Colleges and Universities nationwide are being
called upon to prove the quality of and degree to
which their students actually learn. Effective
measures are used in the classroom by the
awarding of a grade or other measure of learning of
content-specific domains. If a student grasps the
concepts presented in the classroom as indicated by
their ability to engage in activities such as scholarly debate,
completion of suitable papers, or satisfactory
performance on a test or exam, content-specific
learning can be measured, providing
quantitatively-based evaluation of the quality and
degree of learning.
But a post-secondary education is far more than the
sum total of grades issued in each class completed.
Indeed, student growth, learning
and development (GLD) should be considered as a whole
and specific desirable learning outcomes be
constructed to reflect an education that has fully
prepared students to effectively manage their lives
after graduation. Employers,
taxpayers, legislators, accreditation officials,
bureaucrats and a host of other constituents are interested in a student’s ability to
effectively engage behavior sets that complement all
aspects of their lives, including professional,
career, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.,
Merely
reporting progress toward graduation, cumulative grade
point averages, and ultimate graduation rates are insufficient to answer the
demands for accountability.
Indeed, accountability prescribes that
identification of the ways in which and to what
degree students grow, learn, and develop in a
holistic way. Because no nationally-normed instrument exists that
measures overall GLD, the need for an instrument
such as the Barratt-Frederick University Learning
Outcomes Assessment (UniLOA) is obvious.
In 2006,
during a casual conversation, Mark Frederick asked Will
Barratt “help me understand why so many people in
Student Affairs Divisions quote Chickering and his
works as though it is a stand alone model that can be
relied upon to direct programming decisions?” The answer given
was simple; “it’s about all that’s out there
that most student affairs professionals know of to
guide them."
While the vectors Chickering
identified (developing competence, managing
emotions, developing autonomy, establishing
identity, freeing interpersonal relationships,
developing purpose, and developing integrity) are
useful in appreciating the lived experience of
students and the areas in which growth should occur,
the vectors themselves are broad constructs as
opposed to operational definitions that can be
measured and quantified.
Frederick and Barratt then set out to discover
what qualities, skills, and assets college graduates
should possess by the time they finished their
undergraduate collegiate careers. Their
research uncovered seven specific domains of
interest and which provided a more utilitarian
definition of student growth, learning, and
development. From those seven domains,
operational definitions were written which led to
the creation of the UniLOA.
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