Transparency by design

According to an Aug. 4 story in Inside Higher Ed,...

It's hardly a coincidence that the push for colleges to measure and report how successfully their students achieve certain learning outcomes has been least embraced by elite, traditional institutions already perceived to be atop the higher education pyramid, and championed most by colleges with less name recognition or nontraditional approaches. The former would arguably have the most to lose, and the latter the most to gain, if evidence about student learning were to upend longstanding perceptions about which colleges did the best job.

So it's also not surprising that of all the accountability systems that have emerged from within higher education in the last few years, perhaps the most aggressive and expansive, a project known as Transparency by Design, has come from a group of primarily online institutions that serve adult students.

The article offers some comparisons between TBD and a couple of other highly-touted accountability initiatives, such as the Voluntary System of Accountability. In this matchup, what I like about TBD is their apparent agreement that, rather than focusing on requiring all member institutions to use the same standardized instruments, they're exploring ways in which each institution can put forth the continuous improvement results that make the most sense for them.

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