The oversight and implementation of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) is now in the hands of Professor Barbara Anderson, who was elected SLO coordinator during the May 14 Academic Senate meeting.
SLOs are used to track and analyze predetermined criteria within a particular course, so that teachers can assess the students’ performance in various aspects of the course.
Teachers could then make changes to their course curriculum in areas that need improvement.
Anderson will not be facing this challenge alone, however. Also elected were two SLO coaches: Speech Professor Jennifer Rosenberg and English instructor Mary Chavarria.
“To me, the heart of SLOs is measuring the effectiveness of your teaching methodology,” Rosenberg said.
The coaches are responsible for meeting with departments across campus in order to help them develop course-specific criteria and measure the performance of students in those areas.
For example, Rosenberg tracks and analyzes her students’ performance using criteria such as delivery, research and organization. If she were to find that many of her students were scoring low in one of these categories, she would consider spending more time focusing on that particular area.
“It’s critical pedagogy. That is, it is looking critically at your teaching method,” Rosenberg added.
Ideally, SLOs will allow each student to get the most that they can out of a class, while giving teachers unique feedback on how they can improve their courses.
Although SLOs have been in use for some time now, teachers are not required to use them.