Note that on most campuses these would be called “Program Outcomes” or “Departmental Outcomes,” but UCI Student Affairs calls these sections of our division “units,” so we have named them “Unit Outcomes.” (We call a few of these sections “departments” but we call the majority “units,” so we will refer to all of them as “Unit Outcomes” [UO] to make this easier to understand for the majority.)
Here are the steps in the process of writing a UO, and there are some examples at the bottom of this page. You can conduct a web search for many additional examples, but search for “program outcomes.”
Step 1 – How to Begin Choosing a UO for your Unit
Student Affairs Unit Outcomes (UOs) pertain to something your unit/department strives to do. Like learning outcomes, Unit Outcomes usually should pertain to important aspects of your unit (see your Mission Statement or Vision) or to goals you have for your unit (Strategic Plan types of goals).
What is some type of goal that you:
- Think is important that your unit achieve during the year AND
- Is central to your unit (e.g., tied to your Mission Statement or Strategic Plan) AND
- Would be useful for you to know whether or to what extent the goal is achieved because it will help you to adapt or improve or budget?
A UO should be at least two of these three.
A unit outcome can pertain to numbers of events/workshops held, attendance goals at events/workshops, types or quantity of outreach, or fiscal issues.
Here are a few examples:
- [Unit’s] workshop attendance will increase by at least 10% over our last pre-covid year’s attendance.
- Latinx students are currently underrepresented in our unit’s workshops [or classes or consultations or whatever] so we will do more outreach to attract more Latinx students to our programs.
- Possible benchmarks:
- The percentage of students who participate in our programs who self-report as Latinx will be at least 20%.
- The percentage of students who participate in our programs who self-report as Latinx will increase by 25%.
- Possible benchmarks:
Step 2 – How Will You Use Your UO Assessment Results?
Will data about this UO you are considering be useful? Assessment must be useful and provide better understanding of what your unit does, both for accountability and continuous improvement, so the data must be useful to your unit or it is not a good outcome to assess. In other words, if you find that you are or are not meeting your goal, will that help you to reallocate your priorities, staff duties, or budget so that this outcome can be met? If not, i.e., if you have no use for your UO results, go back to Step 1 and think of another UO. As with LO assessment, UO assessment needs to be useful, not simply done (it’s a requirement that it be useful – that is the purpose of assessment).
Step 3 – How Will You Measure Your Results?
Examples include:
- Change in who seeks your services, e.g., demographics of those you serve
- Increase in number of repeat users of your services
- Tabulation of total attendance numbers
- Tabulation of numbers of workshops or consultations provided
Step 4 – Defining Success (Choosing your Benchmark)
How will you define program success, i.e., decide that you have met your goal? In other words, “operationalize” your outcome (in case you are familiar with that terminology).
- The percentage of students who participate in our programs who self-report as Latinx will be at least 20%.
- Attendance at our ____ workshop will increase by 50%.
- Attendance at each type of workshop will increase by 10% over the previous (non-covid) year.
- We will add five more faculty affiliates to our program, from at least three different schools on campus, who will each attend (number or percentage) of our events to interact with and informally mentor our students.
- We will work to increase our appeal to graduate students, so they will start participating in our programs. We will increase graduate student participation from the current 1% by 3% per year until we reach our goal of 10% graduate students.
- We will double our usual annual attendance numbers of ____ for our Ally training.
- We will raise an additional $____ in donations to our program over the previous year (if you are doing the fundraising yourselves).
Note that benchmarks are often set based on what other campuses are achieving. For example, if one of our sister campuses that is also an HSI has 25% of the students they serve in their unit (that is the counterpart to your unit) self-identify as Latinx, then having 25% in your unit would be a reasonable benchmark, whether your current percentage is 5% or 20%. How many faculty members generally attend your counterpart’s events at UCSD or UCSB or UCD? You can also aspire to being “better” than comparable sister campuses, however you define better.
Step 5 – Write the UO and Benchmark
Write a one- or two-sentence outcome statement and the background needed to understand your outcome in the Outcome box. and the associated benchmark and how the benchmark will be measured, including some details about your instrument(s) in the Benchmark box. Be precise in your wording. Note that most of the outcomes above include the benchmark in the outcome, and that’s fine, just rewrite the benchmark portion. The benchmark should be your goal, don’t make it super easy just so you can reach it, the purpose is to push yourselves and see real change/improvement. Here is the rubric Student Affairs will use to determine whether your outcome is acceptable.
Step 6 – Enter it into the SALO system
The Student Affairs Learning Outcomes (SALO) database is at salo.studentaffairs.uci.edu, and you need to enter your new UO and benchmark into it. If you don’t have access, your director or assessment lead in your unit can give you access, as shown in the SALO instructions.
Instructions for using SALO »