Pilot Project

Passport Learning Outcomes and Proficiency Criteria

Passport Learning Outcomes

At the October 2012 Passport Negotiation meeting held in Boulder, faculty representatives from participating institutions, along with the Pilot State Facilitators and project staff, developed Passport Learning Outcomes for the three lower-division general education disciplines of the Passport initiative: oral communication, written communication, and quantitative literacy. The Passport Learning Outcome Teams – one for each content area – reviewed, compared, and contrasted the five sets of learning outcomes that were submitted by each pilot state to negotiate an agreed-upon set of learning outcomes – the Passport Learning Outcomes. Institutions that sign the Passport Agreement will be acknowledging that their lower-division general education learning outcomes in these three disciplines map to and are congruent with the Passport Learning Outcomes.

Criteria and Assessment Teams

Following that October meeting, the Criteria and Assessment Teams were assembled to begin work on developing institutional level criteria that indicate the level of proficiency of the PLOs required for a student to earn a Passport. Linked to these criteria are examples of assignments and/or assessments that may be used as appropriate evidence to support a judgment of “competent at the transfer level.” Each of the five pilot states (CA, HI, ND, OR, UT) named representatives to the criteria and assessment teams to serve through May 2013. The C&A Teams will share their work with the Pilot State Facilitators and their stakeholders during several rounds of review, soliciting feedback and resulting, as appropriate, in new versions of the criteria. The goal of teams’ work is to produce the Passport Learning Outcomes and Criteria that will become part of the Interstate Passport Agreement to be available to the pilot states for signature in June 2013.