Mission: to stimulate a culture of ongoing instructional improvement using assessment to facilitate student success.

SLO Requirements

What should your department be working on? The accreditation standards require us to define student learning outcomes (SLOs) for each course, program, certificate, and degree. In addition, we need to continually assess student achievement of the SLOs. Here are the things your department should be working on:

• Develop SLOs for each course in the department. If your department offers many courses, start with the most popular core courses. When you develop SLOs, there should be discussions between all instructors teaching the same course. The SLOs you develop should be common SLOs for all instructors teaching the course. Submit SLOs to mfossum@peralta.edu for approval and posting on the SLO Reporting site.
• Make sure to include the SLOs on all course syllabi.
• Develop SLOs for any degrees or certificates your department offers. There should be lots of input and discussion between department members while developing the outcomes. Post these program-level SLOs on your department website and in department brochures.
• Decide which outcomes you will assess first, and submit an assessment plan. Forms can be found on the “SLO Forms” site. Click on the appropriate link at the upper left corner of this page.
• Assess your course and program SLOs. This requires collecting information on how many students were able to achieve each student learning outcome. You can collect this information by examining papers, projects, performances, or other assignments that your students submit. You might also use a selection of test questions that directly relate to the outcome you are assessing. You might also give a survey to assess one or more outcomes.
• Reflect on the results of your assessments, and implement changes/improvements to the course or program. Report on your results using the Assessment Report form. (See the “SLO Forms” site.)
• Repeat!

For more information, please read the SLO and Assessment Manual. It can be found in the “Documents” section of this site.

New – SLO and Assessment Manual

Check the “Documents” section for a downloadable “how-to” instruction manual on writing SLOs and Assessing the SLOs.

General Education Outcomes

On April 26 2007, there was a college-wide retreat with the goal of deciding on a set of General Education outcomes for Laney College. The handouts and notes from the meeting can be found in the “Documents” section.

How to Write Student Learning Outcomes

Click on the link on the upper left corner of this page (it says “How to Write Student Learning Outcomes” in blue) to access instructions and tips on writing SLOs. You can access handouts from the SLO workshops from this subcommunity.

Questions or Feedback?

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “feedback” button to send us an e-mail.