Cascadia Community CollegeOutcome and Assessment
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Learning College Paradigm

Interdisciplinarity

Culture of Assessment

Rubrics & Learning Outcomes

Learning Communities


    

Learning Outcome Teams

The curriculum of Cascadia promotes student learning and achievement in four broad areas called college learning outcomes. Upon graduation, a student will posses the foundations of content knowledge and be able to:

  • Learn Actively
  • Think Critically, Creatively and Reflectively
  • Communicate with Clarity and Originality
  • Interact in Complex and Diverse Environments

To support student learning in these four areas, faculty have organized into interdisciplinary Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs), rather than traditional disciplinary departments. The faculty has a secondary form of organization via the Faculty Senate to discuss and resolve issues not directly related to student learning. This dual form of organization is shown below.
Guiding Principles of Formation
  • Primary organization for faculty
  • Interdisciplinary
  • Involves other stakeholders from the college
  • Primary goal to assess student learning


  • Secondary organization for faculty
  • Involves Associate and Tenure Track faculty
  • Discusses issues, concerns and policies not directly related to achievement of the four college learning outcomes.
  • Serves as a unified voice to transmit faculty recommendations to administration.
Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs)
Function: The LOTs primary function is to design strategies to promote and assess student learning of its corresponding college wide outcome. Other responsibilities include:
  • Research pedagogy, best practices and efforts at other schools relating to outcome area
  • Enrich understanding of the outcome area through interdisciplinary discussions with colleagues
  • Use authentic student work to create rubrics capturing the criteria, progressions and levels of achievement
  • Enable all within the institution to understand the background, rationale, implication and expression of the outcomes work.
  • Look beyond student work to assist in the development of rubrics/processes/evidence of achievement of outcomes across campus by all members of the community (e.g. integration of CLO's into faculty tenure process, evaluation instruments for all faculty, staff, and administration).


    • Organization: LOTs will have the following membership:
  • Tenure-track faculty with a diversity of disciplines
  • Associate faculty
  • Representatives from other areas of the college, by department (e.g. Student Success Services, Information and Learning Systems and Technology) and/or classification (e.g. classifies, exempt)
  • Representative from the Library
  • Representative(s) from UW-B
  • Two Cascadia students
  • Facilitator nominated fro the membership who serves for one year

In order to complete the workload required and recognizing that not all LOT members will be able to participate to such depth, each LOT will have a working group. The working group is comprised of tenure-track faculty and those wishing to volunteer their time to the efforts of this group. The number of working group members shall not exceed eight, in order to maximize ability to get work done. In the event that more than 8 people wish to participate in the working group, the balance of the openings will be voted on by the entire LOT. In addition LOT members (Tenure Track Faculty) shall form the Tenure Working Group that will mentor and monitor the progress of individuals on Tenure Track from another LOT. This responsibility is one, which will assist each Tenure Track Faculty in achieving Tenure. The Tenure Working Group will report their finding to the Tenure Review Committee.

Also LOTs will have a LOT lead who will be LOT representative on the Student Learning Council. LOT lead responsibilities are documented in current Cascadia policies. Some of the responsibilities include creating the curriculum schedule as well as the annual schedule.

The primary goal is to achieve representation from all stakeholders, so areas (e.g. Student Success) or groups (classified) within the college are encouraged to nominate representatives to all of the LOTs. Students will be selected by . . . Employees interested in receiving information about a LOT can also subscribe to receive upcoming agendas and minutes without formally participating in the LOT.

Meeting Schedule:

Communication (within LOT, across LOTs and outside of LOT) - The LOT Facilitator maintains the distribution list and is responsible for notifying members of upcoming meetings, soliciting agenda items, disseminating meeting minutes and sharing communication from outside the LOT. In addition to informal lines of communication, the LOT facilitators will disseminate information about LOT activities via email or web site postings to other facilitators. The LOT facilitators will meet regularly with the Executive Team to report on team progress and develop directions for future LOT activities.
 

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