SLOs: Progress or Problem?

by Nick Pernisco

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) have become all the rage in the academic community in recent years, but not necessarily by choice.  They may be great new tools that will help boost learning.  Previoously SLOs were federally mandated, but the 2007 Higher Education Act passed by Congress removed that mandate.  Despite the new law, the accreditation commission in California is still insisting that SLOs be used.  Therefore, not only do colleges and universities need to write SLOs for each class being taught, but they must also be written for each program, for each department, and for the entire institution.  Obviously, this is a daunting task that puts more on the plate of an already overstretched faculty body.

While I’m not an expert on student learning outcomes and the politics behind them, I do know how they have affected my colleagues, my own students, and me.  I’ve written SLOs for courses in my department (Communications), attended SLO workshops at conferences such as the FACCC Part-Time Symposium Oct. 25, and I have experienced the benefits and shortfalls of SLOs in real teaching situations.  The college has made SLOs a major issue, and so I feel a responsibility to understand how the system works, why it works, why it exists, and its benefits and short comings.

So why are SLOs so important, at least to those who believe they’re necessary?  The theory is that by focusing on student learning outcomes instead of learning objectives, stakeholders (students, faculty, administrators, politicians) will have a rubric on which to judge the success or failure of student learning.  By devising precise and objective measurement guidelines for learning, we should be able to tell whether students have learned what they’re supposed to know upon completing a given course or program.  In other words, SLOs are supposed to improve student learning by making institutions more accountable.  At least this is the theory, and given that they can affect a college’s accreditation, it is a theory already being put into practice. 

SLOs focus on outcomes instead of objectives.  According to the theories behind SLOs, faculty and administrators typically focus on learning objectives – “today we’re going to read this chapter, go over these slides, review this material, etc.” – while learning outcomes focus on the end result – “today we’ll learn how to give a speech”.  The theory and practice in the  learning  process  are supposedly disconnected in the  traditional  objectives  approach.  SLO  propo-nents claim that approaching education from a teaching perspective takes the focus away from what should  be a student-centered experience.  Instead, SLOs aim to approach education from a learning perspective to give students definite expectations of their classroom experience.

When discussing SLOs at each level of a higher learning institution, the question arises: Who is responsible for writing these outcomes?  It’s obvious that for SLOs to be meaningful, only those who truly understand the courses, programs, and whole institution should be writing these.  This typically means that the instructors are the people who are burdened with the responsibility to craft these outcomes.  But what happens when, as is the case at many community colleges and universities, an SLO must be created for a class that is only taught by a part-time instructor?  Are these part-timers, many of whom may have other teaching and professional responsibilities, responsible for creating the SLOs for their classes?  If so, they’re being asked to do work for which they aren’t being paid.  And once SLOs are written and approved, they must still be revised over time in order to meet changing student needs and expectations.  This means the process never ends.

Another criticism of SLOs is the question of how much they really help improve learning.  Is an outcomes approach better than an objectives approach?  Although many studies have been done regarding the usefulness and efficiency of SLOs, and there are many educators eager to talk about the virtues of an outcomes-based system, it’s too soon to tell if students taught during the SLO era will translate into a larger number of successful members of society after graduation.  Some colleges and universities are just starting to survey alumni for information regarding the long-term value of the SLO system.  The counter-argument to this is that if we don’t know the long-term impact of SLOs, we might as well continue using them in case there is a positive impact sometime in the future. That’s fine if there’s no cost to using them - but there is.

Another criticism of the SLO system is that instructors feel that they’re being mandated to do something they’ve already been doing their entire careers.  At its most basic level, SLOs force teachers and students to assess whether a particular skill or  amount of knowledge has been learned.  And while most instructors achieve this assessment through examinations, many instructors were already using more involved forms of assessment before SLOs ever became relevant.  For example, many classes that teach critical thinking use written exams as well as other forms of assessment (such as projects and in-class discussions) to determine if students have truly mastered the concepts being taught.  In a way, SLOs are telling us what it takes to be good teachers, yet it seems to me that most teachers already know what it takes to be a good teacher.  Having a verifiable benchmark like an SLO might seem like a good test of teacher quality, but other methods of evaluating teacher quality, including peer review through observation, interviews with department leaders, and self-review, among others, are better methods.

In addition to already having a reliable assessment system in place, colleges and universities have always had reliable forms of learning outcome determination in the form of course outlines and syllabi.  New instructors almost always reference these documents for insight about teaching their classes.  Therefore, the question arises as to really need yet more guidelines to tell us how to teach our classes. 

While this might be useful for new teachers, veteran teachers already know how to teach a class and they’re unlikely to change their teaching methodology despite being told to do so by an SLO.  Besides, when they’re available, these veteran teachers are the likely candidates for writing course SLOs, so they’re already introducing their own biases when developing the phrasing of each outcome.  In addition, many instructors believe that requiring additional guides in teaching a course diminishes the academic freedoms we’re guaranteed by law. 

At bottom, I believe that SLOs should be looked at as a political tool rather than an academic tool.  Like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for K-12 education, SLOs add another level of complexity to an already complex educational system.  Just as NCLB schools have been used as political footballs for their measured successes and failures, SLOs have the power to make college funding and accreditation into political issues used to gain votes rather than to help with their intended goal: student success. 

What’s more frightening than politics mixing with student success is that SLOs lack the complexity to show the whole picture.  Learners come to higher education  for  different reasons  and  with  different skill sets.  SLOs can never take into account the student who is taking a demanding History class after barely passing the English writing requirement, or the returning student who has been out of school for 30 years and has forgotten how to learn in a classroom setting, or the blind student who can’t pass a required journalism class because most of the information is presented visually.  These are all cases I’ve personally encountered, and these are cases that may make a student appear like a failure for not being able to meet the required outcome thrust upon him or her by faculty with unrealistic expectations.

So are we stuck with SLOs as a necessary evil, mandated by people who don’t understand the process, or who don’t want to acknowledge that this is a measuring stick far too simplistic for a very complex educational system?  Yes and no.  Yes, the law requires SLOs and they must be implemented in order to comply with federal mandates.  While this may change in the future, the current reality is that we’re stuck with the SLO system.  But the “no” comes from the fact that SLOs are not set in stone, and they can be and should written to be adaptable to a wide variety of teaching and learning styles.  In addition, SLOs should change over time to reflect current societal, cultural, and workplace realities.

Instructors should discuss current SLOs with their department and institutional leaders to ensure that course, program, and institutional SLOs accommodate the needs and expectations of all stakeholders: students, parents, faculty, administrators, future employers, and society.  Discuss the challenges that SLOs present with students who aren’t average, and make sure everyone has an opportunity to succeed.  SLOs must reflect the college community they attempt to serve, and as such they should be adaptable and changeable over time.  If a college or university prides itself on student success, cultural diversity, and access to all learners, every single SLO should be written with those ideals in mind. 

While the usefulness and efficiency of SLOs are still issues for heated debate, instructors should learn the ins and outs of the system so they can be active participants in shaping how it’s used in the future.  Whether the discussion is about using SLOs in their current state, lobbying to change current SLOs to accommodate the real student population, or making an argument to eliminate the system altogether, knowledge is power.  Get the facts, know where you stand, and you’ll be better prepared to help shape future legislation and teaching trends.

The following is a useful resource for learning about current and past research regarding SLOs:

“What is Known about Student Learning Outcomes and How does it relate to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” by Patricia A. Marsh, Ph.D.

http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v1n2/essays/marsh/index.htm