Honors PSLO 3 Assessment — Where It Stands, in Plain Terms

The gap it's built to fill

When we map honors courses to the eight program outcomes, seven of them have evidence flowing through what courses already do — knowledge, communication, critical thinking, ethics. PSLO 3 is the exception. "Critically synthesize findings from multiple disciplines" isn't something a biology course, or a philosophy course, teaches on its own — it's what's supposed to happen across the honors experience. So on our alignment data it shows up as a pale, empty column, and if HLC asks for evidence of it (Criterion 3.E), we have none to show. That hole is the problem this framework is trying to solve — nothing more exotic than that.

Why it doesn't look like a normal Form 1–3B

You flagged this in the meeting, and you're right.

Everything we normally assess is course-based — one course, one CSLO, run through Forms 1 to 3B. This isn't that, and it can't be, because PSLO 3 is a program-level outcome that no single course can demonstrate. So the framework measures at the program level: it looks at what students do when they carry their course learning across disciplines over time. Same reporting forms at the end — but the thing being measured is the program, not a course. That difference is by design, not an oversight.

How it works, plainly

The design runs top-down — from the program’s identity (the interdisciplinary synthesizer, which is PSLO 3) down to each course. The Honors Common CSLO is the bridge: each honors section anchors on one course CSLO the instructor is already teaching — its HIA focus — and the Common CSLO carries that course-level reasoning up to PSLO 3. Nothing new is imposed on the course; the outline stays locked.

Two assessments, at two levels — don’t conflate them. In their own course the instructor designs the assessment — an assignment, project, presentation, or panel — aligned to their CSLO(s), the HIA theme, and PSLO 3. A standalone one develops the disciplinary reasoning; a course collaboration — a shared project, assessment, or panel between paired courses — develops disciplinary reasoning and integrative learning at once, with each instructor reviewing the shared work from their own disciplinary perspective. Separately, the PSLO 3 assessment itself is the program’s, not any one course’s: a longitudinal, discussion-based instrument run through the Hub that measures and promotes growth in integrative learning across the four semesters. So integrative learning is developed at the course level — especially in collaborations — and measured longitudinally at the program level; and because that program measure belongs to no single department, the decision to run it is the committee’s.

Three moving parts:

• The Honors Common CSLO — the bridge — one program-level outcome, apply disciplinary reasoning to a shared complex problem, that every section reaches through its own course CSLO. It is “common” two ways at once: down toward the course it is satisfied by whatever CSLO that instructor already teaches (no new outcome, outlines untouched); up toward the program it is the single shared outcome every section connects to — the only way an orphan like PSLO 3 becomes measurable. It lives in program documentation, not course outlines.
• A "consultant identity" per course — each honors course produces a kind of professional thinker, derived from the course CSLO the instructor is focusing on for that honors section (grounded in the discipline’s real outcomes — anchored, not invented). Every identity has a built-in blind spot — what that discipline can't answer on its own.
• A four-semester journey — because synthesis can only be measured after a student has worked through multiple lenses.

The point is the friction between them: when the Epidemiologist's "30-year life-expectancy gap" meets the Ethicist's "is that gap an injustice?", that's synthesis happening — and the framework engineers those encounters rather than hoping for them.

Scoring uses a five-criterion weighted rubric adapted from the AAC&U Integrative Learning VALUE rubric (the one this committee reviewed): Role Fidelity (35%) and Evidence Integration (25%) are course-level — the student reasoning from their section’s CSLO; Peer Engagement (15%) and Integration Across Roles (25%) are program-level — the synthesis that only exists because sections are paired across the four-semester arc, and where PSLO 3 actually shows up. Blind-spot awareness is scored as an unweighted gate. It scores disciplinary thinking, not content. The two Co-Directors score it; faculty never grade any of this — their total involvement is roughly 14 minutes a semester.

"We don't have that student population yet" — the design answer

Your sharpest point in the meeting. Here's the piece that resolves it.

You're right that we don't have a pool of students who've already finished 18 honors credits under this model — and we don't need one. The framework is developmental, not retrospective: it doesn't assess students who already completed the program. It enrolls a first-semester cohort now and follows them forward. The pilot's whole job is to start building that population — S1 students in Fall 2026, growing one semester at a time, with the first complete four-semester picture in Spring 2028. Interim checkpoints (S1 baseline this fall, S1→S2 growth next spring) come sooner.

So the population isn't a prerequisite the plan is missing — it's the thing the pilot creates. That's exactly why "pilot," not "adopt and run": we're testing the machine on the first cohort, not asserting we already have four years of students to score.

"I don't know what a Form 1 for this would even look like" — here it is

You said this directly. So here's the Form 1, filled — every field already answered by what's built.

This is a draft, contingent on the committee adopting the outcome — shown so the finished thing is concrete, not to file it. Because the platform captures item-level data at submission, the paper trail (Forms 1→3B) begins the same semester the instrument runs.

What's built · what needs work · what's the committee's call

To be straight about where the line falls — because the report made it sound like the only thing missing was a yes:

It is not "adopt or don't." It needs work, and the committee — everyone in the room — shapes what it becomes.

What "adoption is your call" should have said

This is the phrase that (rightly) didn't sit well.

The report framed it as though your single decision was the only thing holding the plan up. That was the wrong framing, and you corrected it yourself in the meeting: it's the Honors Advisory Committee's decision, which you lead as Director — not yours alone, and not a plan that's finished and merely waiting for a signature. The accurate version is: the framework is a proposal under review by the Honors Advisory Committee; any decision to pilot it is the committee's to make, collaboratively, under Director Shechter. That's the language going into the record from here, and the reason Honors is being taken out of the coordinator report entirely — nothing was assessed, so there's nothing for that report to carry.

Bottom line

Full detail, if useful: the Honors Hub — honorshub.ninotech.us (the walkthrough, the rubric derivation, the student journey, and the platform itself). This page is the plain-language digest of all of it.