One of the most important purposes for the teaching function in a graduate professional school is to foster students' mastery of the programmatic learning outcomes that have been agreed upon by faculty as part of the strategic planning process. Students' learning is a composite of courses they have taken. If the contribution of each course to the achievement of program-level outcomes is an important purpose of teaching, then why is that contribution not routinely assessed as part of annual evaluation of teaching effectiveness? The purpose for this paper is to describe a rationale for viewing course-level learning outcomes as one measure of teaching effectiveness and a component of programmatic outcomes assessment. This paper includes a model for unit-level outcomes assessment that links an individual faculty member's coursework contributions with programmatic outcomes, and describes a strategic planning process for developing faculty consensus on accurate statements of unit-level student learning outcomes and corollary methods of assessment.
Academic Exchange Quarterly, v. 5, no. 1, p. 79-86
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/vicki-gregory/3/