The Challenges of Effective Learning Interventions

Accrediting bodies like the AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE require you to demonstrate the continuous improvement of program and education quality through the implementation of evidence-based learning interventions.

Even if your actions are evidence-backed by learning outcomes assessment results, the creation and implementation of learning assurance interventions are still greatly impacted by the following three challenges:

• Drawing meaningful conclusions
• Designing practical interventions
• Addressing application obstacles

Let’s delve deeper into each challenge and explore solutions to help you assure accrediting bodies your interventions are improving program and educational quality.

Drawing Meaningful Conclusions

Tackling this challenge requires you to understand and consider the following:

• The Need for Specificity: create a roadmap of the learning outcomes assessment process for internal and external stakeholders by linking learning goals to specific programs and objectives.
• The Criterion Problem: understand that measuring multidimensional concepts has implications such as the fact that no single outcome measure will ever be perfectly valid.
• The Context of the Numbers: interpret the benchmark levels and aggregated program results by determining the difficulty levels of specific assessments, integrating demographics, and building rubrics to describe performance levels.

Designing Practical Interventions

Solving this challenge requires identifying and balancing the following:

• The Needs of the School and Students: balance the needs of the school, obtaining data for accreditation documentation, and the needs of the students, developing relevant skills that will lead to career success.
• The Dual Approaches to Evaluation: balance the summative and formative assessment approaches in order to evaluate learning and document outcomes while also monitoring and enhancing the learning outcomes process.
• The Types of Possible Interventions: implement program-level and/or student-level interventions based on the evidence provided by the learning outcomes assessment process.

Addressing Application Obstacles

Overcoming this challenge requires focusing and anchoring the following:

• The Conversation to Program Quality: encourage internal stakeholders to buy into the interventions by centering the conversation on the enhancement of program quality.
• The Interventions to Content, Not Faculty: interventions must be directly tied to improving program and educational quality and not to faculty performance or competence. Angling interventions around faculty will only create friction and discontent in all internal stakeholders.
• The True Purpose to Students’ Careers: boost engagement and usefulness of interventions by making sure they enhance educational quality and meet student needs in regard to developing relevant knowledge and skills that will lead to success post-graduation.

To learn more about the challenges of implementing effective learning interventions, access your free eBook – The Ultimate Guide to Learning Outcomes Assessment. This eBook will provide you with additional solutions to the aforementioned challenges and will introduce you to multiple assessment solutions designed to ease your burden in the assessment and documentation stages of the learning outcomes assessment process.