Faculty in Action: Researching a Community of Practice Approach to Institutional Learning Outcomes Assessment

Increasingly, postsecondary education institutions are articulating institutional learning outcomes that define core competencies and evidence student learning to justify their value; however, concerns have arisen due to lack of authenticity, faculty autonomy, and representation of diverse disciplinary perspectives and worldviews (Lucas in Policy and Society 33(3):215–224, 2014). To actively engage faculty in co-designing institutional rubrics and learning outcomes assessment, we designed an action research project with the goal of examining and improving assessment practices related to institutional learning outcomes. The project is now in its fourth action research cycle; this paper describes the first two years of trialing a faculty-led community of practice approach to course-embedded assessment we call Strategic Assessment of Institutional Learning. We further describe the landscape of institutional learning outcomes assessment, two iterative cycles of action research, and seven themes that surfaced during the project. These seven themes informed the direction of learning outcomes assessment at our university: 1) student informed consent, 2) trust and community, 3) assignment selection, 4) rubric clarity and disciplinary variation, 5) framing the degree of student achievement, 6) implications for course redesign, and 7) faculty motivation.