Deactivated user Here is the write-up. I left out using questions banks for scoring outcomes as that will take longer to explain. I will attempt to add screenshots for some of the descriptions below as I am able to.
Overview
Our institution recently realigned program competencies and outcomes to assess student performance across the curriculum. Here is brief description of the process:
One of the schools at our University was searching for a better solution to assess competency through various assessment methods, such as quizzes, papers, oral presentations and examinations. At the course level, faculty outline competencies on their syllabi and map them to assessments that are delivered throughout the semester, enabling students to see how competencies are introduced and reinforced throughout the curriculum. The school was looking for consistency in how students were assessed across programs, so program level competencies and outcomes were introduced and used for aligning with assessment items. This approach made it easy for us to collect data on competencies and outcomes that were used across the program to see how students are progressing.
The Setup
We started at the highest account level in Canvas for creating outcomes. At the time, this would make it easier to update outcomes and import them into sub-accounts and courses so that all the data rolled up to the highest level.
Structure
We structured, or grouped, the Outcomes as follows:
- School > Program > Concentration > Competency > Outcomes
- Bold indicates a Group/Folder created within the Outcomes Tool
- These Outcomes were then imported into the School’s sub-account in Canvas so that they could be assessed by faculty enrolled in courses organized in this sub-account.
The structure was created for faculty to easily navigate to and select outcomes to import into their courses. We used the competency and outcome alignment matrix developed by the school to define this structure.Group/Folder structure is also important for the Student Learning Mastery gradebook. Depending how you organized your Outcomes in the course level outcomes tool will determine how outcomes are organized in this view. For example, we imported the Concentration folder, competencies folder, and outcomes for each competency so that they were grouped by competency in the student learning mastery view. This enables you to be able to see how many outcomes a student is mastering within a competency.
Nomenclature
Again, the nomenclature was created based upon the structure. Each outcome was named as follows:
- School.Program.Concentration.Competency#.Outcome#
- Example: SPH.MPH.EOHS.C1.LO1
- The reason for this nomenclature is due to the Outcomes report tool in Canvas. The report tool does not include the group structure, so we had to create a name that allowed us to see where this particular outcome resides.
Rubric Scale
For easy implementation, our school agreed upon a 5 point scale with easily identifiable descriptions for every learning outcome. This varied slightly from the default rubric in Canvas (5,3,1) as we saw the need to allow faculty to score students who fell between outstanding, acceptable, and unacceptable. Since learning outcomes in a particular program are assessed across multiple courses, it was important to implement a method that was both easy to read and use for both students AND faculty. We the used the API to update outcomes with the rubric after they were created.
There are also some calculation methods to consider. Best score, highest score, decaying average. See here: What calculation methods are available for Outcomes?
Be sure to decide on a calculation method as this will impact the learning mastery gradebook and cannot be adjusted after an outcome is scored.
Alignment
Since outcomes were created at the account level, they need to be imported into the course. Things to note:
- Make sure your outcomes are grouped so that they are organized in the student learning mastery view.
- Faculty cannot delete outcomes from their course once they are imported (admins can), but they can delete outcomes that are in groups. We decided to import outcomes into the course for the faculty so that the folder structure was correct and persistent through all courses.
- If you import any outcomes that will not be assessed, delete those from the course since they will display as "not met" in the learning mastery areas. We import into the course-level based on concentration and then delete those that are not needed so that the folder structure is retained.
- Outcomes are aligned using the rubric tool that can be attached to assignments, quizzes, and discussion boards. Outcomes can be imported onto the rubric to either grade the student or not impact the grade at all. We chose the latter so that outcome scoring was separate from traditional student grades (A, B, C, D, etc).
- Scoring outcomes occurs in speedgrader.
I hope this is helpful. I'll try to clean this up since it is essentially an information dump from my head.
