To: Colleagues

From: Alix Gitelman, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

January 12th, 2023

Dear Colleagues,  

I am writing with two important updates from Academic Affairs—one about a new policy on course and program learning outcomes and the other about OSU’s internal work related to statewide progress on common course numbering.

Student Learning Outcomes Policy

In November 2022, the Faculty Senate Curriculum Council approved a new student learning outcomes policy. The policy requires that all courses and programs have measurable student learning outcomes with appropriate breadth, depth, sequencing, and synthesis of learning. You can access the policy here.

To support this policy, the Curriculum Management team, with approval of the Curriculum Council has initiated a project to update learning outcomes for all courses not currently recorded in Curriculum Inventory Management (CIM). The team will reach out to colleges one by one over the next 18 months. Currently, the team is working with the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Business. College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences is slated to begin its work in spring term 2023. Questions about this project can be sent to Caryn Stoess in Curriculum Management.

Separately, as academic units update program learning outcomes, they can do so in CIM. A link for this will be made available in CIM beginning in Spring 2023. Questions about program learning outcomes and updates can be sent to Kristin Nagy Catz in Assessment and Accreditation.

Common Course Numbering (CCN) – Statewide Legislation

In the 2021 legislative session, the state enacted SB 233 requiring all two- and four-year public higher education institutions to create a common course numbering system for commonly transferred courses. The law mandated formation of the Transfer Council and faculty subcommittees to do the work of aligning course names, numbers, credits, descriptions, and learning outcomes. To learn more about this statewide effort, please visit the Higher Education Coordinating Commission’s (HECC’s) Transfer Council website.

Work has already been completed on ten courses, with another 14 slated for completion this academic year. To see lists of these courses please visit the HECC CCN resources webpage. My sincere thanks to the many OSU faculty involved in this work. Note that courses in the new CCN system will have a “Z” at the end of them, so they can be easily identified by students, staff, faculty, and other stakeholders.

The Curriculum Management team, with approval from the Faculty Senate Curriculum Council has developed detailed plans for implementing these curriculum changes at OSU. The implementation needs to be fast-tracked to meet legislative deadlines once courses are approved by HECC. The Curriculum Management team will do the bulk of the work making course updates, and they will work directly with academic units to process all additional course- and program-level changes resulting from CCN changes. Details about these processes can be found here. If you have questions, please contact Erin Bird, Transfer Transitions Coordinator.

Thanks for your attention to these changes, and best wishes for a smooth start to winter term. 

Alix Gitelman 
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Senior Vice Provost                                                       

 

 

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