CHAPARRAL

This article is written in response to the “Rulers” article in the December Chaparral, which voices concern over the WASC mandate for the implementation of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) in our community college system. 

     The following quotes represent opinions that support the relationship between good teaching and SLOs.  The first two quotes represent what one would assume all faculty believe, including the author of “Rulers”:

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn ~John Cotton Dana

Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first.  The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.   When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed ~Marva Collins

     The title of this article, however, represents what many faculty do not believe, including the author of “Rulers”:

In SLO-land we are the rulers, not the ruled ~Sid Kolpas

     Our article aims to show how all three quotes are indeed true, and furthermore, it aims to address the concerns about SLOs that have been raised throughout our campus and all campuses in the California community college system.
     Let’s begin with an overview of the SLO philosophy.  Mediocre teachers typically subscribe to a "transmission model" of education, in which teaching is a matter of transmitting knowledge from the professor's brain to the students' brains.  Mediocre teachers may have (one would hope) specific student learning outcomes, and may even evaluate the success of those outcomes.  However, they rarely modify their teaching based on the degree of success their students exhibit on course outcomes; if the students did not succeed, it was the students’ fault. Outstanding teachers, in contrast, assume a "learning model" of education; they constantly search to find what their students need to learn through formative and summative analyses of students’ success on the SLOs they’ve formulated for their courses.  Thus, they constantly adjust their instruction to meet their students’ needs, always responding to students' failures with efforts to find “better” ways to teach. That is, outstanding teachers do not subscribe to the philosophy that "I put the knowledge out there. It's the students' job to learn it; if they don’t learn it, it’s not my fault.”  Instead, they either conduct their own research, or use the research results of other educators to try to improve instruction. That is, good teachers have formulated course objectives (student learning outcomes), continually evaluate students to monitor their success in achieving those objectives, and modify their teaching with the goal of improving student success.  Being experts in curriculum and assessment, they fashion their own instruments to analyze the outcomes they have chosen to monitor.  This philosophy of teaching and learning we can all agree upon. However, we disagree with the “Rulers” article’s interpretation of how SLOs will affect the teaching/learning process.
     We appreciate the in-depth and careful analysis in “Rulers” and welcome the dialogue that it sparks.  We are sure that many people on campus share the sentiments expressed in “Rulers.”  However, we respectfully disagree with the conclusions reached by the author.  We believe that SLOs are not only something most of us have already been doing, but that they present an opportunity for each division on campus to improve instruction, and as a consequence student learning.
     Over the past two years the SLO Committee, a task force of the GCC Academic Senate, has spent a great deal of time thinking of ways to promote SLOs on our campus and to get people involved in using them.  While most of us have already been using outcomes to monitor our students’ success, and to improve our teaching, the new Accreditation Standards now mandate the SLO approach for each community college.  Writing SLOs and using them to improve one’s teaching is what any good teacher would naturally do.  While pre-written SLOs and pre-written evaluation rubrics have been imposed on the K-12 system, we at the community college have the opportunity to take professional control of our destiny—to be the ruler and not the ruled. We can write our own SLOs based on the goals we’ve delineated for our courses and programs, decide which SLOs we wish to monitor each semester, develop our own evaluation instruments, and analyze our own data.  As professionals, our data analysis should then be used to improve our teaching, and thus our students’ success in attaining course outcomes. What is different now is that we are being asked to document this process of defining our own students’ outcomes and our own rulers.  This documentation is what WASC wants to see, for it verifies that we are using our scholarship and adaptive expertise to produce high quality students.
     We’d like to say a few things in response to the “Rulers” article that might shed a more positive light on the SLO issue.  It seems that “Rulers” is concerned about community college faculty having to follow externally imposed SLOs and assessment rules, such as is the case with K-12 faculty.  Again, this is not the case with community colleges.  We are scholars and experts, much like the faculty of universities, and WASC sees us as such (universities, by the way, are also facing the same SLO mandate from WASC). We will not have to give up any of the scholarly freedom we already enjoy.  Let us respond to what “Rulers” states
below:

The ruler of academic research grants university professors the right to define truth and share it because they are the experts—they discovered and framed it with their research.  Their outcomes must be self-defined.  Tradition has allowed them to craft their own ruler.

      Just like university professors, we are being asked to define our own outcomes (SLOs).  And, we are being asked to craft our own rulers (evaluation procedures).  Because our self-defined SLOs will have to be done at the division/program level, we must communicate with our colleagues to decide on the common outcomes of our programs.  We will then come to a scholarly agreement about what goals we want our students to attain, and how we will evaluate the degree to which they have attained those goals. Doing this enriches each and every one of us; we have much to learn from one another.  Good teaching practice does not develop in a vacuum. Communicating with one another about curriculum and instruction is what professionals do; the end result will be better teaching and thus better student learning.  Again, what is new here is that our process must be documented and made public—to students, to employers, to universities, and to the state. 
     The second concern that the “Rulers” article voices is that SLOs are misfocused and do not reflect the true scholarship and teaching that occurs in the classroom.  Let us address another excerpt from “Rulers,” which states

SLOs dilute our adaptive expertise by emphasizing outcomes and the products of learning over the processes of learning.  Defining and measuring an outcome does not assure that its pedagogical underpinnings are understood.  In fact, such outcomes are nothing more than shallow facades (of understanding) that can be used as external definitions of teaching and learning.  That is not the ruler or unit of measurement that best serves the scholarship of teaching and learning.

     In our view, SLOs do not dilute our adaptive expertise.  As faculty, we should use Participatory Action Research (PAR) to improve our teaching.  We should adapt to the classroom culture by using our scholarship and expertise.  Obviously, that's our job.  But does WASC really care how we teach?  How can we blame them for putting emphasis on student outcomes?  Does WASC care more about what we do, or about what our students can do as a result of attending our college?  Indeed, our job is the teaching process (the adaptive teaching process), and WASC’s job should be to require SLOs.  We are not necessarily happy that SLOs are now mandated by WASC, but we believe that they neither threaten nor control our teaching.  Therefore, there is no reason to be insulted by the new SLO mandate.
     A final concern expressed in “Rulers” is how to “help invite the future President to see us on our terms (with our unit of measurement).” If we establish our own outcomes and units of measurement, framed in the WASC mandated SLO format, then our new leader will see that we are professional faculty who have done our jobs.  In terms of SLOs, we are rulers of our own destiny, as it is a faculty-led process.  The fault ultimately lies not in SLOs, but in ourselves if we do not take ownership of the process.  Our conclusion mirrors the conclusion in “Rulers,” which states

I can think of nothing more critical to my professional livelihood as a scholar of teaching and learning than to take an active role in defining our ruler.

     If you agree with this heartfelt outlook, and you are concerned about SLOs, we urge you to join our SLO Task Force, where you can become a leader by sharing your ideas and advocating communication about outcomes, rulers, and revisions with our own GCC scholars and experts!   For more information, contact Sid Kolpas, Alice Mecom, or any of your colleagues on the SLO Task Force. &

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