So the Ohlone Philosophy department, along with all other departments at Ohlone College needs to begin assessing course SLOs (Student Learning Outcomes) as part of the larger accreditation process of the college. This is also an opportunity to reflect upon our teaching techniques and styles, and determine if our students are actually learning the things that we set out for them to learn.
What makes Philosophy Course SLO assessment particularly difficult is that there are many courses that are taught only by adjuncts, specifically:
104 Logic
109A Understanding the Old Testament
109B Understanding the New Testament
110 Introduction to Asian Religions
112 Introduction to Western religions
114 Introduction to Islam
But I am confident in my adjunct professors, and believe that they will help me assist in assessing Course SLOs when it comes time to evaluate their specific Course SLOs.
Complicating matters further is that the philosophy department must under go course review this semester. All course outlines must be reviewed, evaluated, and updated, which includes course SLOs. This will require input from adjuncts who teach these particular courses. I also want to ensure that course SLOs in some way line up with Program SLOs and courses that fall under GE areas should have at least one SLO that matches GE SLOs.
Nicely stated Wayne.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty arising in assessing SLOs is the fact that at least five courses in the Philosophy Department at Ohlone College are actually Religious Studies Courses. (The Department Website and catalog should reflect this.)
The following are the general SLOs used at many CSU Religious Studies departments. These were taken from CSU Chico's Religious Studies Department Website.
SLO1. Students can identify the historical and cultural sources and describe the basic beliefs and practices of a given world religious tradition.
SLO2. Students can illustrate the concepts of ritual, myth, doctrine, ethics, philosophy, and material religious culture by describing and comparing examples of each.
SLO3. Students can explain how religion shapes and has been shaped by other cultural systems in history.
SLO4a. Students can demonstrate understanding of texts on religion (including primary texts) from the perspective of a disciplinary field or fields.
SLO4b. Students can demonstrate understanding of the relation between religious studies methodologies and the methodologies of other disciplines.
SLO5. Students can engage in reasoned dialogue about religion.
SLO6a. Students can make clear, well organized, and substantive written presentations.
SLO6b. Students can make clear, well organized, and substantive oral presentations.
SLO7. Students can produce a research project that demonstrates facility with traditional and electronic religious studies resources and usage of appropriate scholarly style and citation formats.
These give us an idea of what the general SLOs need to look like for RS courses.
Later I will post updated SLOs for each
RS class offered at Ohlone College.
I agree. It's a problem I don't think any other department at Ohlone has, but one that isn't going away any time soon either. I think these are actually pretty helpful. I might copy a few of these, at least in spirit, into some of the courses.
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