Tools of Engagement: Technologies and Strategies for All Learning Styles

Brief article on the Faculty Focus site.

Just for fun. Skip this one if you're in a serious mood.

That'll teach UF to downplay zombie threat!

Increasing engagement among online students

Available as a free download from Faculty Focus, a set of articles about increasing engagement among online students. You'll need to register on their web site, but doing that is quick and easy.

Genuine learning, wherever it may be found

Some quotes from an interesting and hopeful story:

To many officials at public and independent nonprofit colleges, for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix and DeVry University seem like brash aggressors with the self-assurance of wheeler dealers. The odd truth of it is that some of the most prominent leaders of the for-profit sector are almost insecure, and surprisingly eager - almost desperate - to alter their "outsider" status in the broad universe of higher education.

That reality was abundantly clear at an unusual gathering here late last week convened by the University of Phoenix, the University of Southern California and the Lumina Foundation for Education. The nominal purpose of the meeting was to start framing an agenda for a new research center that Phoenix is creating, and they invited an intriguing mix of for-profit leaders, higher education researchers, foundation officials and others to suggest (and throw darts at) ideas for the sort of work the center might do.

They made some significant headway toward that goal, reaching general agreement that the center should focus on comparative studies designed to show how the institutions fare in educating students, and that to be credible, the work supported by the institute must be as independent as possible from the for-profit sector itself.

“Unfortunately, [there] are virtually non-existent, especially data-driven, empirical studies that compare traditional and market-based institutions in areas such as learning outcomes, cost to the taxpayer, student debt burdens, and return on investment as measured by the relative worth of degrees to individuals in terms of opportunity costs, employability, or job/career advancement...”

“These institutions are potentially labs for innovation, because there’s experimentation going on” in terms of learning techniques and student support services, but “the studies that would let us glean insights into that isn’t happening...”

Given the types of students that for-profit colleges enroll - predominantly low-income, minority, and first generation in their families to go to college - studies of their students could be extremely useful to other institutions, like urban public universities, some small independent colleges, and two-year institutions, that serve such students, participants in the meeting said. "Lessons you glean from your own operations could be extended to community colleges, and vice versa...."

And now for the rest of the story...

If it's no good, then what good is it?

Jamie Merisotis, of the Lumina Foundation, says (again, though apparently not often enough or loudly enough or convincingly enough!)...

As we pursue our big goal, we are increasingly convinced that ensuring the quality of degrees is every bit as important as increasing the quantity. Increasing the number of degree holders without ensuring the quality of those degrees would be a very hollow achievement for this nation, a major step backward even.

And now, for the rest of the story...

UMass assessment handbook

Here is the UMass handbook for academic program assessment.

Think-alouds as assessment strategy

The link below takes you to the September posts on the ASSESS listserv. Scroll down to the thread called Think-alouds as assessment strategy for some interesting ideas on assessing student learning.

Assessment and other four-letter words

Some quotes from Robert Connor, president of the Teagle Foundation, on the power of words:

When I left a research center for the humanities and started work in a philanthropic foundation over five years ago, I wanted to know if a foundation could make a difference to the extent and depth of student learning in the liberal arts. To answer that question, I had to learn as much as I could about how students learn and how we know about their learning.

The next thing I knew, I was asking whether colleges and universities were translating that understanding of liberal education into clear learning outcomes. The phrase did not come tripping off the tongue, but the question was such an important one that I went right ahead and asked whether their practices were truly and effectively aligned with these outcomes.

Despite its efforts to - or asked such questions. When I started to do so, I found myself making the strange hiss sounds of “assessment,” a sound so savagely obnoxious that my friends began to hint that I was opening the gates to the barbarians.

And now, for the rest of the story...

Increasing student participation

Available as a free download from Faculty Focus, a set of articles about increasing student participation in class. You'll need to register on their web site, but doing that is quick and easy.

Innovative Educators

Each week Innovative Educators posts a long list of links to articles & media items, many of which should be interesting to you. The latest post on their web site is here.