Undergraduate Student Learning Outcomes: What Should a Graduate of the University Be Able to Do?
By Lauren Marsh
What should undergraduates be able to do after finishing a degree at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities?
A student in computer science should be able to use floating-point arithmetic to solve problems. A student in studio arts must be able to determine if the strength and resilience of a material makes it suitable for a particular sculpture or site. Both of these students need to solve problems in the context of their own fields.
In 2003, the Provost's Council for Enhancing Student Learning (CESL) asked faculty members across disciplines to describe the most elemental and enduring aspects of education at the University of Minnesota on the Twin Cities campus in order to promote a University-wide—even nationwide—discussion on student learning outcomes. The answers gathered by the council have been distilled into seven learning outcomes that were approved by the Faculty Senate in May of this year. Two leaders in the learning outcomes and assessment initiative are Arlene Carney, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs and first chair of CESL, and Ann Hill Duin, who supports learning outcomes and assessment efforts in her current role as associate vice president and deputy chief information officer, Office of Information Technology.
The undergraduate learning outcomes are part of a strategy to improve education by creating a set of clear and public expectations, collecting data that pertain to student learning, and using the data to shape and inform instruction through an ongoing cycle of assessment and improvement. In this first successful phase, CESL has developed consensus around student learning outcomes. Ultimately, the council’s goal is to achieve alignment across University-level learning outcomes, individual majors, and courses. Toward that end, 15 departments are participating in a pilot program that began this fall; Carney and her colleagues will work with faculty in these departments to map curriculum to student learning outcomes. In so doing, they’ll get a “snapshot” of the curriculum in each major that will contribute to our understanding of the undergraduate learning experience. While no individual class or major shoulders responsibility for engaging all learning outcomes, students should be assured competency through their work in a major as well as fulfillment of liberal education requirements.
While the student learning outcomes are “bedrock—tried and true,” Duin notes that we can teach and assess them in new ways as a result of innovations in technology. She recalls her experiences with portfolios 20 years ago, when a portfolio was a sheaf of papers that a student carried around; it was a resource that couldn’t be reused or easily referenced and ultimately “fell under the weight of pen-and-paper-intensive technology that didn’t work.” Today, we have an extraordinary range of tools to bring to assessment, and these tools facilitate collecting and analyzing data in order to gather real and meaningful information about student learning. Duin points to the Digital Media Center as a resource for faculty members who want to leverage technology in order to assess and enhance learning.
Not only should students leave the University of Minnesota with an excellent education, they should understand the significance of that education. According to Carney, having high-level, institutional learning outcomes “gives students a language and a vocabulary for talking about their undergraduate education.” This, in turn, will help students make connections across disciplines and reflect on different ways of knowing in order to reinforce and deepen learning. Students also benefit from being able to talk with insight about their undergraduate learning in the context of job interviews and graduate or professional school applications. But Carney points out that the impact of student learning outcomes is more far reaching: the University is preparing its graduates to be knowledgeable citizens and lifelong learners.
