Investigating the Connection between Usability and Learning Outcomes inOnline Learning Environments 

220The trouble withlearningoutcomes

Ten years ago, Richard Shavelson wrote that accreditation pressures could lead us to focus on easily formulated, standardized, and measured student outcomes and to neglect "personal and social responsibility" skills — "personal, civic, moral, social, and intercultural knowledge and actions." He warned that if we do not measure those, "they will drop from sight." If we neglect the ineffable outcomes in our efforts to understand what college is for, and what we accomplish in higher education, they could disappear from our attention, our aspirations, and eventually from our teaching.