MSASS introduces outcome-based learning

Students in CWRU's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences master's program next fall will notice some changes in what they learn and how they learn it.

Joining a growing number of undergraduate and professional schools in other disciplines, the Mandel School is introducing the concept of outcome-based learning into its curriculum.

Wally Gingerich, professor of social work and one of the chairs of the task force that is overseeing development of the new initiative, said that outcome-based learning is "deciding in advance what we want our students to know, how we want them to be different, then designing course work and field placement experiences to make that happen."

The school's faculty has approved the program in principle and is scheduled to finalize the fully developed curriculum at its May meeting. It will be among the first graduate programs in social work to use the concept in its curriculum.

The revised curriculum will include a great deal of self-assessment among students, or "assessment-as-learning," Gingerich said.

As students progress through the program, they will be asked to evaluate their own skills and compare those evaluations to those of teachers, fellow students and supervisors in their field placement. They also will be required to maintain a portfolio of their work, demonstrating evidence of their abilities. Students will present their portfolio to faculty and fellow students at a day-long workshop in their final semester.

"What makes this exciting is that students will know right from the start what educational outcomes will be expected of them when they graduate," said Karen Kaye, assistant dean for student administration and academic support. "They will also be shown how to integrate what they are learning in the classroom with what they are doing in the field, translating values into action."

Kaye said that students, at the beginning of their first semester, will be assigned to "learning groups," which will meet regularly during the two years of the master's degree program. The groups' purpose is to help students understand the assessment process and discuss problems that arise.

In planning the new curriculum, focus groups were used to compile a list of about 500 specific abilities that graduates should have. After categorizing these skills, Gingerich said, the next step has been to integrate them into the curriculum if they did not exist already and make them more explicit where they did.

"These abilities are not abstract or theoretical," Gingerich said. "They grow out of the day-to-day functions of social work."

A critical element of the curriculum revisions is the emphasis on what the student is actually learning, as opposed to the passive transmission of knowledge.

"It's a real paradigm shift," Gingerich said, "from a focus on teaching to an emphasis on learning."

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