This means the assessment process itself will evolve to better inform future. dialog and future assessment. Page 3 of 4.
SLO Assessment in Student Services Best Practices
Benefits of the Assessment Process •
Opportunity to self-reflect and improve your efforts.
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Increased staff awareness of students’ needs and issues, and how staff efforts are contributing to student success.
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Effective evaluation will make program planning and annual updates easier.
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Open the door for funding requests – assessment drives budget requests, especially requests that are ultimately approved by the college.
Definition of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) •
A Student Services SLO describes what a student can do after an interaction with a service. This includes the knowledge, skills, abilities, or attitudes attained by the end of the activity being measured. This can be part of a department’s service or an activity offered in a class.
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An SLO is user-centered, and does not describe what the department does nor measure what students think or “feel.”
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SLOs are typically not comprehensive, but reflect key things a user can do after interacting with your department.
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Examples: o Students will be able to locate and appropriately apply for job openings on campus. o Students who apply for financial aid will be able to complete the application process and meet deadlines.
Assessment Examples •
Consider using Data/Evidence that you are already collecting. For example, graduation rates, service usage, persistence, retention, etc. Work with the PRO office. For example, CAP could use service usage (i.e. WebAdvisor/Student Planning) to measure whether their students are participating in all registration, assessment and enrollment activities. Measure what they KNOW or can do after learning about these.
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Analyze web page usage (Web Analytics). Are your users going to the data or procedures you collect and present for them? For example, in Student Employment, you can track how many students are able to locate and appropriately apply for job openings. Work with PRO to get this type of information.
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Focus Groups. For example, Financial Aid could look at the students who applied for FAFSA, provide them with the next steps of what they need to do to meet their next deadlines and measure how many students actually followed the instructions given. Then, they could have a focus group to discuss what can be done to improve the number of students who had not complied. If using focus groups, work with PRO to accurately identify the right candidates for the focus groups and be cautious about confidentiality.
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Exit Surveys with action questions. For example, Outreach’s SLO for students participating in outreach events states that “Students will be able to list at least three steps to enroll at Cabrillo College,” This is after they have participated in a campus tour with a tour guide. A brief survey could be given to each student which would ask them to name three steps to enroll at Cabrillo (as long as those issues were covered on the tour.) With all surveys, it’s important to measure what students know how to do, not what they think they know how to do. Be careful about questions that could measure students’ opinions rather than their knowledge.
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Pre-Post Tests. Another example is from the Matriculation Office where students file “challenges for prerequisites.” Students were asked to answer questions about the Requisite Challenge process in a pre-test—specific information about purpose and process. Their first time using the process included assistance from office staff helping them navigate it. The post-test asked them the same questions of purpose and process and whether they could complete it in the future without assistance (indicating knowledge of and ability to do something). Ninety-two (92%) responded Yes. This particular example also included an unexpected piece of information about the confusion on campus of where students should go to initiate this challenge process. This gave the Matriculation Office new information that resulted in an FAQ that went to division offices and a posting on the webpage of this information. It also included a “Steps to Challenge” document to vacillate students’ familiarity and comfort initiating the process.
Preparation & Organization •
Honor the process with sufficient time to make it effective. Schedule meetings dedicated exclusively or primarily to assessment. Structure the meeting and schedule in gab time (food?).
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Send out meeting reminders so that staff can come to assessment meetings prepared. Consider having specific questions to be addressed to guide discussion.
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Include all staff in the process so they have ownership. Assign responsibility. This could be in producing the final departmental assessment forms that get included in the program plan or organizing the discussion.
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Use the assessment forms in a way best suited to your department. Create new questions to put to participants. It's OK to deviate from the standard forms and check boxes.
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Have a long term plan.
Dialog & Participation •
Dialog opportunities – unit staff should participate in all stages of the cycle, to improve buy-in, understanding, and enrich staff roles. Discuss the assessment results: What does the data tell us? Is it what we expected? Do we need help interpreting the results? Are there clear changes to our operation called for by the results? Do we need to re-examine our assessment methods?
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Department leadership sets the tone for an inclusive process.
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Everyone one is heard, and all staff participate in creating meaningful dialog
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Dialog focuses on students or others who use your services. Consider what they need, not just what you want
Dialog improves and evolves the assessment process. Dialog should create new questions or need for deeper assessment. This means the assessment process itself will evolve to better inform future dialog and future assessment
Student Services Best Practices Assessment Cycle: An Example from Counseling
Write SLO: Counseling's SLO: Students will create a plan to facilitate their educa3onal and career goals.
Base Funding Request on Improvement Plans: If Counseling wanted to ask for GF support for this service, it would be added to their annual program plan update.
Discuss in Program Plan: This new informaBon led to creaBon of the “Before you Make an Appointment” (BYMA) process: a checklist for staff and students to follow so that the students came to the counseling appointment beIer-‐prepared. This checklist was then publicized at criBcal check-‐in locaBons and was also included in the phone appointment process.
Assess SLO: Before and a6er a counseling appointment, students are asked to rate their level of knowledge of the next steps necessary to reach their educaBonal and career goals, on a self-‐report Likert (agree/disagree) scale.
Analyze Results and Design Improvements: The results of the evaluaBon/assessment indicated that students needed to come beIer-‐ informed and beIer-‐ prepared to appointments with counselors. Doing so would make the Bme of the counselors and the students more producBve.
