University Teaching & Learning 5000

Learning outcomes and accountability

David Baume, author of two of the items assigned for today’s class, was at York just a few weeks ago to lead a workshop for York Department administrators on the construction of learning outcomes for Department level programmes. You are likely to hear a lot more about efforts of this sort in the future as governments across the world are putting pressure on universities to specify the outcomes students can expect to achieve by completing any particular degree. The push seems to be based on two factors – one, an idea that universities should be more accountable with respect to the benefits they provide in relation to the public’s financial investment, and two, an idea that universities should be offering comparable programmes that make it easy for students to move from one university to another in pursuit of their degrees.

In Ontario universities the acronym UUDLEs is heard increasingly in this context; it stands for university undergraduate degree level expectations. You can read more about the Ontario project here. One of York’s Associate VPs Academic is a staunch supporter of this initiative and you can read his account of the workshop Baume led here.

Many faculty members asked to specify learning outcomes for their courses or programmes fear that this initiative is simply a first step in homogenizing offerings and making it easier for governments to apply a simple-minded system of comparing instructors, courses, degrees or universities with respect to which ones are worthy of funding. In 2006 the Spellings Commission, convened by the US Department of Education, released a report pushing universities to specify and evaluate the attainment of learning outcomes. For a sense of the controversy surrounding the Commission’s efforts see this article from Inside Higher Education. A long list of related articles can be found here.