Faculty Resources

Check out our new page about

• Learning Outcomes,

including an interactive introduction and all our documents on the topic. 

Writing good learning outcomes is the first step in the backward design process, following the educational model of "constructive alignment." You can read about constructive alignment here.

• Constructive alignment slides (2024)

• Template for mixing up groups – up to 30 students (PPT document)

See also our separate pages on:

• Post-pandemic teaching: What we’ve learned and what we're learning
• Teaching through campus closures

What do we suggest?

• We suggest that we spend a little time in the first class of each course co-creating course “agreements” or guidelines with our students.

Why?

Agreements (also referred to as ground rules, guidelines, or norms) can help share responsibility for a constructive class environment, can contribute to trust, and promote belonging and inclusion (Addy et al., 2021; Ambrose et al., 2010; Brookfield & Preskill, 2005).

Commentary

Depending on the types of learning activities in our courses and on the topics we discuss, we can develop context-specific sets of agreements for class interaction.

Many of us at SU are doing this by co-constructing agreements with students in the first class, which can take 15-20 minutes. Sometimes, the subjects of our courses – particularly some social justice topics – may mean that it makes more sense for us to provide predetermined agreements to our students (University of Michigan CRLT, n.d.).

Two things to bear in mind are: (1) that agreements need to be ones that both students and faculty can follow (meaning that sometimes students will suggest agreements that we cannot support, so we can simply explain why that’s the case); and (2) the agreements need revisiting regularly (say, once a week) so that they stay fresh in students’ minds as they continue learning.

The University of Michigan’s CRLT provides example agreements as well as questions to consider as we decide which approach is going to work best for our courses.

• Essay rubric: analytic (U of Wyoming)
• Debate rubric: analytic (Purdue U)
• Scientific papers: analytic (PJ Alaimo and J Langenhan, Seattle U)
• Class participation: analytic (B Kelly and T Huston, Seattle U)
• Annotated bibliographies: analytic (J Bean, Seattle U)
• Application of theory: analytic (D Green, UCE Birmingham, UK)
• Practical proposal: analytic (J Bean, Seattle U)
• Public argument: analytic (J Bean, Seattle U)

• Inquiry & analysis
• Critical thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Written Communication
• Oral communication
• Reading
• Quantitative literacy
• Information Literacy
• Teamwork
• Problem-Solving

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

• Civic engagement
• Intercultural knowledge
• Ethical reasoning
• Lifelong learning
• Global learning

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

• Integrative learning

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Information to follow

We encourage you to adapt these forms to suit your own context and the kinds of questions you would like students to answer. Remember that you'll need to respond to students' comments – ideally in the next class after receiving the feedback – so be sure that you will have time to organize their feedback; if you think you will be short of time, try to reduce the amount of feedback students provide you.

Each link automatically downloads an MS Word document.

• Class reaction survey
• Constructive statements
• Discussion-seminar opinion form
• Six open-ended questions
• Teacher behaviors inventory
• Three open-ended questions
• Creating your own survey form

If you'd like help thinking through how best to respond to student feedback, request a consultation with us.

We encourage you to save yourself some time by using these two documents below to structure your course evaluation analysis so that you can make good decisions based on real data.

Both links automatically download an MS Word document.

• Evaluation comment sorting tool: Items within my control
• Evaluation comment sorting tool: Items outside my control

If you'd like help in analyzing student evaluation comments, we can show you using the feedback from a single course and we'll give you our template for you to use with future classes. To do so, request a consultation and we’ll get back to you.