In 2002, the WASC visiting team noted that CSULB displays CSULB displays a remarkable atmosphere of collegiality and trust. The team noted that this sense of shared identity and feeling of community is especially noteworthy as it exists within a very large university with a highly diverse environment: “The focus on students, expressed in multiple ways, is an institutional strength. The senior administration is clearly in touch with student concerns.” In the Action Letter of July 8, 2002, the Senior Commission reaffirmed accreditation and endorsed the recommendations of the visiting team's report. This Proposal contains three core commitments, two of which respond directly to the recommendations contained in WASC’s Action Letter.
These two issues relate to program review and assessment, especially the inclusion of learning outcomes as part of an ongoing process. CSULB has completely reorganized its program review processes and procedures to ensure that every program review is followed by a Memorandum of Understanding between the academic unit, the college dean, and the Office of Academic Affairs. These Memoranda of Understanding specify exactly what actions will be taken by which parties along a predetermined time line. These subsequent actions always include learning outcomes assessment. Every college has been provided funds for an Assessment Coordinator, and departments are encouraged to apply for resources to develop learning outcomes assessment processes, including General Education outcomes. Learning outcomes for General Education, as well as a plan for assessment of learning in the General Education program, are central components of a major revision of the General Education policy that came before the Academic Senate in 2007. The Office of Academic Affairs links program review, the actions specified in the Memoranda of Understanding, and increased learning outcomes assessment to resource allocations, particularly to the authorization for new faculty positions. Thus the first two issues, as defined in WASC’s Action Letter, have been addressed. The thrust of one part of our Self-Study is to assess the effectiveness of our revised processes and procedures in the key areas of General Education, student learning outcomes, and assessment.
Pursuant to the concerns expressed in the Action Letter, the Office of Academic Affairs conducted extensive consultation with the academic community and reorganized its structure to better focus on learning outcomes. In addition, the office revised its goals and developed its own vision statement. Further, the Academic Senate reviewed its governance structure and, following a two-year extended discussion, restructured its councils and committees to better reflect the needs of the campus. Specifically, councils engaged in program review have been combined and reorganized to make these reviews more effective, and crossmembership between councils and the Academic Senate has been institutionalized. The challenge to our Self-Study is to devise ways to measure whether these changes have been effective in aligning its systems and structures to better carry out and evaluate decisions. In an institution of our size, the challenge is to allow sufficient flexibility to academic units to develop their own individuality while, at the same time, ensuring that all units focus on the improvement of both learning outcomes and learning outcomes assessment.
Specific responses to the Team’s Recommendations are as follows:
In 2002, the Commission’s Action Letter noted that CSULB had not developed “data [on student learning] into systematic evidence to be aligned with questions of effectiveness, nor has it developed a framework for raising such questions.” The letter further noted that areas related to planning programming, and assessment were not “clearly vested in specific structures or individuals, resulting in dysjunctures in institutional governance and evaluation.” In response to these concerns and ongoing challenges regarding integrating program review and assessment, the Academic Senate worked with the Division of Academic Affairs to completely overhaul program review policy and practices and to establish clear guidelines for program assessment. The results of Program reviews are used to drive the approval of faculty searches and, thus, the growth or shrinkage of particular programs.
All degree programs at CSULB have implemented a faculty-endorsed time line for the assessment of student learning outcomes, with reports provided annually to deans and central academic administrators. Beginning in 2005-06, a plan for or an update of student learning was a required component of all periodic program review. Each college has designated a coordinator responsible for ensuring the assessment of program and course learning outcomes, with funding allocated to support faculty efforts. The Director for Assessment and Program Review, together with the College Assessment Coordinators, review the departmental annual assessment reports to document how programs have made changes based on evidence of student learning. These reports will then become part of each program’s Program Review. We need to assess how readily programs make curricular and instructional changes based on actual evidence of student learning.
The CSULB GE policy identifies ten key learning outcomes and defines guidelines for on-going program-level assessment. For each of these ten learning outcomes, the responsible faculty come together to identify current pedagogical practices and to examine their effectiveness for student learning. The process, entitled GEtogether, began in spring 2006 with an interdisciplinary discussion about best practices in courses designed to address the learning outcome of “fostering respect for human diversity.” The goal of the first GEtogether process is for faculty to create common pedagogical practices, incorporate them in a variety of human diversity courses, assess their impact on learning, and tease out best practices to benefit all GE human diversity courses. We anticipate that, in a cascading effect, every GE outcome will be brought into this process within a three year time frame. Faculty who teach GE courses will collectively examine samples of student work to map desired learning outcomes to specific elements of instructional activities. The best practices identified through this on-going plan will inform the evaluation and recertification of General Education courses. Although preliminary results have been incorporated into the Capacity and Preparatory Review, very substantial results will be addressed in the Educational Effectiveness Review, by which time we expect every GE outcome to have been brought into this process.
The University has launched its culture of evidence campaign campus-wide rather than program by program, thinking that we could move more quickly college by college rather than program by program. Thus, as described in our response to the second recommendation, we have provided each college with a program coordinator, and each college has funds to invest in assessment activities. In all cases, programs and colleges are asked to employ data from student learning outcomes assessment in their annual reports as well as in their self-studies for program review. Following every program review, there is a Memorandum of Understanding between the program, the college and Academic Affairs that is a factor in resource allocation and new faculty allocations.
