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.

New community college accountability system

According to Inside Higher Ed,

...the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation for Education announced Tuesday their funding of an effort to create a national, voluntary accountability system for community colleges.

The idea is to develop “common set of metrics and data points to evaluate their effectiveness, both internally and against one another, developed specifically for their mission.”

What MIGHT make this effort different from similar ones?

“We need to try to build on progression measures of students and not just focus on the final outcome of degree and certificate attainment,”.... “For instance, we need to highlight certain points along the learning path toward reaching graduation, such as the attainment of 30 credit hours or 60 credit hours or after the progression from development to college-level coursework [all points after which it is more likely that a student will graduate]. We also need to catch the things that community colleges do that aren’t necessarily credential specific, such as work force and community development. Maybe we could track job placement rates in these programs or show the income change among students who’ve taken x number of courses at a community college.”

Officials from Gates and Lumina expressed a similar desire to see better measurements taken at prescribed benchmarks as students move through community colleges.

“We need to see beyond graduation rates.... Even if colleges find that they have poor graduation rates - and many of them do - they can’t tell where students get lost and how they can get along to improve themselves. We need to pay more attention to milestone markers. Of course, we’re still interested in outcomes, but we need to know more about what’s happening along the way."

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

Assessing online learning

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

New issue of Diversity & Democracy

The new issue of AAC&U's publication, Diversity & Democracy, is now available.

New issue of AAC&U News

The new October 2009 issue of AAC&U News, is now available.

How to have high impact in hard times

George Kuh is one of the godfathers of high-impact educational practices and student engagement. He wrote an article for a recent issue of the Journal of College and Character in which he addressed the tough challenge of maintaining high-impact educational practices in difficult economic times that mean retrenchment in many institutions. A few quotes:

How do we get through the next 18 months without the quality of the student experience eroding significantly?

Four sets of actions may help limit the most deleterious effects on the student experience of this perfectly miserable storm.

First, the most direct route to preserving educational quality is to build a zero-based operating budget that privileges effective educational practices in ways that are congruent with the institution’s mission. These practices include engaging pedagogies such as active and collaborative learning, prompt feedback, and holding students to high expectations…and the recently identified high-impact activities that induce high levels of engagement on the part of all types of students including those from historically underrepresented groups…. Among these activities are learning communities, study abroad, internships, undergraduate research, and service learning. Although some high-impact activities may cost more than delivering instruction via lecture, they are especially good at enhancing engagement and learning. Equally important, student engagement and persistence do not appear to be directly related to the amount of institutional expenditures…. However, where money is spent does make a difference. For example, one recent study found 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…. Gwendolyn Dungy, NASPA executive director, wisely said that these findings alone do not justify moving more resources into student services…. More important, perhaps, is finding ways for student services and academic staff to collaborate productively on serving students well, both in and out of the classroom.

The second action is for institutional leaders, faculty, and staff to maintain a laser-like focus to make sure core teaching, learning, and student support functions are done well

Third, seek ways to stretch resources by using student staff in ways that fuel engagement and learning. Two approaches come to mind. The first is to use more undergraduates in instructional roles, such as teaching assistants in lower division courses, peer leaders for learning communities, learning center tutors, and research assistants…. Another approach is to expand the number of students who work on campus in essential functions and use the work experience to enhance its educational impact by intentionally creating some of same conditions that characterize the high-impact activities mentioned earlier.

The fourth set of actions is inspirational, motivational leadership - a tall order. At the end of the day, people are integral to everything worthwhile that happens in a college or university. Relationships matter to student, faculty, and staff performance. However quaint it may sound, maintaining the morale of everyone on campus may be the most important and only thing senior administrators and staff can do to maintain educational quality in coming months that does not have a direct monetary cost.

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

Civic engagement: Gap between goals & reality

According to today's Inside Higher Ed,

There is strong support among students and faculty members for the idea that colleges have a role to play in encouraging civic engagement and promoting good citizenship. But there are real doubts about whether colleges are actually carrying out that role.

These are the key findings of a survey being released today by [AAC&U]. The survey results are from 23,000 students at 23 colleges and universities; the survey is part of the association's Core Commitments project...to encourage educational goals related to personal and social responsibility.

Among the institutions in the survey, it appears that the longer a student is on campus, the less likely he or she is to think that such issues are a key part of the campus culture.

It should worry educators that students don't perceive that their colleges are helping them to consider "What are my responsibilities with the knowledge I have gained?" or "What should I be asking as a citizen?"

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