New Faculty Guide

Welcome! This is a quick guide for faculty who might not know what an SLO is or what they are responsible for doing about them.

What is an ‘SLO?’

SLO stands for Student Learning Outcome. Every course has a course outline of record, and in that record are listed some number of CSLOs (Course SLO). You should view what the CSLOs for each of your course are, as you will need to assess the students on those outcomes.

All faculty, whether full-time or part-time, are responsible for recording the data for their course SLOs. Not every single SLO must be done every semester. Different departments have different rules, so be sure to ask your department coordinator. The only formal rule is that every CSLO must be assessed at least once every program review cycle (5 years).

You can read all about SLOs in the handbooks if you have some time on your hand.

What Do I have to Do?

The following:

  1. View the CSLOs for each of your courses so you know what they are. Search your courses on this database.
  2. Ask your fellow departmental faculty which CSLOs you are required to assess this semester. If they do not know, then as a new faculty member, pick at least one per class and then later work with your department to come up with a proper method in future semesters.
  3. Design an assessment to evaluate the students on this outcome. The most common way faculty do this is to have a final exam question be about the CSLO.
  4. Grade the assessment. Keep in mind that SLO data is stored on a 0,1,2,3 scale, with 2 representing a ‘meets expectations’ and 3 representing ‘exceeds expectations.’
  5. Input this data into Canvas by following the faculty guide for entering SLO data.

That concludes your personal responsibility!

What Purpose does this Serve?

Every CSLO is connected to a program outcome and an institutional outcome. When you input your SLO data for your course, it helps your program/degree evaluate how effective it is meeting its learning goals for the students. In addition, doing this helps the college as a whole evaluate how well it is meeting its learning goals.

For example, one of the college’s institutional learning outcomes is to foster critical thinking within its students. But how does it do this? Well, many CSLOs in many different courses are connected (‘mapped’) to the institution’s critical thinking outcome. All such scores are collected and we can build an understanding of how effective Yuba College trains critical thinking within its students.

Additionally, by looking at CSLO data over time, departments can discuss and analyze this data (called ‘closing the loop.’) This allows faculty to use data-driven decision making to make changes to their courses and improve their teaching.