This year’s Mid-Year Opening Conference and Professional Development Day will be January 9. During the professional development portion of the day, we will continue our focus on developing course outcomes with the goal of finalizing all course outlines by January 13. All courses outlines will be due to area chairs on January 13, and those outlines will all need to have at least one outcome in each of the six boxes: Foundational Knowledge, Application, Integration, Human Dimension, Caring, and Learning How to Learn. Together we will look at specific examples of good outcomes and discuss how to create those outcomes and make them SMART.

Those of you with courses that already have completed outlines will have time to work on linking assessments explicitly to the outcomes as well as looking at how your course activities link to those assessments. This day will be a chance for all of us to continue thinking about what we really want our students to learn in our courses and how we can promote and assess that learning. You will have lots of time to work with your colleagues on your specific courses’ outlines and assessments.