLOs

1. Program Goals and SLOs Getting Down to Business Created by Michael Gos

2. Program Goals The next step in the assessment process is to identify the goals we have for students in the program Goals should be the articulations of things we intend students to still carry with them five years down the road Programs have multiple goals. For our purposes now, one or two goals per program will be sufficient Goals arise from the primary functions and activities laid out in the mission statement Created by Michael Gos

3. Program Goals In the last program, we examined this mission statement: The mission of the Lee College Vocational Nursing Program is to prepare students to successfully complete the vocational nursing certification licensure examination and gain employment by providing quality instruction in the knowledge, application, and creation of skills essential to nurse practitioners. This mission statement suggests several goals. Here are two: Students will be able to use the nursing process to provide safe, effective patient-centered care among culturally diverse service recipients Students will be able to prepare employment documentation Created by Michael Gos

4. Program Goals Program goals can be general, or specific They CAN be measurable, but don’t need to be They will serve as our sources for the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that we’ll discuss nextAnd a special tip: Don’t use verbs like “understand” or “learn” in your goals because they will lead to SLOs that are very difficult to measure Created by Michael Gos

5. Student Learning Outcomes Student Learning Outcome: An unambiguous, specific, observable and measurable performance statement. Describes what a student will be able to do at the end of a program Each goal can be quantified by a collection of student learning outcomes. Created by Michael Gos

6. Example • Goal: Students will be able to solve quadratic equations by a variety of methods • This can translate into three distinct SLOs: • Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using factoring • Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using the completing the square method • Students will be able to solve a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula Created by Michael Gos

7. Another Example Created by Michael Gos

8. Writing the SLO One effective way of writing the SLO is to be certain you address each of four issues:Audience Behavior Condition Degree We call this the ABCD Model for writing SLOs Let’s look at these four more closely Created by Michael Gos

9. Writing The SLO: The ABCD Model Created by Michael Gos

10. Let’s look at that last SLO again, from the perspective of the ABCD method.. Created by Michael Gos

11. Be Careful of Your Choices The SLOs you articulate here will limit your options for evaluation methods substantially. Certain questions require certain types of measurement tools. You can limit your risk by studying the next lesson in this program (Assessment Tools) and, once comfortable with that information, come back and consider your SLOs again. Created by Michael Gos