The Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs)

Responsibilities and Membership

The Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs) are organized around the college's four learning outcomes and have two basic responsibilities and two distinct memberships.

1. Institutional - serving as vehicles for communication of college-wide matters, and as leaders in the research and development of their particular outcome and all of its related assessment practices.
2. Instructional - serving as vehicles for interdisciplinary communication, planning and implementation of instructional matters for the faculty.

Institutional Membership and Leadership

• The work of the institutional LOTs is facilitated by a LOT Facilitator appointed on an annual basis by the President.
• The LOTs are open systems of governance with college-wide participation and open to all college employees.

Instructional Membership and Leadership

• A LOT Lead appointed on an annual basis by the Vice President for Student Learning facilitates the work of the instructional LOTs.
• All college faculty are members of the instructional LOTs.

Meeting times and dates

The LOTs meet every other week, each LOT meeting twice a month.

Learning Outcome Teams
Mission Statements

• Learn Actively LOT
  • The "Learn Actively" LOT will empower our community to become life-long learners by collectively creating an environment in which teaching is more than telling and learning is more than listening. "The purpose of education is not to fill buckets, but to light fires." - Yeats
• Think LOT
  • The "Think" LOT will provide leadership in the development of clear outcomes, assessment tools, learning strategies and evaluation criteria of critical, creative and reflective thinking at Cascadia.
• Communicate LOT
  • The "Communicate" LOT is committed to improve and enrich the nature and quality of communication among our students, staff, and faculty and with our community. This commitment will be demonstrated by defining, developing and assessing specific communication outcomes which will support the institution's appreciation of cultural richness and increasing globalization. Additionally, the team will create and support opportunities for formal and informal conversation within the college in order to fully recognize the Cascadia vision.
• Interact LOT
  • The "Interact" LOT advocates respect and responsibility for the multiple human and natural environments in which we interact. As a result, Cascadians will become empowered change agents and global citizens.

Learning Outcomes

These college outcomes are the learning goals for all Cascadia students, faculty, administrators and staff. When practiced as lifelong learning habits, they encourage personal growth, enhance productive citizenship, and foster individual and cooperative learning. As they are assessed inside and outside the classroom, these outcomes guide learning, decision-making and actions by all members of the college community.

Cascadia student Ginny Higgins came up with the concept for the Learning Outcomes Logo.

View the full Learning Outcomes Diagram.

Learn   Actively

Learning is a personal, interactive achievement that results in greater expertise and a more comprehensive understanding of the world.

• Develop expertise, broaden perspectives and deepen understanding of the world by seeking information and engaging in meaningful practice
• Construct meaning from expanding and conflicting information
• Engage in learning, both individually and with others, through reading, listening, observing and doing
• Take responsibility for learning

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Think   Critically, Creatively & Reflectively

Reason and imagination are fundamental to problem solving and critical examination of self and others.

• Create, integrate and evaluate ideas across a range of contexts, cultures and areas of knowledge
• Recognize and solve problems using creativity, analysis and intuition
• Examine one’s attitudes, values and assumptions, and reflect on their implications and consequences

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Communicate   with Clarity & Originality

The ability to exchange ideas and information is essential to personal growth, productive work, and societal vitality.

• Organize and articulate ideas for a range of audiences and purposes
• Use written, spoken and symbolic forms to convey concepts creatively
• Use technology to gather, process and communicate information

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Interact   in Diverse & Complex Environments

Successful negotiation through our increasingly complex, interdependent and global society requires knowledge and awareness of others as well as enhanced interaction skills.

• Build interpersonal skills through knowledge of diverse ideas, values and perspectives
• Collaborate with others in complicated, dynamic and ambiguous situations
• Practice civility, empathy, honesty and personal responsibility

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Learning Outcome Teams

The curriculum of Cascadia promotes student learning and achievement in four broad areas called college learning outcomes. Upon graduation, a student will posses the foundations of content knowledge and be able to: Learn Actively Think Critically, Creatively and Reflectively Communicate with Clarity and Originality Interact in Complex and Diverse Environments To support student learning in these four areas, faculty have organized into interdisciplinary Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs), rather than traditional disciplinary departments. The faculty has a secondary form of organization via the Faculty Senate to discuss and resolve issues not directly related to student learning. This dual form of organization is shown below.
	Guiding Principles of Formation Primary organization for faculty Interdisciplinary Involves other stakeholders from the college Primary goal to assess student learning Secondary organization for faculty Involves Associate and Tenure Track faculty Discusses issues, concerns and policies not directly related to achievement of the four college learning outcomes. Serves as a unified voice to transmit faculty recommendations to administration.
Learning Outcome Teams (LOTs) Function: The LOTs primary function is to design strategies to promote and assess student learning of its corresponding college wide outcome. Other responsibilities include: Research pedagogy, best practices and efforts at other schools relating to outcome area Enrich understanding of the outcome area through interdisciplinary discussions with colleagues Use authentic student work to create rubrics capturing the criteria, progressions and levels of achievement Enable all within the institution to understand the background, rationale, implication and expression of the outcomes work. Look beyond student work to assist in the development of rubrics/processes/evidence of achievement of outcomes across campus by all members of the community (e.g. integration of CLO's into faculty tenure process, evaluation instruments for all faculty, staff, and administration). Organization: LOTs will have the following membership: Tenure-track faculty with a diversity of disciplines Associate faculty Representatives from other areas of the college, by department (e.g. Student Success Services, Information and Learning Systems and Technology) and/or classification (e.g. classifies, exempt) Representative from the Library Representative(s) from UW-B Two Cascadia students Facilitator nominated fro the membership who serves for one year In order to complete the workload required and recognizing that not all LOT members will be able to participate to such depth, each LOT will have a working group. The working group is comprised of tenure-track faculty and those wishing to volunteer their time to the efforts of this group. The number of working group members shall not exceed eight, in order to maximize ability to get work done. In the event that more than 8 people wish to participate in the working group, the balance of the openings will be voted on by the entire LOT. In addition LOT members (Tenure Track Faculty) shall form the Tenure Working Group that will mentor and monitor the progress of individuals on Tenure Track from another LOT. This responsibility is one, which will assist each Tenure Track Faculty in achieving Tenure. The Tenure Working Group will report their finding to the Tenure Review Committee. Also LOTs will have a LOT lead who will be LOT representative on the Student Learning Council. LOT lead responsibilities are documented in current Cascadia policies. Some of the responsibilities include creating the curriculum schedule as well as the annual schedule. The primary goal is to achieve representation from all stakeholders, so areas (e.g. Student Success) or groups (classified) within the college are encouraged to nominate representatives to all of the LOTs. Students will be selected by . . . Employees interested in receiving information about a LOT can also subscribe to receive upcoming agendas and minutes without formally participating in the LOT. Meeting Schedule: Communication (within LOT, across LOTs and outside of LOT) - The LOT Facilitator maintains the distribution list and is responsible for notifying members of upcoming meetings, soliciting agenda items, disseminating meeting minutes and sharing communication from outside the LOT. In addition to informal lines of communication, the LOT facilitators will disseminate information about LOT activities via email or web site postings to other facilitators. The LOT facilitators will meet regularly with the Executive Team to report on team progress and develop directions for future LOT activities.