Piloting Co-curricular Activities Outcomes Assessment: A Case Study

Peter Lau
Theresa Kwong

Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

 

Abstract:

Institutions of higher education around the globe are increasingly facing greater demand for insight into their educational effectiveness. Thus, it is essential for an institution to answer the key question of “How do we know our students have achieved the graduate outcomes upon graduation?”, and to assure that student learning is indeed occurring and improving. Hence, Outcomes Assessment becomes a very hot and common topic for discussion across institutions in higher education. However, most of the outcomes assessments focus on providing evidence of student learning in academic courses and programmes but neglect the importance of providing evidence for student learning and growing through their participation to co-curricular activities. Since we all know that transformative learning takes place in multiple contexts throughout the university, the assessment of student learning in co-curricular activities should also be of vital importance and should be included for a valid and reliable holistic outcomes assessment exercise at the institutional level.

In this presentation, the presenters will share their experience of using an online outcomes assessment platform, Blackboard Outcomes systems, at the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) to conduct a pilot assessment for students’ achievement of the HKBU Graduate Attribute “Citizenship” after participating in two different co-curricular programmes. A total of 31 student reflective journals (out of ~50) were randomly sampled by the system and the “cross-cultural competence” rubric was selected for this outcomes assessment exercise. The findings from this pilot study not only provide the university an actionable knowledge of how to improve its co-curricular programmes, but also provide an insight on how learning outcomes of co-curricular activities can be effectively assessed at institutional level.