Assurance of Student Learning Actions

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Actions/Closing the loop

One of the most important sections of the ASL report is the Actions section.  The goal of ASL is to make program changes that help students learn more and better.  Actions refer to the decision-making process and actions planned for program improvement.  Essentially, you will analyze how well students achieved the SLOs and met your targets, speculate about causes for weaknesses and strengths in the results, and describe the actions taken to promote success.  Actions should be specific and preferably in present tense (e.g. try to avoid stating what you are “planning” to do).  Examples of changes include: Content in one or more courses were modified (list specific course(s)); one or more new courses were created (list specific course(s)); change in course sequence (detail modifications); change in admission criteria (detail modifications); change in instructional methodology (detail modifications); change in student advisement process (detail modifications); program was suspended; changes in instructional methodology; change of textbooks; facility changes (e.g. classroom modifications); introduction of technology (e.g. smart classrooms, computer facilities, etc.); faculty hires to fill a particular content need; faculty instructional training; developed a more refined assessment tool.  Make sure to include a timeline for the process.  Again, including actions and follow-up activities is essential to the ASL process.

Note: If a program is meeting all goals set for a SLO over several years, then faculty can, for example, select different instruments for that SLO.  Alternatively, departments might replace one SLO with a new SLO.  Another option when achieving learning outcomes is to identify an area for which program students are underperforming and implement changes to improve that area.

Here are other resources for “Closing the Loop”:

Closing the Loop Strategies (University of Michigan- Dearborn)

“Closing the loop”: Types and Examples of Changes (Fullerton)