NMC seeks to define strengths, weaknesses

By MARCONI CALINDAS
REPORTER

Northern Mariana College hopes to get a better idea about its strengths and weaknesses after ending a three-day Student Learning Outcome workshop on Thursday.

The seminar, which began Tuesday, was part of the college’s accreditation requirement set by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and sought to determine areas NMC needs to work on in order to provide more quality education to students.

The Commonwealth’s lone tertiary institution flew in Kate Pluta and Janet Fulks, consultants from Bakerfield Colleges, to speak to over 120 participants composed of staff, faculty, and students. Public School System representatives were also present.

The workshop’s first day focused on discovering how NMC and its students could benefit from defining expectations, and aligning them with SLOs that outline what students should do after the completion of a program and how well they have learned in a course. It also aimed to assess these outcomes, which, in turn, should help NMC in its institutional decision-making processes.

The second day of the workshop was a hands-on activity that focused on faculty-led and classroom-based assessment and again on the SLO.

Yesterday, the workshop zeroed in on the effective assessment that begins in the classroom up to the faculty. In this session, they determined how SLOs can create exciting opportunities for professional dialogue and contribute to effective teaching and program planning.

According to Reina Camacho, event coordinator, the outcome of the workshop would make the college aware of its strengths and weaknesses.

“We know we’ve made progress this year,” Camacho said, “So we need to know what we are doing right to maintain that and perhaps even strengthen what we have been doing.”

Camacho said they would schedule an in-depth review of the SLOs. She said that the college is also observing the concepts conveyed in the workshop.

“It’s just a matter of terminology. But we are doing it. We are practicing it,” she added.

Though the school has had these concepts before, a lot of questions still remain, according to her.

“We all got it on paper but are we really implementing it? It’s basically not what we are really teaching the students, it’s what they are taking away and what they can do afterwards….We want all our graduates to leave here with what they can do and apply it,” she said.

Certificates of participation were given to the attendees of the SLO workshop.