Evidence of Student Learning Outcomes – Why and How?

Abstract

Providing evidence of student learning is important for quality assurance, ensuring that institutions, teachers, and students are achieving the learning outcomes that they intend and claim to achieve. This kind of quality-assurance standard helps institutions continuously improve their academic programmes by ensuring that students are provided with the appropriate opportunities and support, and that the quality of provision is comparable to international best practice. Quality auditing agencies and accreditation bodies have been focusing on assuring the quality of teaching and learning processes, adopting and implementing more reliable processes such as outcomes based approach to student learning. However, the focus is now more shifted to the assurance of student learning outcomes at the institutional and programme level, leading to the increasing attention on the assessment of student learning outcomes in terms of both direct and indirect evidence of learning outcomes. Discussion on the purposes of learning outcomes assessment and more importantly, how learning outcomes are assessed in higher education institutions are thus, hot topics in higher education. When we talk about learning outcomes, teachers and students often focus on academic discipline knowledge, the concern mainly emphases on content knowledge students may learn and achieve. But what about the generic skills competency that most universities have embedded into their mission statements, educational aims and institution learning outcomes and are now a graduation requirement? How are these learning outcomes being assessed and reported? In this workshop, we will discuss ways, processes and issues to collect, analyse, reflect and act upon the evidence of student learning in both academic discipline knowledge and generic skills competency.