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Results of AFT 1493 Faculty Survey on SLOs

Below are all of the responses to the following AFT 1493 survey question (11/15/06-11/26/06):

Please describe your experience and your current opinion regarding the implementation of student learning outcomes (SLOs) in your department and in your college. Based on your experience, do you view SLOs as a positive or negative contribution to our educational goals and curriculum?

	SLOs are positive. Anything that encourages us to think about course content and student learning is positive. These are really the same as the old Learning Objective fad, with a slight change in language so there's nothing really novel...just encouraging folks to think about student learning. And, think about what is important content and what students need to know. Note, SLOs don't standardize a course anymore than having an official course outline. I disagree w/ the editorial that this is standardizing instruction. Don't you have measurable objectives in your courses? I assure you Mr. Manley did: presented the important concepts and facts of Social Science--and had a way of measuring whether you learned them.
	Another example of following the latest fad at an enormous cost of time and energy. Could be helpful to some but simply a rewording of learning objectives for most of us. I'm not opposed to developing SLOs but I find the attention given to that to be ludicrous.
	I think SLO's are a lot of work but a great process. All the start up stuff with those endless exercises about discerning the difference between a goal, an outcome, etc. seemed pointless, but once our department started working together on changing the outlines, that got interesting, and I think some of the most important work we've done in years.
	I am in support of developing any assessment that will aid students in their education. However, I am concerned about our guidance for developing such assessment. We seem to have started defining SLO and strayed to other business. In the meantime, anything learned is left to whatever was written and to memory.
	In my experience, the implementation of assessing SLOs has made the writing of Program Review a thoughful activity. It has enabled me to make some improvements to the program that will lead to more student success.
	SLOs just formalize and restate what has gone on in and out of the classroom all along. Aside from the minimal effort of writing them up, there is not much burden. Assessing SLOs does require more effort (probably too much initially, then less as we learn what assessment methods work well), but I think that it will be worthwhile.
	I think that my colleagues who are working hard to get us all to define SLOs are doing a fine job. (In other words, I do not "blame" them for forcing us to do this, and I think they're doing a fine job of making the process as painless as possible.) However, while some worthwhile ideas can come out of this whole process, I do not think that the "worthwhile ideas" justify the inordinate resources being put towards this endeavor.
	I think SLOs are a first step towards a standardized exit exam and I am against them and against standardizing assessments. I feel that for a large portion of the CC population, CC is their last chance to learn critical thinking and that standardized assessments will destroy that option. We are being forced to provide SLOs with any new courses or course modifications; the CORs are not accepted without the SLOs. Administrators keep asking if I have any proof that students are achieving the course objects, and I have always said, Yes, they are called grades; I'm sure you have heard of them. This is just more ridiculous extra work AND an attempt to take control over our classrooms. I feel that a unified effort on the part of unions and academic senates is the best way to make sure that this doesn't get any worse.
	I regard SLOs as useless. The courses I teach have course descriptions, regularly updated. Those describe what the students should cover in the classes. Beyond that I have my own training and experience to guide me as to standards of difficulty in what I ask and standards of grading in my assessment of student work. I have no idea why more than that would be needed.
	SLOs are a negative contribution to educational goals and curriculum.
	SLO's help instructors understand the desired outcomes for a class. I like the idea, but I do not see the need to get so caught up on language, coordination (at the college level), and committees.
	I would consider SLOs a positive contribution to our educational goals and curriculum because they reflect a standarization of teaching outcomes. However, I also think individual professors should have the freedom to teach in their unique ways.
	It has been a very positive experience in that it has opened up many, many conversations about what our students are or are not learning, and what they should or should not be learning. It has also engaged us in important conversations about the forms that evidence of that learning might take. We are even involved in conversations with our transfer institutions that would not have taken place without this initiative. Ultimately, I feel it will help students take greater responsibilty for really learning, not just passing a clss with the minimum effort required to do so.
The process of creating SLOs has allowed my department to have some important discussions about our common goals; these discussions are essential to our teaching and so the process of creating SLOs is a good thing. At the same time, we aren't articulating any new goals--nothing that wasn't already in the course outlines, however differently it may have been worded. At this point in the process, I also don't see how SLOs are likely to improve our teaching--that will depend on how we react if we are not meeting them. And given that we have great difficulty now in enforcing even the most modest of goals (teachers who do not show up to classes or teach anything close to the required curriculum are still here), I'm not confident that SLOs will help. Still, the discussion we are having is positive.
I think that the collaboration with colleagues and transparency to students is positive. Continuously refining the education experience is what teaching is all about! The only problem is that with all the other responsibilities, it is difficult to put the necessary quality time in to do a good job of it.
Overall it's a good idea, but it takes a lot of time away from the ordinary teaching duties of the classroom. I might advocate having a few people in each department who really want to work on it to get some release time to work on SLO's.
I like the SLO process, as it helps keep me stay focused on the mathods with which to achieve them. Coming from a secondary school teaching background where learning outcomes and content standards are driving the educational process, I dislike the process in that it stifles the creatiivity of teaching. I don't believe in the 'factory' approach to education, particularly at the college level, but I do see the merits and benefits for students whose learning style is geared toward this method of teaching and learning.
I have worked on developing SLO's for some of my classes and departmental SLO's for the program. It has positive contributions to our educational goals. It is easier for me to assess whether or not I am achieving my goals, and which areas need improvement.
I do not have a positive view of SLOs. I have listened to the presentations and explanations from very competent committee members and am not at all convinced of the need for SLOs. It's taking a phenomenal amount of coordinating and faculty time to essentially arrive at where we were with learner objectives etc. I am very conscientious about my syllabus and curriculm and do not feel this contributes to this process. I am also concerned that the national shift to rely on SLOs as an evaluative tool will be tied to federally mandated assessments (like SAT 9 and No Child Left Behind)and therefore funding of college institutions. The Bush administration has a Think Tank working on this right now and recently gave an update on their work/recommendations. Their intial "findings" are to require more "accountability of the community colleges" which of course will be tied to funding and further government influence in curriculum content. Thanks for asking--this is potentially a very serious issue.
Although the assessment cycle takes time, it has resulted, so far, in more dialogue about curriculum within the department. When our first assessment is complete next semester, we will hopefully be able to determine some strengths and some areas of improvement within our courses department wide regarding student learning. Because our courses are sequential, determining areas that need improvement and addressing them will benefit our students. If the outcomes are definied by the discipline faculty and if the assessment of those outcomes is done correctly, SLOs are a positive contribution to our educational goals and curriculum.
I am a senior faculty member. I have not found SLOs helpful in my courses. They seem to me to be an attempt to fulfill a bureaucratic imperative toward measurement more than a method for the improvement of teaching and learning.
On the whole I believe that it has been a positive experience. I appreciate that we have been able to do it in stages. It is a lot of work.
I see them as a positive contribution. They assist instructors to clarify where the student will be after completing each course. They assist the student in understanding what to expect from the class. They assist the department to determine what learnings will be accomplished for those majoring in the discipline. All instructors in the program work more closely together.
another layer of responsibility to add to the workload--does it justify administration's existence? Does it accomplish anything else?? Good questions.
I really dont care either way.
Our department has been developing the SLOs and have implemented an assessment of one SLO this semester. It has been good to meet as a department and discuss what we want the students to learn. I think it is valuable for those who work on creating SLOs. It gets us to think about our disciplines. However, I think that how they are to be implemented will not do as much for those who did not work on or write them. It is also a time consuming project on the one hand; on the other hand once the basic structure is created for one class it can be an almost a cut and paste job to complete the rest. Thus it has the scent of more busy work. I do think it is very valuable to explicitly ask ourselves what are students learning. But as the system is implemented I see that it could be a tool used by administration to sanction programs and departments. There are however means to meet the requirement(since it is now a part of WASC accreditation) that provides data, but does not simply provide quantifiable, and thus easy to manipulate, outcomes. e.g. portfolios of student work. In sum I think SLOs are a positive opportunity to learn about how we teach and what students learn. The structure and implementation of SLOs does pose significant concerns however.
Overall, I see it as a positive contribution, but perhaps for a different reason than most. As a former K-12 educator, and a vocational educator, this is nothing new to me. I have been writing student performance objectives, as well as assessment tools, since my first teacher preparation class in the 1960s. And another interesting note..... until AB1725, the vocational credential required vocational educators to take a series of post graduate courses in teacher preaparation and specifically in writing student learning objectives. Now that that is no longer a requirement, the results are predictibly of a lower standard. What this really point out to me is a pretty universal problem in post secondary education: we are hiring subject matter experts and assuming they have teaching ability because of their subject matter expertise, and too often that is not the case. Teaching is a profession, not a delivery system, and it should be a skill we require before hiring any new instructors.
Working on SLOs within our department is contributing to more faculty sharing of teaching approaches and to deeper thinking about what we are trying to accomplish in our courses. Implementing and evaluating SLOs has so far proven intractable!
As a part-time faculty member, I have not been involved in the process of implementing SLOs and do not have an opinion. I am sure, however, that such implementation will impact my teaching methods. The implementation of SLOs is generally positive but if used as a method to determine if instructors and meeting a particular standard of instruction they can potentially be used in a negative way.
I believe that SLO's are necessary because I think we need more consistency in teaching and grading. However, AFT needs to think about what the process really means: if we implement these SLO's and discover that we have several senior adjuncts who have been teaching the same way since the 1950's who do not go along with the SLO's because they weren't part of the drafing of them, AFT still requires that we give those faculty priority class assignment. Full-time faculty may be headed in one direction and may wish that adjunct move in that same direction with us, but if they don't, there's nothing we can do about it. Therefore, programs that need improvement will not improve if they cannot control who they give assignments to, and they cannot control that because it is written into our AFT contract. Secondly, the SLO process is really just a glorified program review: the only measure of how well we create them is how well we think we create them. There's no entity in charge of really examining departments to be sure that they're following the SLO's that they've written. Even if it looks like we are making radical changes on paper, who's there to see if those changes are actually being carried out in practice?
SLO's are very, very negative, and I have had a awful experience with them. I consider them trendy, rigid, non-enforceable and a form of control by administration. Curriculum has been terrible for it.
waste of time. If grades measure what the did when we went to school ( and i assume they do or we should stop doing them) and if outlines correctly inform students and transfering institutions what we teach then what's the point. Lots of effort, not much value. Moreover, as this climbs out of the classroom it gets even fuzzier. For example, institutional goals can be a way for the adminstration or a small group of faculty to write in innappropriate goals or the inclusion of "pet" ideas of the day.
I see them as a different flavor of course objectives. They do not have to be difficult to write, if the course objectives are already in place. One aspect that is NOT serving students well is that the focus is on distilling a course down to a few SLOs and only evaluating success (of a course, dept, and division) on the basis of students meeting those few SLOs. If course objectives are not thoughtfully constructed, then the push for SLOs is stimulating their review.
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