Program Learning Outcome and Course Learning Outcome

weiwu
Community Novice

As the department's assessment coordinator, I would dream that my colleagues could use outcomes and link them to specific assignments/quizzes/projects in Canvas. However, we've run into the following problems:

1. In terms of the connection between outcomes and assessment measures (e.g. quizzes, tests, projects, discussions, etc.), Canvas requires an outcome to have a criteria with performance levels, pretty much like a type of rubric. However, a grading rubric is usually used for evaluating student performance for a specific assessment measure. So each learning outcome may have several assessment measures (per our accreditation standards, it requires at least 2 measures and 1 has to be direct measure). In this case, assessing the learning outcome should really be the summary of results of these assessment measures. But in Canvas, if you want to associate an outcome with a specific assessment measure, it has to be part of the grading rubric, or simply be the rubric (with only 1 criterion!). Besides, in determining if an outcome is achieved, we usually set an minimum standard and target, e.g. "80% of the class has to be 80% or better for the assessment measure". This is not possible with the current settings of Outcome in Canvas.

To give a specific example, let's say I want to assess oral communication as an outcome, and use a project presentation as the assessment measure. Then I've got a whole grading rubric with 5 criteria and 5 levels of performance with a total of 100 points to assess students' presentation. In this case, I don't really want to use the "Oral Communication Outcome" as the rubric, instead, I'll use the grading rubric to grade students, and summarize their performance to see if 80% of the students scored 80% or better to determine if this Oral Communication Outcome is achieved.  

2. In terms of the mapping between program outcome and course outcomes. There is no direct mapping mechanism available for the two. I read some previous posts that suggesting the account outcome could be the program outcome, but even that, there is no direct mapping between the two. In most accreditation scenarios (e.g. ABET, ACCE), accreditation standards and learning outcomes should be mapped with course outcomes, and assessed at course level. How Canvas can help address this?

My questions are very specific and quite wordy, I apologize for that. But any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.