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Understanding Educational Assessment: ILOs and PLOs

Otis College of Art and Design instills its Mission, Vision, and Values across all levels of the college. This integrated framework reinforces our guiding principles, ensuring they are woven intuitively into all learnings across campus. Through ongoing assessment, we identify how these values are demonstrated in student learning and seek opportunities to further strengthen these principles throughout the student experience.

Adapted from Northwest Indian College                                              

This framework is designed to ensure that Otis College's Mission, Values, and ILOs are delivered upon at all levels of learning and engagement. From large-scale events like Internship Recruitment Day and O-Launch to daily studio courses, the Otis Experience is rooted in its mission of educating a diverse community of students to become highly skilled, well-informed, and responsible professionals -- empowering them to shape the world.

More information regarding our ILOs can be found on the Student Outcomes page and our Mission and Vision page.

Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs est. 2025)

Otis College of Art and Design’s Institutional Learning Outcomes are action words describing our approach to learning, and what we expect of our students:
GROW ▼
  • Disciplinary knowledge and skills
  • Proficiency in industry-standard skills, technologies, and processes
  • Cross-disciplinary awareness and practice
  • Audience-focused research, historical context and field-specific discourse
  • Capacity to identify and solve creative problems
DARE ▼
  • Innovation
  • Experimentation and play
  • Challenge to the status quo
  • Bravery in their work and their interactions with others
REFLECT ▼
  • Self-awareness
  • Capacity to communicate (orally, written, and/or visually) about their practice
  • Capacity to seek, assemble, evaluate, and ethically apply information and ideas from diverse sources
  • Analysis of both ethical and aesthetic impacts of art and design
CONNECT ▼
  • Understanding of themselves as parts of a larger whole made up of human and non-human beings
  • Awareness of positionality – in the world, their field, their communities
  • Ability to work well, collaborate, and build relationships across differences in identity, perspective, aesthetics, and disciplines
  • Integration of skills, information, and concepts
SHINE ▼
  • Ability to define aspirations, future goals and their role within the creative economy
  • Awareness of audience and ability to cultivate relationships with others in their chosen fields
  • Compelling presentation and exhibition skills, through Annual Exhibition, Capstone, and portfolios
  • Proficiency in time and project management
  • Career readiness, as evidenced by strong interpersonal skills, self-advocacy, adaptation, autonomy, initiative, and willingness to both receive and offer feedback

Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)

Each Department creates individual Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) that illustrate how the institutional learning outcomes are presented within the program and discipline.  

Department PLOs can be found on the Student Learning Outcomes site under Majors.

Curriculum Mapping Resources

Curriculum Mapping Resources

Writing A Learning Outcome

Learning outcomes (LO) describe what student are able to do (knowledge, skills, values, behaviors, “habits of mind”) as a result of a course or program.

Generally there are two types of student learning outcomes (SLO)—Course Learning Outcomes (CLO) and Program Learning Outcomes (PLO). PLOs describe what the program as a whole is expected to achieve and tend to be more general. CLOs describe what a student is expected to be able to do as a result of course, are more specific, and are written by instructors to align with the PLOs.

4 types of learning outcomes:

  • Knowledge, ideas, beliefs, facts (cognitive)
  • Skills and abilities (performative)
  • Values, attitudes, emotions (affective)
  • Caring for others and their own well-being (spiritual)

Why should you care?

  • Better learning, less time wasted, can set high expectations
  • Better performance—students know where you want them to go
  • Focused and strategic teaching
  • Assessment

Most common problem with LOs—not assessable or internal and can’t be observed or demonstrated. Too vague or too specific.

Verbs to avoid: understand, appreciate, comprehend, grasp, know, see, accept, be aware of, be conscious of, learn, perceive, value, get, apprehend, be familiar with

Questions to ask if your outcomes are good:

  • Is the LO observable?
  • Can you and the students know when it is achieved?
  • What evidence would  you need to see if it’s been reached?
  • What sorts of behaviors or performances would you associate with someone who has reached the state?
  • If a student completed your course only having mastered these outcomes would you consider your course a success?
  • Why do these LOs matter to you or your dept?
  • How do these LOs build on what has come before in the program?
  • How do these LOs prepare the students for what comes after?

Otis College of Art and Design | 9045 Lincoln Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045 | MyOtis

Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment | MyOtis | Contact Provost Office