From Curriculum Guidelines to Learning Outcomes: Assessment at the Program Level

Abstract

The 2000 ASA Guidelines for Undergraduate Statistics majors aimed to provide guidance to programs with undergraduate degrees in statistics as to the content and skills that statistics majors should be learning. The 2014 Guidelines revise the earlier guidelines to reflect changes in the discipline. As programs strive to adjust their curricula to align with the 2014 Guidelines, it is appropriate to also think about developing an assessment cycle of evaluation. This will enable programs to determine whether students are learning what we want them to learn and to work on continuously improving the program over time. The first step is to translate the broader Guidelines into institution-specific measurable learning outcomes. This article focuses on providing examples of learning outcomes developed by different institutions based on the 2000 Guidelines. The companion article by Moore and Kaplan (this issue) focuses on choosing appropriate assessment methods and rubrics and creating an assessment plan. We hope the examples provided are illustrative and that they will assist programs as they implement the 2014 Guidelines.[Received November 2014. Revised July 2015.]