Cerritos College
Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

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SLOs and IPRs presented to faculty

A detailed presentation of the proposed student learning outcomes strategy and the revised instructional program review process was provided and presented at the general faculty meeting at 11 a.m. on Feb. 26.

Faculty President Bryan Reece and Chair of the Instructional Program Review Committee Mark Fronke hosted the meeting with hopes of getting the faculty on the page and encouraging it to collaborate as a group.

Reece said, “(The faculty) is facing several learning challenges, but it knows what it needs to do to overcome them.”

He added, “If Cerritos College wants to be a great learning institution, it needs to collaborate together as a group and pull in the same direction toward student success.”

The accreditation team that placed Cerritos College on warning made the expansion of SLOs one of the eight required improvements for the college.

Therefore, the faculty will need to learn how to improve its SLOs and continue to produce its Instructional Program Review reports.

Reece and Fronke were responsible for explaining a 16-page description of what student learning outcomes and instructional program reviews are and how to improve those reports.

One of the topics explained by Reece was that although the workload would be intensive, the SLO approach would be faculty-driven rather than administration-driven.

This means that teaching practices will be determined by faculty members and learning outcomes will be written by colleagues.

Though it is an area of controversy, Reece said, it is recommended.

He also stressed the “Habits of Mind” campaign, saying that it encourages the purpose and goal of improving student success.

Fronke tried to encourage the faculty by saying that although it will be a difficult process, everyone on the SLO and IPR committee is there to help.

“We are all here for the students, so we are all here to help,” he said.

When explaining the IPR reports, he provided information on how to present evidence and assertions when submitting reports and presenting them to the IPR committee.

“Because the program review process is a much more mature committee in the sense that it’s been around long enough, it needs to collaborate with the SLO committee and help it through its process,” he said.

These processes are used to improve instruction and student learning, Fronke said, not to “eliminate programs or instructors.”

“If students are not learning, it’s not because we have sucky teachers, or maybe it is,” he joked. “But we need to acknowledge and figure out what it is and try our best to try to improve it.”

SLO co-coordinator Jan Connal tried suggesting to the faculty that if the goal is to improve student learning, then it would make sense to integrate those who support the educative services outside of classroom instruction.

“It’s unrealistic to think that learning happens only inside the classroom,” she said.

She states that Cerritos has a long history of thinking instruction is limited and only occurring in classrooms when really it also happens in counseling and financial aid offices.

“I want to advocate that we shouldn’t separate those who obtain a role in classroom instruction from those entities that support out of classroom instruction,” she said. “Instead, we should be uniting all these entities in order to work on the same process.”

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SLOs and IPRs presented to faculty