PROGRAM REVIEW & IMPROVEMENT

Student Learning Standards, Westmont College

Introduction

A degree from Westmont College, like a degree from any other institution of higher education testifies to the fact that a graduate has completed a prescribed number of courses and has earned a requisite passing grade in each course. Various honors suggest that some students have mastered the material more fully than others. In addition to acquiring these quantifiable aspects of an education, we at Westmont also hope that our students have been put on a trajectory of development, as a result of their education, that will lead them to live wisely and effectively, and to be agents of God’s loving and gracious redemptive purposes in the world. These larger hopes are embodied in the documents on philosophy of education in the college catalogue.

While Westmont, and most other educational institutions, would readily agree that an education is much more than the accumulation of units and the attainment of a certain grade point average, there has been considerable reluctance in higher education to seek to measure the accomplishments of an education in areas other than cognitive course work. This reluctance is, in part, because the full measure of the effectiveness of an education cannot be taken until long after one has graduated; the measure of an education can only be taken over the course of a lifetime. This reluctance is also recognition that many of the goals of education are not readily assessable by traditional modes of testing and measuring. Thus, there is the concern that, if there is an insistence on measuring all aspects of an educational vision, this will only result in a more circumscribed education vision. This reluctance emerges especially in a context where our deepest hopes in educating students are linked to concerns for their growth in intellectual, moral and spiritual independence and integrity.

In addition to all the practical worries about how to measure fully and accurately the results of an education, there is also a philosophical concern when people speak of measuring the effectiveness of an educational institution by the “learning outcomes” of its graduates. Such emphasis on assessing learning outcomes can seem to suggest that learning is a mechanical process where results can be guaranteed as a result of certain inputs. There is the worry that this approach does not adequately take into account the freedom of a learner to choose not to learn, or that it substitutes a coercive picture of education for a vision of education as invitation. An education that transforms a person must involve the willing engagement of the will of the learner.So, we at Westmont clearly recognize the limitations inherent in any effort to assess many of our educational goals—including some of the goals most crucial to a Christian liberal arts educational vision. Further, we also firmly reject any view of assessment that threatens the freedom of the learner, or that seeks to limit the goals of an education to those that can be quantitatively measured, or that fails to recognize the element of mystery and wonder that is central to a deep and transformative vision of education.

Nevertheless, we want to affirm the value of an institution’s commitment to ongoing assessment of its programs, its faculty and its pedagogical strategies. We want a process in place that not only insures regular review of our curriculum and our instructional strategies, but that provides incentive for the feedback from these reviews to result in ongoing improvement of our programs and our pedagogy. We believe that there is great value in naming the goals of our educational vision, both those goals that are more obviously measurable, and those that are not. In owning our goals openly, we as faculty are more likely to be intentional and creative in pursuing them in ways that are appropriate in our various disciplines. Furthermore, if our goals are openly owned in a way that enlivens our community discussion about pedagogy, we are more likely to learn from each other across disciplines about how we might be more effective. We hope that, in seeking to evaluate the progress of our students in these areas, we may find more effective ways to foster a large and rich Christian liberal arts environment at Westmont College.

Our six Student Learning Standards concern themselves with those areas of an education that go beyond mastery of the content in any particular subject area. One might say that these standards concern themselves with aspects of our education that are common to all areas of study at Westmont. Furthermore, they represent aspects of our educational process that are both prerequisites to obtaining an education in any particular subject area, but they are also constantly being developed as a result of the study of any particular subject area. We certainly recognize that mastery of content is at the root of any education, and we are taking for granted its importance in this document. The assessment of particular disciplines we leave to the various departments. These college-wide standards, while certainly not exhaustive, do attempt to go beyond the learning outcomes that are assumed in any particular discipline, to recognize those areas of learning that are more distinctly characteristic of a Christian Liberal Arts education.

May, 2002