Student Learning Outcomes: Proficiency by 2012

Last year, the Commission developed a Rubric for Evaluating Institutional Effectiveness to be used by institutions as a tool to measure and evaluate their own effectiveness and by comprehensive evaluation teams to assess the level of college performance in each of three areas: Program Review, Planning, and Student Learning Outcomes. Under each area, the rubric describes the characteristics of institutional performance at four different levels: Awareness, Development; Proficiency, and Sustainable Continuous Quality Improvement.

The Commission announced that by Fall 2007, it required member institutions to be at the top level of the rubric in the areas of program review and planning, and at the second level of the rubric in the area of student learning outcomes. The Commission now has determined that it will require member institutions to be at the third level of the rubric, the Proficiency level, on student learning outcomes by fall 2012. This deadline aligns with the Commission’s decision in 2002, upon approval of the Standards of Accreditation, to permit institutions ten years to fully implement the new standards on student learning and assessment of learning. The Commission will continue to examine information about college progress in implementing the standards related to student learning outcomes.

Since the 1990s, the Commission’s Standards of Accreditation have expected institutions to have in place systematic and timely processes for program review and other forms of institutional effectiveness assessment, processes for short-term and long-term planning to make institutional improvements, and processes for setting institutional priorities and allocating resources needed to implement institutional plans for improvement. These combined processes were to become the means to continuous quality improvement. The Commission’s requirement that institutions now demonstrate performance at the Sustainable Continuous Quality Improvement level in the areas of evaluation and planning reflects these long standing accreditation requirements.

Source:

Accreditation Notes, Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, Western Association of Schools and Colleges.  Summer 2008.