Introduction
Blackboard Outcomes is a slick tool that helps us, as an institution, ensure quality and consistency across our curriculum. Are we doing what we say we’re doing? If not, how can we make improvements?
This isn’t an easy task. Especially when comparing similarly purposed courses taught in different departments. How, for example, do we look at two Aesthetic Experience courses, taught from drastically difference perspectives and compare how well they meet Core Goal #4: Participate in an act of artistic creation and reflect on the experience?
We’ll accomplish this task through a committee of secondary assessors who will examine compare and contrast students’ work from various courses, assignments that look different, but have identical programmatic goals. Rather than grading assignment, they’ll examine the work through the lens of the broad goal.
Blackboard Outcomes automates the gathering of assignments with common goals so that you, the professor, don’t have to. What do we need you to do? One simple thing, align these goals to their corresponding assignments. This can be done to current courses, future courses, or even completed courses.
This is a simple task. Let me show you with the example of First Year Seminar (FYS) and their third course goal: writing effectively.