PLO Assessment at Bellevue College

01 Context

Why IERA has prioritized PLO assessment

One page, prepared by the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Research and Analytics, states the central reason and the accreditation clock behind everything below.

Bellevue College must demonstrate, consistently across academic programs, what students know and can do, how faculty interpret direct evidence, and how results produce improvements in curriculum, teaching, learning support, and student learning.

Feb. 25, 2026

Bellevue College Year Seven Evaluation of Institutional Effectiveness Report (internal record).
Spring 2026

NWCCU evaluation. Accreditation reaffirmed; Recommendation 3 identifies program-level assessment as noncompliant.
Aug. 5, 2026

NWCCU Commission action letter, the official accreditation record of the finding.
Spring 2028

Ad Hoc Report with Visit. The finding must be resolved within the Commission's required timeframe.

Why PLO assessment comes first

It directly addresses NWCCU Recommendation 3 and Standards 1.C.5 and 1.C.7.
It moves Bellevue from published outcomes to a recurring cycle of direct evidence, faculty review, improvement, and reassessment.
It shows integrated learning at program completion. Course grades and course-level evidence alone are insufficient.
It supplies credible learning evidence for Program Review, learning-support planning, accreditation, and resource decisions.
It creates a foundation for, but does not replace, the College's separately governed ILO-assessment work.

What NWCCU expects

Standard 1.C.5: an effective program-learning assessment system with faculty central to curriculum, assessment, and instructional improvement.
Standard 1.C.7: documented use of results to improve academic and learning-support planning and practices.
A clear, documented, implemented, useful, recurring and faculty-engaged process, not only outcome lists, indirect measures or one-time reports.
Integration with Program Review and institutional planning, including documented actions, ownership, follow-up, and evidence that improvements were implemented.

The line IERA holds

IERA coordinates common timelines, definitions, templates, evidence architecture, records, analysis and accreditation reporting, and monitors completion and system effectiveness. It preserves faculty authority over PLOs, curriculum, academic judgments and improvement decisions, and it does not evaluate individual faculty or take ownership of Program Review. The stated institutional value is durable capacity rather than a one-time compliance response.

Document 010-why-iera-has-prioritized-plo-assessment-at-bellevue-college.pdf

02 Governance

A standing committee, chartered before the work begins

Bellevue College Academic Assessment Committee Charter, Version 2.1, prepared August 2026 and revised August 18, 2026. Sixteen sections written for the members themselves: ten guiding principles, nineteen Committee functions, eighteen expectations of every member, and an explicit list of what falls outside the Committee's authority.

Ten seats, weighted toward the classroom

Proposed membership of the Academic Assessment Committee
Representation	Seats	Primary contribution
One representative from each of four academic divisions	4	Faculty and disciplinary perspectives; communication with academic areas
Library representative	1	Information literacy, learning resources, and academic support
Professional-Technical education representative	1	Applied learning, workforce, advisory, and specialized-accreditation context
Student Services assessment coordinator or role-equivalent	1	Student-support and co-curricular assessment perspective
Associate Director of Accreditation and Assessment	1	Assessment coordination, institutional support, and accreditation alignment
Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Accreditation Liaison Officer	1	Institutional effectiveness, executive coordination, and NWCCU alignment
Student representative	1	Student perspective on learning, assessment, communication, and the student experience
Total	10	Composition preserves a majority with direct academic or instructional responsibilities

The four division representatives and the Professional-Technical representative should ordinarily be faculty. The student representative is a member of the Committee; selection, term, orientation, confidentiality responsibilities and voting status are confirmed before the Charter is adopted.

How it would run

Meetings: Once each month during the academic year, two hours per regular meeting, with special meetings when a time-sensitive matter cannot wait.
Papers: Agenda, draft minutes and available materials posted to the Committee's SharePoint site at least five working days before each regular meeting.
Quorum: A simple majority of currently appointed voting members. The exact number is stated at adoption, because the student representative's voting status is still to be confirmed.
Terms: September 1 to August 31. Representative seats serve two-year staggered terms, up to three consecutive full terms, with initial one- and two-year appointments establishing the staggering.
Co-chairs: A Faculty Co-Chair elected annually from the division, Library or Professional-Technical representatives (one-year term, renewable once), with the Associate Director of Accreditation and Assessment as Administrative Co-Chair.
Attendance: Missing two consecutive regular meetings, or half the regular meetings in a year, prompts a conversation with the co-chairs and the represented area about replacement.
Review: First formal Charter review one year after adoption, then every two years.

What the Committee does not do

Evaluate individual faculty members, staff members or students.
Use assessment results for personnel evaluation or punitive comparison.
Treat grades, enrollment, retention, completion or satisfaction data as substitutes for direct evidence of student learning.
Authorize budgets, staffing, program suspension, program closure or executive decisions.
Supersede specialized-accreditation requirements or professional-technical advisory committees.
Supersede College policy, collective-bargaining agreements, privacy protections, data-governance requirements or applicable law.

Section 16 leaves the approval body, date adopted, effective date and superseded document blank for the approving authority to record. Proposed Charter sponsor: Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs. Proposed administrative home: Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Research, and Analytics.

Document 003-proposed-charter-academic-assessment-committee.pdf

03 Method

The plan, the instrument, and the vocabulary

Three documents stand between the charter and the classroom: a benchmark memorandum recommending the shape of the plan, the form faculty would actually complete, and the terminology groundwork that keeps both consistent.

Research and design memorandum · August 18, 2026 · Benchmark and design recommendation, not proposed policy

Benchmark Models and Recommended Architecture for a Bellevue College PLO Assessment Plan

The review examined current NWCCU requirements, nine publicly available assessment models from NWCCU-accredited institutions, eight models from institutions accredited by HLC, MSCHE, NECHE, SACSCOC and WSCUC, and two practical artifacts supplied by Lou: a 2025 ACBSP mentor and evaluator workshop, and a Summer 2018 longitudinal PLO-results workbook. Its finding: no single institution supplies an ideal model, and effective PLO assessment is not merely a schedule for collecting data. Strong systems create an auditable chain from published PLOs, through curriculum mapping and direct assessment, to faculty interpretation, documented improvement, implementation, and comparable reassessment.

What each strongest model contributes

Skagit Valley College: End-to-end four-year system: annual reporting, rotating outcomes, common rubric, Canvas-to-dashboard workflow, disaggregation, and cumulative review.
Washington State University: The most complete public package of plan templates, annual calendars, measure records, sampling and norming fields, and archive responsibilities.
Oregon State University: Annual report and maturity rubric requiring direct evidence, benchmarks, numerical results, action, and evaluation of prior changes.
Clark College: The clearest quarter-based Plan, Do, Assess/Share, Act calendar and submission deadline.
El Paso Community College: The strongest plan and report specifications: representative all-modality sampling, benchmark rationale, approval, implementation evidence, and retention controls.
Montgomery College and CCBC: The strongest assessment, action and reassessment architecture, with faculty review and comparable follow-up evidence.

Tacoma Community College, Highline College, Lane Community College, Bates Technical College, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, Connecticut State Community College, NWACC, Clovis Community College, Austin Community College and San Francisco State University complete the seventeen.

Recommended plan architecture

I Foundation: status, purpose, NWCCU authority, scope and boundaries, the ILO-PLO-CLO hierarchy, and guiding principles.
II PLO assessment requirements: publication, curriculum mapping, evidence rules, rubrics and calibration, thresholds and targets, coverage and sampling, data quality and small-cell protections.
III Cycle and use of results: annual calendar, multi-year coverage, faculty interpretation, improvement actions, reassessment and impact.
IV Roles, governance and support: program faculty, deans, the Academic Assessment Committee, IERA, and training and workload.
V Records, reporting and plan evaluation: SharePoint repository, retention and privacy, annual reporting, and periodic revision.

Thirty numbered components across five parts, supported by a separately controlled toolkit of eighteen companion resources, from the PLO-CLO curriculum-map template and rubric-calibration guide to the improvement-action record, reassessment log and committee formative-review rubric, so forms can improve without reopening the governing plan.

Provisional cycle for design discussion

Every academic program participates each year, assessing a manageable subset of PLOs, so that all PLOs are assessed within three years, with improvement actions implemented and reassessed on a stated timeline and a fourth-year cumulative review of trends, impact and plan effectiveness.

Because Bellevue must demonstrate progress for the spring 2028 review, implementation may require a transitional readiness and baseline phase first. The final cycle should be set only after inventorying all credentials, PLOs, course mappings, current evidence, faculty capacity, program calendars, specialized-accreditation cycles and available systems.

Governance boundaries the plan recommends

Program faculty retain academic authority to interpret learning evidence and decide the teaching and curricular response. The Committee does not initiate, design, approve or require curriculum changes; those proceed through the Curriculum Advisory Committee. Program Review remains a separate process under its own governance, and ILO assessment remains a separate institutional process that the PLO plan aligns with but does not own.

Document 005-plo-assessment-plan-benchmark-and-recommended-architecture.docx

Working template · Version 1.16 · August 21, 2026

Multi-PLO Artifact Assessment Record

One form for one direct artifact, and the same artifact may provide evidence for up to four PLOs. Thirteen numbered sections carry a program from plan to archive: program and cycle; PLOs, assessed criteria and course traceability; artifact and evidence design; population, section coverage and sampling; PLO-specific scoring expectations and targets; responsibilities and schedule; actual evidence collection; results by PLO; faculty interpretation and decision; improvement actions; reassessment and impact; the evidence record; and a faculty glossary.

Each PLO row records the exact published statement, the instrument criterion, the course, aligned CLOs and assessment point, and why it was selected.
Scoring fields separate the student proficiency threshold from the program benchmark, and require the decision rule to be set before results are viewed.
Missing or excluded artifacts stay visible in the record. Exclusion rules must never be used to remove low-performing work or improve a reported result.
The template deliberately declines to invent a numerical small-cell threshold, on the ground that Bellevue should establish an approved rule.
Changes to a rubric or cut score after planning require documented rationale, consistent rescoring, and an honest statement of lost comparability.

Document 004-multi-plo-artifact-assessment-template-v1-1.pdf

Terminology groundwork

Three public assessment documents, compared

EPCC's Program Learning Outcomes: Guidelines for Assessment, Montgomery College's Assessment Handbook, and NWACC's Learning Assessment Handbook all define their nomenclature. Their vocabularies are not identical, because each reflects its own accreditor, governance, software and reporting architecture. The conclusion: Bellevue should develop one approved vocabulary rather than import any source glossary unchanged.

Outcome hierarchy
Assessment Plan
Assessment Report
Direct measure
Indirect measure
Proficiency threshold
Program benchmark
Performance criterion
Curriculum map
Norming / calibration
Improvement action
Closing the loop
Reassessment
Disaggregation

Fourteen recommended terms, with the prospective Plan kept distinct from the retrospective Report and the student threshold kept distinct from the cohort target.

Document 011-three-public-assessment-documents-terminology-comparison.docx

04 Worked example

BUS 223, from catalog outline to scheduled reassessment

Business Management AAS-T, Winter 2027 baseline. Four working documents, all version 0.1, apply the method to one real course: which published PLOs the artifact can defensibly claim, the exam that produces the evidence, the rubric that scores it, and the planning record that ties them together. The course, the program and the published outcomes are real; the faculty names and the case organization are fictitious, and the package says so on every page.

Do not use the overall exam grade as the PLO result. Each assessed PLO is rated separately, on a 1 to 4 scale, using only its designated evidence and its own analytic rubric row. One student may meet expectations on PLO 1, approach them on PLO 2 and exceed them on PLO 10 from a single exam.

PLO scale: 1 to 4Below, Approaching, Meets, Above
Student threshold: 3 or 4Counts as demonstrated
Program benchmark: 80%Of valid artifacts, per criterion
Result categories: Below / Meets / AboveUnder 80, 80 to 89, 90 or more

01

Alignment reference · Catalog year 2026-27 · Retrieved August 21, 2026

Official course outline and PLO-assessment alignment

BUS 223 Applied Principles of Management is a five-credit course examining planning, organizing, controlling and leading, with five published course outcomes. This reference reproduces the official catalog record, then does the harder work: deciding what a two-hour written midterm can honestly claim.

Defensibly assessed

PLO 1 (contemporary business concepts), PLO 3 (the organization within the larger business environment, including international business), PLO 6 (problem solving and analysis), PLO 9 (human relations, organizational behavior and diversity), PLO 10 (ethics). PLO 2 only if the exam explicitly requires analysis of relationships among functional areas.

Not claimed

PLO 4 (legal business concepts), PLO 5 (business calculations and financial literacy), PLO 7 (oral communication; the essays evidence the written component only), PLO 8 (actual performance as team member and leader). Course Outcome 3, interpersonal skills in a workgroup, needs an observable collaborative activity, not an individual written exam.

Recommended assessment level: Developed, a second-year program checkpoint. A midterm is not terminal program mastery and is not a substitute for later performance-based evidence.

Document 007-bus-223-official-course-outline-and-plo-alignment-reference.docx
02

Assignment · Working demonstration v0.1 · Winter 2027 baseline

The second-year PLO midterm

One hundred points across 120 continuous minutes, individual, online asynchronous and open-note, with generative AI, outside assistance and collaboration prohibited. Section A asks for eight management terms defined in the student's own words and applied to a specific workplace decision (40 points; a definition without an application cannot earn full credit). Sections B and C are 450 to 600 word essays on a shared case, 30 points each.

The common case: HarborPoint Outdoor Supply

A fictitious Seattle-based retailer with 220 employees, six stores and a growing online business, opening its first Canadian store in Vancouver, British Columbia within nine months while introducing AI-assisted inventory forecasting and employee scheduling that Finance expects to cut operating costs by 10 percent within two years. Operations worries about cross-border suppliers, technology warns of integration risk with sales and payroll, and HR reports rising turnover. A scheduling pilot has assigned more evening and weekend shifts to employees with caregiving responsibilities, and employees have raised religious observance, disability and transportation concerns. HarborPoint publicly describes itself as an inclusive and responsible employer.

Essay 1 asks for functional-area coordination, external and international factors, one significant management problem and a justified response. Essay 2 asks for organizational-behavior analysis of the scheduling concerns, diversity and performance, the principal ethical issues and stakeholders, and a recommendation with an effectiveness measure.

Document 009-bus-223-second-year-plo-midterm-assignment-v0-1.docx
03
Instrument · Working demonstration v0.1

Analytic rubric and faculty scoring guide

Six separately scored PLO criteria, each with descriptors at all four levels, alongside a course-grade point guide that is kept deliberately distinct from them.
- PLO 1Concept Accuracy and Applied ExampleSection A. Six terms defined accurately with relevant applications meets expectations; seven or eight with specific applications exceeds.
- PLO 2Functional Integration AnalysisEssay 1. At least three functions explained as working together, with operational connections rather than a list.
- PLO 3External and International Environment AnalysisEssay 1. At least two external or international factors connected to management decisions.
- PLO 6Problem Analysis and Feasible RecommendationBoth essays. If the two differ substantially, the scorer weighs the overall pattern and documents the basis.
- PLO 9Organizational Behavior and Diversity AnalysisEssay 2. At least two relevant concepts applied, with diversity and inclusion tied to organizational effects.
- PLO 10Ethical Issue Identification and ReasoningEssay 2. Principal ethical issues and stakeholders named, with a reasonable justification for the recommended response.
Scoring procedure
1. Two faculty independently score three de-identified sample artifacts.
2. They compare ratings, discuss differences and record agreed interpretations. The goal is consistent application, not forced agreement.
3. One faculty member scores all valid artifacts.
4. A second independently double-scores a selected subset of eight.
5. Differences greater than one performance level are reviewed and resolved against the rubric.
6. A third reviewer checks missing, duplicate and out-of-range ratings, validates denominators and calculations, and confirms no identifiable student information reaches aggregate reports.
Declared pilot limitations

The guide names eight things to examine after the first administration rather than pretending to a polished instrument: whether 120 minutes is sufficient; whether open-note conditions weaken the definitions section; whether Essay 1 elicits enough functional integration for PLO 2; whether one case gives balanced evidence for all six PLOs; whether descriptors need clarifying after calibration; whether an eight-artifact double-scoring subset is adequate; whether online administration creates access limits; and whether later cycles should assess fewer PLOs or add artifacts.

Its own instruction: do not assume these are deficiencies before reviewing evidence, and distinguish learning findings from assessment-method findings.
Document 008-bus-223-plo-analytic-rubric-and-faculty-scoring-guide-v0-1.docx
04

Planning record · Working demonstration v0.1 · August 21, 2026

The completed assessment record

The template above, filled in for Business Management AAS-T in the Social Science and Business Management division: 2026-27 baseline cycle, Year 1, Winter 2027, report stage Plan, occurrence Baseline. It is honest about being unfinished. Every results field reads Pending, and the improvement-action rows read To determine, with an explicit instruction not to preselect the finding.

Population

All students enrolled in the Winter 2027 BUS 223 section at the designated midterm point. Up to 36 could be assessed (published section capacity), with roughly 29 to 35 expected from recent enrollment history.

Sampling

Census of all valid submitted artifacts. One section and a manageable population make sampling unnecessary for the baseline.

Inclusion

Every submitted, readable, complete-enough artifact from an eligible student. Missing, duplicate, unreadable or administratively invalid artifacts are recorded but not scored. Low performance is never excluded.

Disaggregation

None planned for a one-section, one-modality baseline. Aggregate criterion results only, unless an approved, meaningful, privacy-safe comparison becomes feasible.

Context evidence

An optional anonymous three-item student survey on time, clarity of directions and perceived opportunity to demonstrate learning, used to separate possible learning gaps from pilot-method problems. It does not replace the scored exam evidence.

Next administration

Spring 2027, called a reassessment only if an improvement action is implemented first. Same instrument initially, benchmark held at 80 percent, with comparability controls on criteria, timing, scale, threshold and population definition.

Document 006-bus-223-completed-plo-assessment-planning-record-v0-1.docx

Official records: BUS 223 course record Business Management AAS-T program record

05 Reference

Context, not content

Four published documents from other colleges and from the wider field. They are the evidence base the work above draws on, kept separate from it.

Program Learning Outcomes: Guidelines for Assessment

El Paso Community College · Version 3, December 11, 2023

Governs the 2021-2024, 2024-2027 and 2027-2030 assessment cycles. Programs adopt or renew PLOs, obtain approval of a three-year Assessment Plan, collect and disaggregate evidence, and document findings in a Response Report. It opens with a formal definitions and abbreviations section covering PLO, CLO, general education outcome, quality indicator, Assessment Plan and Response Report.

Why it matters here: the clearest distinction between a prospective plan and a retrospective report, plus representative all-modality sampling and retention controls.

Document 012-reference-epcc-program-learning-outcomes-guidelines.pdf
Assessment Handbook

Montgomery College · 2022-2023 edition

Produced by the College's Office of Assessment and updated annually. Programs plan, collect, analyze, implement actions, reassess and integrate evidence within a six-year assessment and review cycle, supported by forms, curriculum mapping, benchmarks and blue "Assessment in Practice" worked examples. Its framing section opens on why grades alone are not enough.

Why it matters here: the most complete explanation of the full assessment, action and reassessment process, and the strongest worked examples of benchmarking and closing the loop.

Document 014-reference-montgomery-college-assessment-handbook.pdf
Learning Assessment Handbook

NorthWest Arkansas Community College · 2023, updated May 2025

Prepared by the Learning Assessment Committee chair and reviewed by the committee, whose members include department assessment coordinators, a library representative and a co-curricular representative. Twelve sections run from policy and framework through developing outcomes and identifying measures to plan and report guidelines, a glossary and sample rubrics.

Why it matters here: the most usable practitioner glossary, evidence taxonomy, performance-criteria guidance and sample rubrics.

Document 015-reference-nwacc-learning-assessment-handbook.pdf
Learning-outcomes assessment software and best practices

August 20, 2026

Reviews Watermark, HelioCampus, Nuventive with Connect-LMS, eLumen Insights for Canvas Outcomes, Blackboard Institutional Effectiveness, Weave, Xitracs and Canvas Outcomes on its own, and shortlists five for a scripted Bellevue demonstration on de-identified data: create outcomes and map them, import rubric results from multiple Canvas sections, sample across modalities, run juried scoring with calibration and discrepancy resolution, disaggregate with small-cell suppression, record action and reassessment, and export an NWCCU-ready evidence package. Its first best practice: start with governance and decisions, not software.

Why it matters here: it keeps the tool question downstream of the system question, and it warns that a change is not an improvement until comparable reassessment shows an effect.

Document 013-reference-assessment-software-and-best-practices-survey.docx

06 Next

Three decisions turn this package into a system.

Adopt the Charter.

Section 16 is waiting on an approval body, a date adopted and an effective date. The student representative's voting status, and therefore the exact quorum number, are confirmed at adoption.
Set the cycle.

The recommended architecture is ready for drafting, but the final cycle should follow an inventory of every credential, PLO, curriculum map, existing practice, faculty capacity and specialized-accreditation calendar, with a transitional readiness and baseline phase ahead of spring 2028.
Pilot before scaling.

Run the BUS 223 Winter 2027 baseline as designed, and pair it with a short RFI and scripted vendor demonstrations. A limited pilot across several varied programs is preferable to an immediate College-wide rollout.

Published outcomes are not enough. This is the system that turns them into evidence.

Why PLO assessment comes first

What NWCCU expects

The line IERA holds

Ten seats, weighted toward the classroom

How it would run

What the Committee does not do

Benchmark Models and Recommended Architecture for a Bellevue College PLO Assessment Plan

What each strongest model contributes

Recommended plan architecture

Provisional cycle for design discussion

Governance boundaries the plan recommends

Multi-PLO Artifact Assessment Record

Three public assessment documents, compared

Official course outline and PLO-assessment alignment

Defensibly assessed

Not claimed

The second-year PLO midterm

The common case: HarborPoint Outdoor Supply

Analytic rubric and faculty scoring guide

Scoring procedure

Declared pilot limitations

The completed assessment record

Program Learning Outcomes: Guidelines for Assessment

Assessment Handbook

Learning Assessment Handbook

Learning-outcomes assessment software and best practices

Three decisions turn this package into a system.

Adopt the Charter.

Set the cycle.

Pilot before scaling.