Assessment of learning outcomes is admittedly a moving target. Learning outcomes, measurement, and assessment assignments shift as discipline, institutional, and student goals adapt to social, economic, political, and cultural historical contexts. There are however, analytically, student learning outcomes that have remained somewhat constant over time. Critical thinking, for example, has stood the test of time as a noble student outcome pursuit. The variation in how this learning outcome has been conceptualized, operationalized, and assessed can easily be found in education repositories. A simple Google search will result in 314 million results.

Disclaimer aside, what follows is the current (2020) iteration of the Department of Sociology Program Student Learning Outcomes aligned with ACC's General Education Outcomes. Course Student Learning Outcomes can be found in their respective course Master Syllabi and it is up to the discretion of the course instructor to align the course level student outcome with our PSLOs. You must provide the rational for your alignment as well as the assessment assignment. If you choose, the department will provide an assessment assignment for you to conduct each semester.

You do not need to formally assess all student learning outcomes for every course, every semester. Ideally, all faculty will assess at least one Course Student Learning Outcome (CSLO) and one Program Student Learning Outcome (PSLO) every course, every Spring semester. Please go to the Gen Ed/PSLO Assessment Page for details on general education and department assessment cycle and assessment instruments.

If you have additional course student learning outcomes not listed in the Master Syllabus for your course, feel free to add them to your syllabus and formally assess for your own emphasis on student learning. It would be great if you share your outcome, assessment assignment, and results with our department faculty. Only those outcomes identified on the master syllabus will be formally assessed and reported to administration on a rotational schedule.