Learning Outcomes at McMaster University

Lavinia Oltean, McMaster University

Jon Kruithof, McMaster University

Background Story

• Gov’t of Ontario was giving money to various projects around productivity and innovation

• University of Guelph and four other D2L clients (McMaster, Mohawk College, Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier) part of the project to work with D2L to improve Analytics/Insights

Timeline

• September 2013 – submit proposal for funding

• November 2013 – proposal accepted• November 2013 – budget for spending from

April 2013, write a mid term report• March 2014 – budget for spending up until

March • June 2014 – start doing the work

Life Sciences

• Looking for alignment between course & program outcomes

• Fall 2014 – one course, one outcome• Winter 2015 – three courses, five outcomes• Spring/Summer 2015 – five courses, all

outcomes• Fall 2015 – full program

Geography and Earth Sciences

• Looking for alignment between course & program outcomes

• Fall 2014 – four course, two outcomes• Winter 2015 – six courses, three outcomes• Fall 2015 – all courses, all outcomes

Org Structure

Org Structure

• Create “shadow” structure to the Org– In our case Program

• Add competencies at the Org level• Add competencies at the Program level• Add objectives at the Template level• Add activities at the Course Offering level• Connect Offering > Template > Program

Report

Lessons Learned

• Logic of Competencies are too rigid• Year over year? How to manage?• Introduced/Practiced/Mastered classification• Global reporting was slow– Fixed by D2L

• Structure of D2L system can be flexible– Using the DOME/OrgUnit Editor to connect

courses allows for multiple levels of reporting

What’s Next - Engineering

• 140 external standards that need to be assessed per student

• 4 levels of achievement – will be assessed with different competencies… – Problematic as reporting will not recognize two

“distinct” competencies are related (eg. Level 1 – Numeric Literacy and Level 2 – Numeric Literacy)

What’s Next - Continuing Education

• Fall 2014 will compare/contrast same course delivered in a blended approach and a face-to-face approach

Beyond “Next”

• Extending to Nursing, MedRadSci– Both programs have external accreditation that

must be reported to– Both have unique challenges in the types of

information they require• Reporting back to D2L