Grading the states' higher ed accountability systems

From the Education Sector web site:

In 2008 and 2009, Education Sector conducted a comprehensive analysis of higher education accountability systems in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We analyzed thousands of documents, Web sites, policies, and laws attempting to answer two questions:

1. What information do states collect on their higher education institutions?
2. How do they use that information to affect institutional improvement?

And in December 2008, we published Ready to Assemble: A Model State Higher Education Accountability System, where we describe the current state of the art in state higher education accountability and offer a set of guidelines for designing a model system.

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Free curriculum mapping webinar

This is not a commercial, but I'm always happy to promote the offerings of our corporate brethren if they serve our purposes.

On Aug. 19, 12:00-1:00 (Eastern) the WEAVE folks are delivering a webinar focusing on curriculum mapping. We've (sorry, homophony unintended) "attended" several of their webinars and they're always focused on a particular topic relative to assessment, with little (sometimes no) discussion of their product. Their email publicity about this webinar says...

The process of building a curriculum map or course matrix enables an institution and its programs to create visual representations of how courses and experiences support outcomes/objectives. This powerful process tool can be used in academic and administrative areas alike.

What can you do with mapping? Faculty developing a new curriculum and staff designing programs and services for students can use the tool to align courses and experiences with desired outcomes/objectives. Individually, faculty can see how their courses relate to other courses to form a coherent curriculum. As a group, faculty can review maps and determine where there are gaps in learning opportunities for students. General education committees can see how core general education outcomes/objectives are addressed in the major. Assessment councils can track the types and suitability of assessments used across the curriculum. Maps can also reveal course patterns in relation to accreditation requirements. Discover how you can use mapping to take teaching, learning, and service discussions to a new level.

Here's more information their events, including more webinars.

Strategies for overcoming resistance to assessment

This appeared today on the Faculty Focus web site.

Cut student services? Think again

Excerpts from an article in today's Inside Higher Ed:

The painful art of trimming a college or university budget -- often with the goal of protecting core academic programs while picking and choosing which support services to cut -- may just have gotten a bit more difficult.

A forthcoming working paper by a Cornell University graduate student, Douglas Webber, and Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, found that in certain instances, graduation and persistence rates are linked to greater expenditures on student services. The research findings show a higher positive correlation between graduation rates and spending on student services -- including things like student organizations, additional educational tools, and health and registrar services -- than between graduation rates and instructional or research spending.

The report also found that expenditures on student services increased the graduation rates more for schools with lower average test scores and more students receiving Pell Grants. "Put another way," the report reads, "their effects are largest at institutions that have lower current graduation and first-year persistence rates."

"I think that's the kind of finding you expect, that for the first generation students, the kind of services they would need that help them stay in school, it's much more important," he said. "It's something to keep in mind as colleges and universities need to make cutbacks. These services help keep students in school." Callan further emphasized the need to "built budgets around the needs of your students."

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New blog hosted by AAC&U

This month, as part of their Liberal Education and America's Promise initiative, AAC&U launched liberal.edu nation. In the blog's first post, Debra Humphreys, AAC&U's Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs, said...

This blog will be a platform for discussion about the future of college learning—why the outcomes of a liberal education are so important in today’s world and how those within and outside of higher education understand these outcomes and the idea of a “liberal education.”

We will try to shine a spotlight on what a liberal education is in today’s colleges and universities, but also the ways that the term “liberal education” is still misunderstood—even by many students and their own college and high school teachers.

We will also use this blog to draw attention to important items in the news you may have missed—the good, the bad, the ugly, the funny, the sad—but especially those news items that college administrators and faculty members need to know about in order to ensure that today’s college education provides every student the opportunity to learn what they need to know to thrive in today’s world.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

Some of the most recognizable names in the business of assessment, continuous improvement, and student success (including Kuh, Banta, Ewell, Eaton, Schneider, Wheelan) are behind the new National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). They say that NILOA...

...assists institutions and others in discovering and adopting promising practices in the assessment of college student learning outcomes. Documenting what students learn, know and can do is of growing interest to colleges and universities, accrediting groups, higher education associations, foundations and others beyond campus, including students, their families, employers, and policy makers.

NILOA’s primary objective is to discover and disseminate ways that academic programs and institutions can productively use assessment data internally to inform and strengthen undergraduate education, and externally to communicate with policy makers, families and other stakeholders.

Kuh recently said that he wants NILOA to become the "go to" clearinghouse for resources on assessment and related interests.

Scottish Enhancement Themes

According to their web page...

The Enhancement Themes initiative aims to enhance the student learning experience in Scottish higher education by identifying specific areas (Themes) for development. The Themes encourage academic and support staff and students to share current good practice and collectively generate ideas and models for innovation in learning and teaching.

They seem to be doing a lot of good work in many areas related to student success, including promoting high-impact educational practices, development of student learning outcomes, and program assessment. Take a look.

Involving undergrad students in research

The Higher Education Academy says...

Our vision is for students in UK higher education to enjoy the highest quality learning experience in the world.

One of their ongoing projects is all about getting undergrad students involved in research. This, of course, is one of the high-impact educational practices touted by George Kuh and others. Here's information about, and a download link for, a new booklet on this topic by two prominent UK educators.

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

As far as getting ahead is concerned, I'm getting behind. So I'm always looking for ways to make my life more efficient. Here's a great idea. I'm going to do this as soon as possible.

Engaging introverted students

This article from Faculty Focus discusses ideas for getting introverted students more engaged in classroom activities.

Online course design

Available as a free download from Faculty Focus, a set of articles about techniques for the design of online courses that promote student engagement. You'll need to register on their web site, but doing that is quick and easy.

Participate in a survey on the use of Twitter in high ed

The survey is sponsored by Faculty Focus. Results will be available next month.

Dean of Engaged Learning

According to Inside Higher Ed...

As more and more evidence makes the case for "engaging" students -- that is, involving them deeply in the process of learning -- colleges continue trying to determine how to do just that. For its part, Robert Morris University may be the first to have a dean dedicated exclusively to the idea.

Last month, Shari Payne became the first dean of engaged learning of the 5,000-student private university, located in Pittsburgh. Previously, as director of academic operations, she oversaw the pilot phase of the Student Engagement Transcript -- a program that tracks and certifies a student's participation in faculty-sponsored extracurricular and co-curricular activities. Activities must fall in one of seven areas: arts, culture and creativity; "transcultural/global" experiences, which include studying abroad; research; community service; leadership; professional experience; and independent study projects. Starting in the fall, the university will require incoming freshmen to demonstrate participation in at least two of the seven categories to graduate, on top of completing traditional requirements based on majors.

As dean of engaged learning, Payne said her main duty is to make the now-mandatory program as efficient as possible by coordinating between all the de-centralized offices involved and approving new activities that fulfill the requirements

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Increasing engagement by decreasing technology?

Not so much decreasing it, but using it quite differently. Here are a few excerpts from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled "smart" classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked"—by which he means, sans machines.

His philosophy is that the information delivery common in today's classroom lectures should be recorded and delivered to students as podcasts or online videos before class sessions. To make sure students tune in, he gives them short online multiple-choice tests.

Most students seem more attentive now, he says, though a few have been thrown off by the new system.

"Strangely enough, the people who are most resistant to this model are the students, who are used to being spoon-fed material that is going to be quote unquote on the test," says Mr. Heffernan. "Students have been socialized to view the educational process as essentially passive. The only way we're going to stop that is by radically refiguring the classroom in precisely the way José wants to do it."

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Achieving Obama's college completion goal

In a recent feature article in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Kevin Carey writes about achieving President Obama's college completion goal. A lot of this article is about being more serious about increasing graduation rates. I agree that we have to do this, but when I hear things like this, I worry that in focusing on increasing graduation rates, we might get distracted from what's more important and more fundamental - improving our students' learning. I don't want to graduate a larger number of students if they don't know more and if they're not able to do more. The right way to increase graduation rates is to improve learning and the instructional methods that contribute to that end.

Thankfully, reading farther in this article gets you to this:

Some might argue that a single-minded focus on graduation will tempt institutions to lower academic standards. But that's why accountability should be multidimensional, gathering information about learning, engagement, scholarship and a whole range of outcomes tied to each institution's unique mission.

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Quality Matters

I've just discovered Quality Matters. They sell themselves like this: Inter-Institutional Quality Assurance in Online Learning. The 1st paragraph on their web site goes like this...

Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components. Sponsored by MarylandOnline, Inc, Quality Matters has generated widespread interest and received national recognition for its peer-based approach to quality assurance and continuous improvement in online education. Originating from a FIPSE grant, Quality Matters is now a self-supporting organization offering institutional subscriptions and a range of fee-based services including Quality Matters-managed course reviews and an array of trainings.

Applying learning agreements in the classroom

Loren Kleinman writes...

As a former editor in the business profession and now educator, I see connections between business and classroom best practices, especially when it comes to using academic learning agreements to promote student engagement and leadership. Such learning agreements can increase student accountability in the classroom and lay the foundation for a successful college experience by helping them understand the importance of adhering to their own best practices and goals.

This particular learning agreement is used in the classroom, and preferably with first-year students in order to establish a pattern of regular learning behaviors, which can be applied and reflected upon throughout college.

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Cell phones used to deliver course content

According to eSchool News...

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says schools and colleges should deliver course content to the cell phones that students use to talk and text every day. Some campus officials are listening, and classes via web-enabled cell phones could be mobile learning's next evolution.

"Kids are on their cell phones the 14 hours a day they are not in school," Duncan said in a recent interview with eCampus News at Education Department (ED) headquarters in Washington, D.C. With teenagers and young adults using cell phones constantly, Duncan said, technology officials should find ways to send homework, video lectures, and other classroom material so students can study wherever they are.

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Engaging students in online classes

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

$5 M grant to assess effectiveness of postsecondary ed programs

The Philanthropy News Digest reports that...

The Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, has announced a three-year, $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a series of studies that will help identify the most productive investments in community colleges.

...the studies will examine seven strategies informed by promising but largely untested ideas about what works to increase community college completion rates for low-income young adults: assessing incoming students' needs (not just their level of academic skills); providing highly structured and focused programs; offering high-quality and engaging online courses; accelerating the pace of remedial instruction and thereby reducing the time needed to complete that instruction; contextualizing basic skills instruction in the teaching of academic or occupational content; providing underprepared students with "student success" courses and other non-academic supports; and aligning programs and services to support student progression and success.

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New Leadership for Student Learning and Accountability

Last October the Chronicle of Higher Education announced the formation of a new alliance among several higher ed organizations and foundations to promote the measurement and improvement of student learning. Two of the members of the alliance have published New Leadership for Student Learning and Accountability: A Statement of Principles, Commitments to Action.

Assessment in leadership development programs

In NASPA's web publication, Net Results, there's an article about assessment of student learning outcomes in leadership development programs. Here are a couple of excerpts:

A report from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (2006) outlines several concerns regarding the U.S. higher education system including access, affordability, quality, and accountability. This report states there is a lack of accountability processes to determine if colleges are succeeding in educating students. With the current economic conditions as well as accountability demands from internal and external stakeholders related to the quality of higher education, assessment is an essential part of any department on campus. Administrators must determine the impact programs are having on students in order to justify the basic survival of those programs. These student outcomes could be knowledge gained, skills developed, or behavioral changes based on what is learned and applied. Knowledge gained is easier to assess through pre/post tests or self-evaluations. Skills developed and behavioral changes take place over time and are more difficult to assess.

One of the departments on a college campus that needs to conduct assessment is leadership development programs.

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Eavesdropping on a conference about improving learning in liberal education

Last October the Teagle Foundation and the Spencer Foundation sponsored a conference called How Can Student Learning Best Be Advanced? Achieving Systematic Improvement in Liberal Education. A number of items from the conference, including podcasts from several sessions, reports about the conference in various publications, and transcripts of some of the presentations are on Teagle's website. On the podcasts you can hear such luminaries as Derek Bok, George Kuh, Judith Eaton (president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation), Peter Ewell, and Carol Geary Schneider (president of AAC&U).

Teagle Foundation spring newsletter

Here's the Teagle Foundation's spring 2009 newsletter. Like their web site, this newsletter is a goldmine of information and links to still more information about liberal education, high-impact educational practices, assessment, and related topics.

Sociology turns up assessment

The July 2 Inside Higher Ed reports on a report by the American Sociological Association:

The question of how to measure learning -- and if it can or should be measured at all - continues to stir debate. But despite skeptics' grumblings, sociology departments are increasingly using assessment methods to evaluate students' experiences, according to a new study by the American Sociological Association.

Over all, the number of departments that perform some types of assessment of student learning rose by about 10 percent between 2001, the last year the study was conducted, and 2007.

"It's more and more generally considered a norm of higher education that you need to assess the outcomes of the students who go through colleges or universities," said Roberta Spalter-Roth, a co-author of the study and director of the American Sociological Association's research and development department. "On other hand, there appears to certainly be a group -- I'm not positive how substantial -- who think that assessment is an invasion into their professional autonomy, who feel that increasingly teachers have less control over what's happening in the university, who think it's a parody of social science research."

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Texas A&M Assessment Conference: Call for proposals

The conference will be held February 21-23, 2010 in College Station. It's time now to submit proposals for presentations at the conference. You can do that here. Proposals are due by October 16.

You can also become a Facebook friend of the conference.

Why do we assess?

In a recent edition of Campus Technology, Trent Batson asks this question.

"On the one hand, a good teacher is supposed to model the role of 'coach' by giving continuous, non-judgmental feedback to the learner. On the other (at least in this country), she or he also must periodically grade student performance for the record. The resulting role conflict has been blamed for everything from ritualized student behavior to grade inflation." (Peter Ewell, address at the 18th conference on assessment hosted by AAHE)

But, it's even more complicated than that for teachers, as we all know who have taught over the years or over the decades. Take the three examples of students I had during one year of a first-year writing class:

1. The "Big words will make me look like a good writer and impress the teacher" student.
2. The "Everything is relative" student who could not take a stand so could not develop an argument.
3. The "I'm smart but won't talk in class" student.

The "big words" student took 5 months to convince that people write to communicate and not to impress. I rewarded him for not using big words. The "everything is relative" student had to develop an argument why she should not fail the course; she did that quite well and I rewarded her for having an opinion. The "won't talk in class" student learned to contribute during the group chat sessions (on computers) we had in class for brainstorming: Her classmates recognized that she, in writing, was a natural class leader, she gained confidence, began talking in class, and her classmates regarded her very differently as the semester progressed.

All three students changed in ways that were profound and important for them. But this brings up a very important question: What do we know about those changes and what did the students think about those changes? How could I make one summative statement, the grade, about these three students that captured or even hinted at the valuable life lessons they had learned?

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Creating an online presence for your online students

On the Faculty Focus site for July 1:

No one doubts the assertion that online students are more likely to be successful if they feel connected to their instructor and fellow students, but just what is the best way to build those connections?

In a recent interview, Todd Conaway, an instructional designer at Yavapai College, shared a few tips on building student engagement, including how to use web 2.0 tools to create the kind of rich learning environment today’s online students expect.

Full access to this article requires registration, which is quick and easy.

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Grading the states on accountability

According to the July 1 Inside Higher Ed,

Most states don’t have systems in place to measure college students’ learning outcomes, and rare is the state that actually uses accountability data to drive policy decisions, a new report says.

Education Sector, a think tank promoting education reform, analyzed accountability systems across the nation and found varied results in its report, Ready to Assemble: Grading State Higher Education Accountability Systems. The group’s survey determined that 38 states have little if any system for measuring learning outcomes, adding that 36 states have yet to develop a method for linking college funding to performance.

“Accountability isn’t just about gathering information; it’s about doing something useful with it,” said Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector.

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Student engagement strategies for the online classroom

On the Faculty Focus site for June 29:

Cognitive engagement is important to student success in any learning environment. However, cognitive engagement takes on more significance in the online learning environment, where students learn in a physically isolated environment and often lack elements that typically engage students in the face-to-face classroom.

In a recent interview, Dr. B. Jean Mandernach, associate professor of psychology and research associate for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Park University, talked about some of the strategies she uses to engage online learners.

Q: What are the characteristics of an online course that promotes cognitive engagement?

Mandernach: An online course that promotes optimal student cognitive engagement has three key characteristics, it:

1. integrates active learning environments with authentic learning tasks,
2. fosters a personal connection between members of the class (teacher-student as well as student-student), and
3. facilitates the process of learning in an online environment.

Full access to this article requires registration, which is quick and easy.

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Students can learn ethics through investing

In the June 29 Chronicle of Higher Education there's a story about an effective way to get students engaged in opportunities for authentic learning in an area most of us value as an element of general or liberal education.

My institution, Stetson University, is among many that are confronting ethical issues in financial markets and challenging students to do the same.

Stetson's School of Business Administration is home to the Roland George investments program...founded in 1980 with an initial gift of approximately $586,000....along with the stipulations that there be minimal restrictions on what the students could invest in and that they use real money. Since its inception, the George program has returned more than 7 percent annually after program expenses have been deducted. Now worth $2.2-million, the gift was intended by its founders to begin a student-focused and student-run portfolio.

That goal, however, is not without its challenges. Recently the students managing the portfolio had to confront what I would call "contentious" investing, involving strong differences of opinion as to what constitutes morally and ethically appropriate investments.

Everyone in the room was forced to confront his or her own position on the ethics of the decision, and nobody left without being exposed to the ethical dimensions of a seemingly cut-and-dried investing decision. That is precisely the way it should be. One can disregard controversial issues with an ethical dimension, or one can stare them straight in the face, make a reasoned analysis, and then live with the consequences. In this case, our students didn't blink but made a decision that took all of the facts into consideration.

I am hopeful about how they will face similar issues as professionals. They realized that decisions go beyond the merely technical; that there are larger issues that must be confronted. That is where the real education took place.

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Why are online courses more effective?

A recent story in Inside Higher Ed says:

Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.

A few other quotes:

The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all.

The...report...identified more than 1,000 empirical studies of online learning that were published from 1996 through July 2008. For its conclusions, however, the Education Department considered only a small number (51) of independent studies that met strict criteria. They had to contrast an online teaching experience to a face-to-face situation, measure student learning outcomes, use a "rigorous research design," and provide adequate information to calculate the differences.

So why do online courses do a better job of promoting learning?

[M]anipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning.... Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. "Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning.... [O]nline learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction."

"Online education provides additional opportunities...." "It gives people greater opportunity for flexibility, for experiential learning, for illustrating things in multiple ways such as visualization."

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