Student Learning Outcomes Assessment: A Component of Program Assessment

Assessment efforts in higher education have evolved as a response to demands by external forces such as legislative and accrediting bodies asking for better accountability evidence.1 Further, an executive order required all federally approved accrediting organizations to include evidence of institutional outcomes in their criteria for accreditation.2 This mandate requested that each program describe what its graduates are able to do (outcomes) and provide evidence that they have demonstrated these abilities (assessment). Thus, accrediting bodies and institutions of higher education now focus significant attention on the implementation of outcomes assessment plans within their areas of purview. Although experts in the area of assessment suggest that assessing student learning is only one of many possible measures of an institution’s outcomes, it is a critical way of demonstrating institutional effectiveness.3 In light of the general public’s growing demand for accountability and the internal shift to a learning-centered instructional paradigm, the focus on student learning outcomes assessment has become something of an “industry standard” for higher education. Further, throughout this assessment movement, definitions, interpretations, and viewpoints have varied and reflect the disciplinary or work contexts of the professionals involved in supporting the assessment endeavors. New terminology has emerged: student learning outcomes, outcomes assessment, competency, and student learning outcomes assessment. This new terminology has caused many in the field to pose a number of questions: What are outcomes? What is outcomes assessment? How do outcomes differ from objectives and competencies? What is outcomes assessment’s relationship to institutional assessment? Does this differ from student learning outcomes assessment? The first paper in this series presented a primer about the emergence of assessment in higher education and detailed the various levels of higher education assessment: institutional, program, and individual. This paper, the second in the series, will focus on a subcomponent of overall program assessment: student learning outcomes (SLO) assessment. Readers may use the following as an outline for this article: • Define outcomes and describe the origin of outcome-based education; • Discuss the relationship of outcome-based education to health education; • Clarify student learning outcomes terminology; • Explain the differences between outcomes, competencies and objectives; American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2005; 69 (2) Article 39.