SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The Learner Outcomes Project was divided into three distinct components: a Summer Institute, Fall Course Implementation and Spring Assessment of Project Results. Seventeen of Cabrillo's most innovative and creative faculty gathered for two weeks in July 1999 to explore the Learner Outcomes model in depth. Joined by interested academic deans and division chairs, they represented the breadth of the campus in both transfer and occupational programs. At the Institute, faculty developed plans to implement the learner outcomes model in one specific course to be taught during the coming fall semester. During the fall, the group continued to meet to share the process of teaching in this new mode. During Spring semester 2000, each faculty member received one-class reassigned time to carefully analyze the results of her/his project, look at success and retention data and write the reports contained in this handbook.

FUNDING

The Learner Outcomes Project was funded by a generous grant from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, augmented by substantial support from Cabrillo's Office of Instruction and VATEA funds.

BACKGROUND ON THE LEARNER OUTCOMES MODEL

The learner outcomes model shifts the emphasis in teaching from what students should know to what they can actually do by the end of the course. Learning is measured by activities that allow students to demonstrate skills or applications of knowledge. The more the goals of the course are clearly defined, the more likely it is that students will succeed in learning. Success and retention rates should rise. Student satisfaction should increase. Most importantly, students should emerge from courses with skills that they can demonstrate to others.

In the traditional classroom, learning is often measured by testing students on the material they have received from the instructor through lectures, discussions and readings. The class syllabus presents what is going to be covered. The learner outcomes approach reverses the emphasis, presenting what students will learn and focusing on how the student can apply the knowledge. This is a subtle difference, but one that requires teachers to ask, "What are students learning? How can they show it?" rather than "What do I want them to know?"

In the learner outcomes model, course content is married to assessment or testing. It's absolutely crucial to clearly define what students will be able to do by the end of the course and design activities and assessments that will allow them to show it. Readings, lectures, discussions, assignments and class activities should all be pointed toward these goals or outcomes of the course. Those outcomes, in turn, are pointed toward an assessment that measures if students have mastered them.

This "outcomes-based" approach has been used in Cabrillo's occupational programs for years. As Debora Bone, Nursing Instructor, put it, "We need to know if a student can correctly give an injection or dispense medication before we'll release her out to the world; it's a matter of life or death." In addition to showing what they can do to Cabrillo instructors, occupational students must often pass state board exams and other outside assessments.

Applying this approach to transfer courses is new for Cabrillo. The Division Chair Council and academic deans spent a year studying this model through readings and attending conferences and workshops. The Faculty Senate has also discussed it. However, until the Learner Outcomes Project, transfer faculty had not had a chance to apply it to individual classrooms. Occupational faculty had never used this language before nor envisioned that the expansion of activities and assessment techniques could strengthen student success. The Summer Institute brought both groups together to explore this approach in depth. Claire Biancalana, Vice President of Instruction, told the Institute director that our task was to investigate how learner outcomes would fit at Cabrillo. Rather than whole-heartedly embracing someone else's model, we were to discover what would make the best sense for our institution.

PROJECT REPORTS

This handbook contains fourteen project reports from the participants in the Learner Outcomes Institute. Each report contains information on the project goals, background, procedures, results, student achievement and retention data, effective strategies for defining and assessing learner outcomes and a list of effective new strategies that were used during the course. Each instructor tried to draw some meaningful conclusions from this exploration of the learner outcomes model.