Program Learning Outcomes (PLO)

Breadth of Knowledge: Students identify, explain, and apply multiple approaches to problem solving and knowledge production from within and across disciplines and fields to intellectual, ethical, social, and practical issues.
Depth of Knowledge: Students demonstrate a depth of knowledge in a specific discipline or field and apply the values and ways of knowing and doing specific to that discipline or field to intellectual, ethical, social, and practical issues.
Critical Literacies: Students analyze the ways artistic, oral, quantitative, technological and written expression and information both shape and are shaped by underlying values, assumptions and contexts so that they can critically contribute to local and global communities.
Ways of Reasoning and Inquiry: Students engage in diverse methods of reasoning and inquiry to define problems, identify and evaluate potential solutions, and determine a course of action.
Creativity and Innovation: Students develop and use new approaches to thinking, problem-solving and expression.
Integrative Learning: Students connect disciplines and learning experiences to frame and solve unscripted problems using lenses from multiple fields, contexts, cultures, and identities.
Engagement in the Campus, Local and Global Communities: Students develop dispositions and apply intellect and behaviors to respect and promote social justice and equity on campus and across local and global communities.
Diversity and Inclusion: Students understand how dynamics within global communities influence the ways in which people see the world. They develop dispositions to respectfully interact and collaborate with diverse individuals and groups and acknowledge their own perspectives and biases.

There are many definitions of Program Learning Outcomes and while there is not a clear consensus around any one particular definition there are some general understandings that can be applied broadly to the approach to developing and accessing program outcomes and student learning outcomes at the program level. One approach to developing PLO is the student learning outcomes at the program level. In this approach, outcomes are defined as knowledge, skills, and/or dispositions that the learners in a program should be able to demonstrate upon program completion. Another approach is the development of broader program outcome statements that incorporate many areas of inter-related knowledge and skills developed through a wide range of courses and learning experiences.

The Quarter to Semester transition taken from 2017-2019 offered the faculty at CSUSB the opportunity to engage in inquiry of their academic programs and courses through the curriculum redesign process. An important component of this inquiry was in the area of PLO. Additionally, a representative sample of programs from each academic college provided alignment of their PLO with the Institutional Learning Outcomes and the WSCUC Core Competencies. These alignment matrixes and the richness and diversity of outcomes identified and by the academic programs at CSUSB can be viewed in the linked documents below.

Quarter Program Learning Outcomes Semester Program Learning Outcomes 2020