When writing your learning outcome results be thorough and specific, and also be sure to say how you are planning to use (or already using) your results – that is an essential part of your results and thus must be included. (Eventually SALO will have a separate box for how you are using your results, but in the meantime, please include it in the results box.)

An example of what to write as results:

  • During the past year, 127 students attended this program [the program to which the particular LO pertains]. We administered eight-question multiple choice and short answer pre- and post-tests to assess students’ knowledge about the topic. The questions covered the areas of ____, ____, and ____. The average pre-test score was 3.4 and at post, immediately following the presentation, the average score was 7.3. However, we noticed that nearly everyone missed the same question. In hindsight, we feel that the question was not well-worded and was confusing, so we will reword it and collect data again next year to be sure it was the question wording that was the problem, rather than a lack of understanding of this one area of our program. Overall, we are pleased with this result that exceeded our benchmark of 7.0, so we will not be modifying this program for the coming year and will focus our staff time on modifying our _____ program instead.
  • The most often missed questions on the posttest pertained to ____ and ____, so we will be adding more information about those two areas to our presentation for the coming year. Because nearly all students knew the answers to ____ at pre, we will shorten that section of our presentation so we can keep the program length at one hour.

Alternatively, and depending on what your LO was, saying how you’re using your results can include:

  • Are you expanding programs that students are learning a lot from, or advertising them more or differently to reach a broader range or larger number of students?
  • Are you revamping or eliminating programs that are less successful?
  • Are you refocusing resources on specific programs or specific parts of programs based on the assessment results?

Unfortunately, the current version of SALO does not allow the inclusion of graphs or attachments with your results entry. Newer versions will.