How learning outcomes are articulated and assessed are relevant to students, schools and employers, and a whitepaper released Wednesday by Campus Labs analyzed data at the institutional and program levels at two-year and four-year institutions across the nation.
Often missing from national conversations about higher education accessibility and affordability are “concerns about what students will learn, or how they will change as human beings,” according to the report, “Degree of Difference: What Do Learning Outcomes Say about Higher Education?”
Learning outcomes should be a basic part of a student’s postsecondary educational experience because they inform students what they will be taught and are expected to learn before leaving a course, a program and an institution, noted Dr. Shannon LaCount, the report’s co-author and assistant vice president for campus adoption at Campus Labs.
While intellectual skills – which encompass reasoning, problem-solving and critical thinking – was the theme with the highest percentage of institutional-level outcomes listed at both types of schools and at the program level at four-year schools, it was second to technology at the program level at two-year schools, the study found.
Intellectual skills and technology, along with culture, communication and personal development, were in the top five at institutional and program-department levels, according to the data, which included 15,521 outcome statements from 73 schools across the United States, all of which use a Campus Labs platform for learning-assessment management.
The data revealed that “there is equity across the institutions, regardless of what school a student wanted to go to,” said LaCount. “That was heartening to me.”
LaCount said the research topic interests her because she is a former educator, having served as an assistant professor and director of student learning assessment at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
