Elumen Software

An update from our SLO expert Alice Mecom

October 2007, San Jose, California, Friday afternoon—the last session of the last day of the Student Learning Success Conference, the annual gathering of SLO Coordinators from across the state.  Everyone was there with luggage by the door.  It was the  session entitled “Documenting Student Learning Outcomes Evidence,” and it was packed.

     After three days of workshops and discussions on core competency assessments, linking outcomes to planning to budget, turning dialogue into action, and so on, everyone still had the same question: Where do we store all of these student learning outcomes and assessment cycles data that we are generating?

     The panel at this session was composed of representatives from three community colleges who were using various software systems to house their SLOACs.   The solution that many colleges are turning to, either as a first resort or as a last, is a software system.  One of the most attractive software solutions that is piquing interest statewide is eLumen.

     eLumen was created in 2003 by academic administrators from the University of Minnesota.  eLumen’s mission is to assist organizations to specify and improve actual learning outcomes, in order to:

· create learning outcomes that meet the needs of organizations by developing their ability to support the personal, professional, and intellectual development
of individuals, and

· enable organizations to improve their capacity to make learning outcomes visible.

     There are other software programs that campuses are using; TracDat, Curricunet, and Scantron’s Parscore are some.  What makes eLumen unique is that it goes beyond storing the SLOs; it facilitates and stores the assessment cycles—and it is affordable.  Some colleges that have adopted eLumen include the San Bernadino Community College District, Coast Community College District, Taft College, Las Positas Community College, Los Angeles City College, and Pasadena City College.

     To understand why GCC is considering the purchase of eLumen, one has to see the “big picture” of what we need to do in order to comply with the SLOAC accreditation mandate, and that is to show assessment cycles on an institutional level.

     What we’ve done so far as a campus is to have all disciplines and services develop their SLOs and assessment cycles at the course and service level (aka “the bottom level”).  Ed Karpp and I have been collecting these outcomes and assessment loops for several semesters.  When writers submit their SLOs, they are also asked to align (aka “map”) each outcome to the corresponding core competencies (aka “the institutional SLOs”). These first steps that we have chosen to take were wise–we engaged in campus-wide dialogue among the largest population.  And, we have set ourselves up to accomplish the next phase of implementation (which is immense enough to make anyone cower).

We still need to:

· write and assess SLOs for all degrees and certificates

· assess the core competencies map all of our course and service outcomes to the degree and certificate outcomes

    eLumen can accomplish these tasks for us based on all of the course and service-level work that we have already done by using rubrics.  Each program on campus would create a rubric to measure the outcomes for its degrees and/or certificates.  The courses within the program can measure student success using the program-level rubric, thus creating a program assessment.  The same is true for the core competencies.  Our college would create seven rubrics for our seven core competencies.  So, if your course outcome is aligned with, for example, the critical thinking competency, you can measure your student’s work with the critical thinking rubric.  If all courses and services aligned with this competency are measured in this way, we get an idea of how well across campus our students achieve critical thinking.  Because eLumen aggregates data by course and service, not by section, it is impossible to pinpoint any results to a specific instructor or staff member. Discussions are taking place in the Senate to initiate rubric design and to work through all of the questions that are surfacing.  Whether we use eLumen or not, we still have to design these assessment tools.

     David Shupe, Ph.D., one of the founders of eLumen, came to our campus in October 2007 to present to about 45 GCC attendees.  Afterwards, we conducted a survey of those who attended.  Eight-seven percent of faculty felt that using eLumen to do our campus-wide and program-level assessments would be better than trying to do so ourselves. The complete survey results can be found online at www.glendale.edu/program/slo, but here are some comments:

· “I worry that any template is limiting, but weighed against the monumental task of creating documenting and managing SLOs, I think it's probably a worthwhile trade.”

· “I appreciate the fact that the program was home grown for faculty and that it protects academic freedom.”

· “WE NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET! The Accrediting Commission is setting the bar higher every year, we have no time to attempt ‘trial and error methods.’ If we want to be student-focused, this system will not only help us do the job, but additionally assist faculty, counselors and other service providers to help more students learn effectively, improve our instructional methods and better serve students.”

· “From what I saw at the eLumen presentation, this looks like what we need to be able to integrate all the work we have been doing on SLOs with the rest of the curriculum and make it possible to complete the SLOAC cycle campus wide.  Let's not try to ‘reinvent the wheel,’ we'll just end up spinning ours!”—Lynn McMurrey

back to top