My Dim View of Accreditation and "Outcomes Assessment"

I can't see how any earnest educator can take seriously the accreditation process of universities with the proliferation of education jargon and pseudo-philosophical distinctions, for instance, between such things as goals, objectives, and outcomes--which apparently can't be well articulated by anyone promoting such distinctions; nonetheless, we're told over and over that here lies a very important distinction.  I, for one, will not pretend that we're doing something important as we conform our professorial practices to the will of the accreditation "experts."

In truth, accreditation doesn't really care a fig about (ultimate) goals and outcomes.  Accreditation doesn't care what my ultimate goals are (well, as long as they fit with the university goals--but those goals could be pert near anything).  If my goal is to have my students skeptical of the resurrection of Jesus by the end of the semester--GREAT--just make sure this (in some nebulous way) fits with the university goals and make sure to DO THAT.  If an intended outcome is that my students in my Modern Philosophy class learn about Winston Churchill--no one will raise a fuss--just so long as the students' learning about Churchill is an outcome fulfilling a goal for the course.  What the goals are isn't a focus; what matters most is whether one has a means-ends rational plan that is properly documented for the assessors.

Here is an example: I am currently redesigning my online Introduction to Philosophy course.  Presumably because of university assessment procedures, we are to document the matching up of all our assignments with the course objectives.  Every assignment must fulfill an objective in the course and this must be documented.  My first thought is:



"Well OF COURSE the assignments are there to fulfill the course objectives!"  Are there really idiot professors out there who need to be told to make sure their assignments actually MAKE SENSE given THE NATURE OF THE COURSE?!  Are there really professors who don't know that, when designing a course, they are first to begin with the purpose of the course and are then to proceed step-wise in a logical fashion planning out the course such that the goal (or goals) are then fulfilled?  (I just participated in a seminar by "education facilitators" where this point was made explicitly and forcefully, as if this were some great new discovery which professors should be made aware of.  Scary).

My second thought is that there is little point to my documenting this.  Why?  Because the assessor who is looking at my well-documented plan has (a) no expertise whereby to evaluate whether these assignments are the proper ones for my discipline (philosophy) and (b) has no evidence from the document that I properly implemented the plan.

With respect to (a), at best, most of the accreditation assessors will have had one philosophy course long ago.  They will not even be able to articulate what philosophy IS (save a few who by rote memory of the etymology will perhaps cough up, "love of wisdom").  As such they will not know whether the sorts of assignments assigned are proper ones vis-a-vis philosophy (or Ancient Philosophy or Philosophy of Mind or whatever the course might be).  With respect to (b), it is perfectly plausible that I actually follow a different procedure from the one documented, or that I implement it only in part, or that I implement it imperfectly.  For instance, suppose I document that one of my assignments is a debate and that the debate will fulfill such and such goals.  Nonetheless, doofus that I am, I construct a terrible debate format, have the students debate a proposition so vague that the two sides talk past one another, etc.  The assessor has no way of knowing whether this was the case from the documentation I provide for her.  All she knows is that I was aware of the (obvious!) fact that my assignments fulfill my objectives that I have for my course.

Another example of the silliness of the assessment process: we are told over and over (ad nauseam--as was the case in the recent seminar I mentioned) to have course outcomes listed in our syllabi that are measurable.  If you can't measure the extent to which an outcome is being fulfilled, then you need a new outcome.

But why think a thing like that?  Why think that the only goals or outcomes that are worth having are ones which can be measured?  Wisdom can be discerned but it can't be measured.  Is it wrong to have documented in my syllabus that one of my intended outcomes is that students increase is wisdom?  Suppose I'm teaching a spiritual formation class and one of my intended outcomes is that students begin to have a love for their enemies.  Love can be detected but it can't be measured.  Am I now to chuck that outcome because I can't tell some spiritually ignorant assessor that I measure love?  Why should I do that?  An implicit assumption is that the only valuable outcomes in a course are ones that can be empirically evaluated (in a fairly narrow, scientific sense of "empirically").  But is it an empirically demonstrable fact that the only valuable outcomes in a course are ones that be empirically evaluated?  The answer is obvious.

Steven Hales' essay here should be required reading for anyone having to deal with assessment and learning outcomes tomfoolery.   Of course, the current accreditation bodies are not going to go away anytime soon--the assessors' jobs are at stake and the universities have a financial incentive to be accredited because the public has been told to put a lot of stock in accreditation.  But we university professors should be educating the public about the true value of the accreditation process which by my lights ain't much.  If you want to ensure a quality university education then hire professors who aren't idiots and let them do their job as they see fit.  If you want to know that they aren't idiots, then don't be an idiot yourself and get an education.