CSU PLO Review Assistant
A thought partner for drafting and revising Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
The CSU PLO Review Assistant helps faculty draft or revise Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) for a degree, concentration, minor, or certificate program so your program arrives at the formal approval process with a stronger draft.
What it Does
This assistant reviews your program’s PLOs against CSU’s institutional assessment guidelines and general degree-level expectations. It will:
- Ask clarifying questions about your program and its PLOs
- Evaluate each PLO for alignment, degree-level rigor, measurability, and distinctiveness
- Propose revisions with clear reasoning tied to specific guidelines
- Produce a clean summary you can carry into your program proposal
How a Session Works
Orient — The assistant restates what your degree level typically requires and asks you to confirm or correct that framing.
Evaluate — Each PLO is assessed for alignment, degree-level fit, disciplinary plausibility, measurability, and distinctiveness.
Feedback — You’ll receive structured feedback per PLO: what’s working, what’s missing, a suggested revision, and the rationale behind it.
Iterate — Workshop specific PLOs further, add new ones, or move to a summary.
Summary — A final list of current + suggested PLOs, plus open questions to resolve with your chair, dean, or the registrar’s office before submitting.
Before you start, have ready:
- Your program’s name, degree level (BA, MA, MFA, PhD, certificate, minor, concentration, etc.), and department/unit
- Your program’s current PLOs (verbatim), or note that you’re starting from scratch
- Your program’s current description or mission statement
- What distinguishes your program from similar programs elsewhere
Good to Know
- The assistant only evaluates against CSU’s provided assessment guidelines. It will tell you plainly if it’s missing information it needs.
- It flags its own uncertainty on discipline-specific or accreditation-specific norms (e.g., licensure fields, ABET, CACREP, CAEP) rather than guessing.
- It won’t flatten a distinctive program into generic boilerplate to fit a template.
- Questions about the tool? Contact CSU’s Director of Assessment, Dr. Stephanie Foster ([email protected]).
Data Security
The PLO Review Assistant runs inside NebulaOne, CSU’s generative AI platform, which is powered by NebulaOne, built on the Azure OpenAI stack, and governed by CSU’s own Responsible AI framework. In practice, that means:
- All data, prompts, and uploads stay inside the university’s Microsoft Azure tenant — your data never leaves CSU.
- You sign in with your CSU NetID and password, so access is tied to your university identity, not a public account.
- Every interaction is expected to follow CSU’s Responsible AI guidelines and data governance standards.
For the full data governance policy, see CSU’s Responsible AI guidelines. Learn more about the broader CSU-GPT/NebulaOne platform.
As with any AI tool, avoid pasting information you wouldn’t otherwise put in an internal CSU system, and don’t include sensitive student records (FERPA-protected data) in your PLO drafting sessions.