About Outcomes and Performance Indicators

03/02/2021

The university uses the terms Program Learning Outcome (PLO) and Student Learning Outcome (SLO). According to the Comprehensive Assessment Plan Template:

PLOs (Program learning outcomes): highlight the specific discipline’s knowledge, skills, and dispositions students are expected to know as program graduates.

SLOs (Student learning outcomes): clearly convey the specific and measureable behaviors students will demonstrate in order to achieve the program’s outcomes. Clearly convey the specific and measureable knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors expected and guide the type of assessments to be used to determine if the desired the level of learning has been achieved.

Key characteristics of student learning outcomes include 1) clarity, 2) specificity, (this means they are worded with active verbs stating observable behaviors) and, 3) measurability. Every student learning outcome should be directly aligned with and related to one or more program learning outcomes. SLOs should be limited in number (eight or less) to maintain manageability. An SLO (or a combination of two SLOs) should be assessed with only one assignment (oftentimes called a signature assignment) and in only one course.

ABET uses the terms Student Outcome (SO) and Performance Indicator (PI). According to the CAC 2021-2022 Criteria:

Student outcomes describe what students are expected to know and be able to do by the time of graduation. These relate to the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that students acquire as they progress through the program.

And according to ABET's Assessment Planning page:

Performance indicators represent the knowledge, skills, attitudes or behavior students should be able to demonstrate by the time of graduation that indicate competence related to the outcome.

A document on ABET website called Student Outcomes and Performance Indicators explains the differences. I'm not sure how authoritative the document is, but the explanation seems to make sense. It gives the following example:

Outcome: Students should be able to conduct an experiment and interpret data.

Performance indicators: Students will be able to demonstrate the ability to:

I think we can safely say University PLOs are ABET SOs, but University SLOs   don't seem to be ABET PIs because

Veena shared a sample assessment plan from Biology. Here's how Biology defines their first PLO and the associated SLOs:

PLO 1: Demonstrate knowledge and application of fundamental principles of living systems.

I think this example looks a lot more like ABET PIs. Also Biology has 23 SLOs out of 6 PLOs instead of "eight or less" recommended in the assessment plan template.

So my conclusions are: