Workforce Program Assessment Planning Guide

Step 3: Course Outline Revisions

All courses at Florida State College at Jacksonville have official course outlines that provide the official course title, catalog description, credit/contact hours, textbook recommendations, and topics to be addressed. The official course outlines for college credit, vocational, and adult studies courses can be found on the Curriculum Services website.

In addition to the elements listed above, each course outline also contains a form that lists the course's major learning outcomes. Go to Curriculum Services - Forms and click on Curriculum Course Learning Outcomes and Assessment to download a blank copy of this form.

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING COURSE OUTLINE REVIEW: Your course learning outcomes will depend on your program learning outcomes and your curriculum map, so you should plan to develop these first. Please see the recommended schedule provided in the Program Assessment Checklist.

For workforce courses, the course learning outcomes form is an opportunity to do three things: 1) list the major learning outcomes for the course, 2) list some sample assessment strategies that could be used to determine if students have met the learning outcomes, and 3) show whether/how the course addresses the College's general education learning outcomes. The course learning outcomes (#1 above) could include one or more of the program's core competencies and/or outcomes related to the core competencies.

Once you have developed your program's curriculum map, use it to add or update your courses' learning outcomes by following these steps:

1. Complete Sections 1 and 2 of the Course Learning Outcomes and Assessment Form with your course information.
2. For each course outline, identify the core competencies addressed in that course using the curriculum map.
3. Determine if the core competencies addressed are specific enough to be considered course-level learning outcomes for the course, or if a more specific statement of an outcome would be more appropriate - if so, write these more specific outcome statements. Also write any additional learning outcome statements needed for the course that are unrelated to the core competencies. As a general rule, you should have 3-7 learning outcomes for each course.
4. In Section 5 of the form, list the course learning outcomes you created. In the second column, list some possible assessment strategies that could be used to determine whether students have achieved the outcomes.
5. In Section 4 of the form, check the boxes that correspond to the general education learning outcomes that are addressed in the course - this will depend in part on the core competencies that are addressed by your course learning outcomes, and is something you will have thought about in the process of developing your core competencies.
6. If adding this form is the only change you are making to the course outline, email it to Kay Pope in Curriculum Services; otherwise, submit it as part of a curriculum package to modify the course outline.

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