Assess this!

Students can get college credit for life experience

2011-05-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

In theory, it makes perfect sense. What we should be interested in are outcomes. What do you know? What can you do? How competencies were acquired should be of less interest. I fully support efforts to develop valid assessments of the competencies we value, and giving credit for them when they're demonstrated. But all of that is easier said than done.

Add one more thing to the list of tasks that colleges can outsource.

This time, it's assessing "experiential learning"—that is, the skills students have gained in the workplace and other life trials—and determining how many credit hours should be awarded for that learning. Two fledgling organizations are game.

The idea of handing such decisions to outsiders might make some faculty members wince. But the services' creators say that their networks of portfolio evaluators will establish national norms that will make experiential-learning assessment more clear-cut, rigorous, and credible. And as the concept gains legitimacy, they say, it could help hundreds of thousands of people complete college.

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

Faculty union leaders support assessment

2011-05-17T08:13:00.001-05:00

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education. A couple of quotes to get you going:

The leaders of three large faculty unions say they support assessments of student learning as a means of informing instruction and curriculum, according to a new paper being released by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, an organization that encourages the use of assessment data to shape the conversation about undergraduate education.

In the paper, Lawrence Gold, director of the higher-education department of the American Federation of Teachers, Gary Rhoades, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, and Mark Smith, a senior policy analyst in higher education of the National Education Association present a united front in advocating that, with local control, faculty should use student-learning assessments to improve students' experiences in the classroom.

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

New effort to understand learning outcomes

2011-05-16T08:55:00.000-05:00

One of the Quick Takes from today's Inside Higher Ed:

A group of public and for-profit institutions has agreed to collaborate on a project aimed at finding a common way to use the data they collect about students' academic progress to better understand how and why students succeed or fail. The project will be led by WCET, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, and funded by a new $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is designed to bring student-level data (drawn from learning management and student information systems) from six institutions -- American Public University System, Colorado Community College System, Rio Salado College, University of Hawaii System, University of Illinois Springfield, and the University of Phoenix -- into a common format so they can be stripped of identifying information about students and merged into one dataset. The researchers say this will allow them to study the variables that affect student progress, and test the ability to merge student-level data from numerous and varied colleges in one place -- a goal that some policy makers have laid out as the holy grail of education research.

Assessment at Texas A&M

2011-03-04T14:33:00.000-06:00

From AAC&U News. A couple of quotes:

A big part of our work on assessment is simply demystifying the process, giving examples of what assessment looks like and how it works. Humor really helps, with frequent reminders that assessment is for them—for the faculty.

One of the university’s main beliefs is that assessment should be useful to the faculty. By emphasizing this utility, Matthews has been able to get faculty members from many fields on board with assessment. “If you do program-level assessment well, it will give you an awful lot of data about your program,” she says.

Another core belief about assessment at Texas A&M is that the results should be easily transferable to curricular improvement efforts. While there are two main reasons that institutions assess programs—accountability and improvement—focusing on the improvement function encourages greater faculty involvement.

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

Assessment: Beyond the term paper

2011-02-24T14:11:00.000-06:00

From Campus Technology:

In designing courses for online environments we have been somewhat successful at scuttling closed-book exams for assessing student learning--largely due to the challenges of monitoring exams. However, we still appear to be stuck in another very entrenched mode of assessing student learning: research papers and project reports.

Why is the traditional paper so prevalent in assessment, and how can we move beyond it to alternative evidence of student learning? And how can we leverage technology and new media in our assessment strategies?

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

Why I like assessment...

2011-02-24T12:10:00.000-06:00

Some quotes from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

I like it because it encourages faculty members to think more carefully about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it that way. I like it because it helps raise questions about how our teaching strategies affect learning outcomes. And I like it because in the process, we discover more about how our teaching fits in with programs and curricula beyond our own courses. Good-quality assessment simply asks about our goals, our instructional procedures, and the link between both of those and learning.

Assessment can help. It can teach faculty members to work together to teach and assess those learning goals. For example, many sociology programs stress the role of research methods across courses, but my interviews with students suggest that students generally fail to apply their knowledge of those methods in other courses. In part that happens because instructors do not reinforce such knowledge and skills. Assessing both the courses and students' knowledge will highlight such gaps and help transform their cumulative experience by encouraging instructors to improve both individual courses and the learning gained across courses.

The entire department would benefit as all courses became part of a well-thought-out whole. Professors gain classes full of prepared students, and students report their highest levels of satisfaction and learning in departments where faculty members collectively assume responsibility for the entire curriculum and its assessment. It takes a village of engaged faculty to raise successful students. That same village can provide better assessment than can one designated person, and can make better use of the results.

Let's not do assessment just because it is mandated. Let's not do it to make accreditation agencies happy or because everyone else is doing it. Let's do it to improve learning.

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

Closing the gap between teaching and assessing

2011-02-24T10:04:00.000-06:00

More from the editors of the new book mentioned below:

Good assessment can give us concrete information about whether students are learning, how much they are learning, and in what areas. And there are institutions, faculty members, and administrators that not only know this body of work but make good use of it as they seek to strengthen their institutions and serve their students better. All too often, though, there is a considerable gap between institutional assessment and teaching. Some faculty members embrace assessment efforts, some are highly critical of them, but most, perhaps, are barely aware of them.

Some things, faculty quickly discover, are easily measured: In the field of literary study, we can gauge students' skill as grammarians, even their ability to construct a persuasive argument. But can we get at the kind of learning that matters most? The kind of learning that leads to full engagement with a topic and a nuanced understanding of its meaning? We will not be able to achieve this until we think about the particular forms of engagement that draw us to deep learning within a discipline, and to the connections between those disciplines and larger social contexts as well as institutional goals.

Exploring forms of alignment among disciplinary goals, institutional aims, and broader social contexts will also better engage faculty in the assessment process. If faculty members were talking regularly with assessment researchers and practitioners, they would have a voice in emerging national conversations about how students learn in different disciplines and what strategies bring student learning to the highest possible levels. They would have a voice in saying what kind of learning really matters in their fields—what outcomes need to be measured—and a chance of aiding in the development of assessment methods genuinely suited to what they teach. They would, in other words, be a guiding force in the work that is a necessary first step in improving learning.

In our research, we insist that every point find solid evidentiary support. Most of us teach our students to do the same: "Can you back that up?" "On what basis do you reach that conclusion?" Yet when it comes to whether or not our students are learning, we rely on evidence that is dubious (teaching evaluations) or circular (grades). Or we abandon the Enlightenment altogether and lapse into faith: We just know. Again, while gut feeling is a crucial part of inquiry, most of us have been rigorously trained to interrogate both received wisdom and unexamined assumptions in our scholarship. Why should our approach to student learning be different?

The clearer we are about our goals for learning, and the better we are at seeing whether we are meeting those goals, and then proceeding—on the basis of that evidence—to strengthen teaching and learning in our classrooms, the better our students will do. With improved learning, we also ensure the viability of higher education and of specific areas of study. Solid data on what students are learning demonstrate the value of a field.

...higher education in general, and the liberal arts in particular, are now under attack in ways that we do not need to explain for most readers of The Chronicle. In that context, resisting efforts to figure out how well our students are learning for the purposes of improvement seems counterproductive. Many academic professional organizations are wisely encouraging their members to reach out to the public and explain the value of their pursuits. We want to remind our colleagues, however, that you don't have to be on the Today show or NPR to be talking to the public. Faculty are already doing this every day, engaging groups of people who will have a disproportionate influence in society compared with their peers who are not going to college. We need to be thinking collaboratively about how best to educate them.

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

Assessing the ineffable

2011-02-24T09:04:00.001-06:00

From Inside Higher Ed, an interview with editors of a new book from the Teagle Foundation on assessment of the hard-to-assess in the disciplines. Remarkably, this book is available for free download on the Teagle web site.

Humanists are sometimes wary of assessment because they feel that there is something ineffable at the heart of their work in the classroom. We realized that the ineffable itself -- in the form of theories of the sublime -- is a subject that we think about a lot. And we wondered whether we could invite people to talk about ineffability -- about the sublime -- as a way of coming to understand some of our most cherished learning goals for our students, and even assessing them. In a way, we were inviting people to face head-on the thing that no one thinks we can talk about. And the collection developed from there.

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

Trust us; we're experts.

2011-02-23T08:58:00.000-06:00

This time I'm just going to post the whole damn thing. It's long for this forum, but compared to other stuff you read, it's short. I started pulling out extracts and realized I was going to end up quoting most of it anyway.

Most of my colleagues are faculty members and that's how I identify myself. I love my profession and I love my academic sisters and brothers. But Geez, people!

Here's today's column in Inside Higher Ed from Dean Dad:

Historiann has a fascinating, and I think largely representative, take on a provocative article in the Washington Post about “fixing” higher education. The original piece outlines eight steps that it argues would make meaningful differences for colleges and universities in the US. Some of them are easy and obvious, like toning down the focus on athletics; others are deeply problematic, like junking merit scholarships. (For my money, there’s something fundamentally wrong when having a good jump shot is a surer ticket to tuition than building a strong record at chemistry or writing.)

The first one is somewhere in between. It’s “measure student learning.” Historiann dismisses this one out of hand, with a quick reference to No Child Left Behind and the following: “Let’s just strangle this one in its crib unless and until we get some evidence that more testing = more education.”

It’s a fascinating response, because it encapsulates so cleanly the unthought impulse that many of us have. Testing equals Republicans equals bullshit; now shut the hell up and write us large checks. Trust us, we’re experts.

It’s written a little more carefully than that, of course, but written specifically to defeat verification. It rejects any sort of “measurement,” but does so by calling for “evidence” that measurement works.

What would that evidence look like? Might it involve, say, measurement? If not, then on what basis could you use a term like “more”? Every meaning of “more” that I can fathom involves some sort of comparative measurement. But to do that, we’d have to agree on a measure. Unless, of course, that was simply a rhetorical flourish, a semi-ironic acknowledgement that such a thing could never be proven because, well, it just couldn’t.

The knee-jerk response to any sort of accountability rests on a tautology. We know better than anyone else because we’re experts; we’re experts because we know better than anyone else. Screw measurement, accountability, or assessment; we already know we’re the best. Just ask us! Now, about that check...

If the folks who care about higher education are even halfway serious about avoiding the traps K-12 is in, the first step is not repeating the same mistakes. “Trust us, we’re experts” simply is not a persuasive argument to the larger public. It may once have been, but it isn’t now, and it hasn’t been for a long time. The difference between Historiann’s perspective and my own is that she seems to assume that failure to defer to rank is the public’s shortcoming; I think it’s basically healthy.

Part of the reason that Academically Adrift has resonated as much as it has, I suspect, is that it argues something that most of us (and most of the taxpaying public) secretly know to be true: many college students skate through without getting appreciably smarter. I consider that a major problem, and one that would require some pretty fundamental structural changes to higher education to address.

Oddly, many of the same people who share Historiann’s dismissal of testing are among the first to decry poor student performance. We expert educators are expert educators, if we don’t mind saying so; therefore, any student failings must...wait for it...be the fault of the students! In fact, they’re getting worse all the time! Now, let’s talk about next year’s tuition increase...

After a few decades of that, the public is getting a bit, well, testy. And well it should.

At base, the popular perception that college is a scam can’t be ameliorated by assertions of expertise, truth, and virtue. If those worked, they would have worked by now. It will be ameliorated, or not, by showing the public some kind of real results. What those results should be is certainly open for debate; as a kid, I remember seeing the space program justified by the development of calculators and digital watches. It might take the form of some sort of exam, or it might take the form of success stories, or it might take the form of new graduates developing wonderful things. Which path to pursue strikes me as a fair and valid discussion. But if we don’t recognize that the basic impulse behind the testiness is essentially valid, we won’t get anywhere. Aristocratic pretensions aren’t gonna cut it; the “appeal to authority” isn’t terribly appealing. We need to show, rather than tell, the public that we’re worth supporting. Which means we need to show ourselves first. Strangling that impulse in the crib is not a serious answer.

"I'm looking thru you; where did you go?"

2011-02-22T09:33:00.000-06:00

A "Quick Take" in today's Inside Higher Ed pointed to NILOA's Transparency Framework. At first glance it's not entirely clear what you're looking at. But it seems to be a rather comprehensive guide for presenting student learning outcomes info on an institution's web page. There's a lot of stuff here, and I haven't carefully studied all of it. But it definitely appears to be worth spending some time.

Will Texas take to tuning?

2011-02-11T13:35:00.000-06:00

From the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's newsletter:

Tuning Oversight 2011 Council for Engineering and Science will apply the “Tuning” and course-level alignment processes to additional engineering and science disciplines

On February 25, with grant support from Lumina Foundation for Education, the Coordinating Board (CB) will host the first meeting of the 2011 Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering and Science, the voluntary faculty advisory council that will assist the CB in continuing to integrate the “Tuning” process (as described below) into the course-level alignment work that was piloted in 2009 through the efforts of the Voluntary Mechanical Engineering Transfer Compact Committee, and which continued in 2010 with the efforts of the 2010 Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering. The 2011 Tuning Oversight Council will consist of four voluntary faculty advisory committees: (1) Biomedical Engineering, (2) Chemical Engineering, (3) Biology, and (4) Chemistry.

Nominations for faculty members to serve on the 2011 Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering and Science have been requested from universities and community colleges across the state; to date, invitations for specific nominees to participate on the council have been sent to 36 faculty members representing 31 institutions. The final makeup of the council and respective committees will be determined by February 18.

The 2010 Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering, which is made up of higher education faculty representing 30 higher education institutions from across the state, is expected to complete Tuning and lower-division course-level alignment work for the disciplines of Civil, Electrical, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering in May. Additional information is available below and online at: www.thecb.state.tx.us/tuningtexas.

“Tuning” is a faculty-led pilot project designed to provide an indication of the knowledge, skills, and abilities students should achieve prior to graduation at different degree levels.

Tuning involves:
Faculty from different sectors and institutions agreeing on what students in a field must know, understand, and be able to do;
Surveying faculty to prioritize subject-area competencies;
Soliciting views of students, graduates, and employers on the most valued general competencies in the field;
Faculty defining degrees using active learning outcomes that can be assessed through coursework and other means; and
Mapping the employability of degree holders.
“Fine-Tuning” or alignment of lower division courses involves:
Identifying common and atypical lower-division courses in a discipline where learning outcomes align with the Tuned discipline;
Reviewing syllabi for all lower-division courses; and
Selecting the most comprehensive course description, pre-/co-requisites, and learning outcomes for each lower-division course.

Speeding without looking

2011-02-11T11:02:00.000-06:00

The high speed proliferation of online learning sometimes seems like we're driving 100 mph...with our eyes closed.

Virtual education is in a period of rapid growth, as school districts, for-profit providers, and nonprofit start-ups all move into the online learning world... But without rigorous oversight, a thousand flowers blooming will also yield a lot of weeds.

At present, virtual education lacks a firm understanding of what high performance looks like.

Virtual public education can be delivered by all types of providers, including charter schools, for-profit companies, universities, state entities, and school districts... Such diversity brings challenges.

[V]irtual education lacks a commonly accepted set of quality outcome measures. Quality can't be defined by the design of a school or by inputs alone; instead, it must focus primarily on outcomes.

[This] complexity can't be an excuse for inaction. Unless providers rise to this task, outside groups, whether supporters or opponents, will define success and the lack of it for them.

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

Mend it, don't end it!

2011-02-11T10:50:00.000-06:00

From Inside Higher Ed, about the recent NACIQI hearings on accreditation:

About two-thirds of the way through the first day of the Education Department's two-day forum on higher education accreditation, something strange happened: a new idea emerged.

Not that the conversation that preceded it was lacking in quality and thoughtfulness. The discussion about higher education's system of quality assurance included some of the sharper minds and best analysts around, and it unfolded at a level that was quite a bit higher than you'd find at, say, the typical Congressional hearing.

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

Accreditation reform: Dull but important!

2011-02-11T10:44:00.000-06:00

Kevin Carey, who writes for Education Sector and lots of other publications, recently testified before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity

To be blunt, I believe the accreditors overseen by NACIQI should not be in the business of deciding whether for-profit colleges and universities should have access to the federal Title IV student aid system. The heart of accreditation is peer review. And the power of peer review does not lie with the creation of or adherence to specific rules and guidelines. Instead, it lies with shared norms and values. That’s all that “peer” means, in the end — persons or organizations with whom one shares fundamental ideas about the nature of things. Peer approval is extremely important and influential, as we see in the scholarly communities that thrive in higher education. But it doesn’t work if those being reviewed are not actually peers.

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

Adrift?

2011-02-11T08:56:00.003-06:00

Robert Sternberg is a highly respected psychologist and, more recently, university administrator. He is probably best known for the notion of "multiple intelligences," which clearly informs this commentary.

This nation made a serious mistake in introducing well-intentioned but poorly executed legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, which has turned many of our elementary and secondary schools into glorified test-preparation centers. Do we dare now do the same for colleges? Do we really want to make preparation for narrowly conceived cognitive tests the primary goal of a college education? Or do we want to broaden assessments, such as performances and portfolios, perhaps in addition to the narrower assessments? If we limit ourselves to narrow measures, we can say good-bye to our hopes to develop an internationally competitive, creative and ethical society. We instead can say hello to creating a nation of excellent test-takers who will shine, but only in some dystopian world in which achieving high scores on tests is the measure of one’s contribution to society.

Ultimately, the goal of college education is to produce the active citizens and positive leaders of tomorrow — people who will make the world a better place. Narrow tests of cognitive skills do not measure the creative, practical, and wisdom-based and ethical skills that leaders need to succeed. We can and truly must assess much more broadly.

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

Online colleges and states at odds over quality

2010-10-13T12:32:00.001-05:00

From today's CHE

Responding to what they call unfair scrutiny from state and federal regulators, representatives from online colleges discussed a self-imposed quality-assurance framework at today’s Presidents’ Forum in Washington, convened by Excelsior College.

But state officials said they are still concerned that self-imposed standards are not good enough and that online programs are not consistent in providing students with high-quality education.

Echoing federal government concerns about the quality of online institutions (reflected in the “gainful employment” rule debated by the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year), a panel of education officials from four states and the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education—which represents 15 states—said it was their responsibility to ensure that all students of online colleges received a good education, and they are skeptical that the institutions consistently deliver.

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

In return for $ to higher ed, Obama wants results

2010-10-13T12:26:00.002-05:00

A thorough & informative story in today's CHE.

Since he took office, almost two years ago, spending on student aid has grown by nearly 50 percent, to $145-billion, while aid to colleges has exploded. Much of the new money has come with no strings attached, including $36-billion for Pell Grants in a student-loan bill he signed in March.

But the president has also sought to use federal funds as leverage, offering carrots to colleges and states that embrace his goals, and sticks to those that hinder them. More than any of his predecessors, he has demanded results in exchange for federal dollars, requiring grant applicants to set benchmarks for improvement and threatening to withhold aid from programs that fail to prepare students for jobs.

That approach has rankled some higher-education leaders, who accuse the administration of meddling in academic affairs, but it has won praise from advocates of greater accountability and assessment for colleges.

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

Without assessment, great teaching stays secret

2010-10-11T08:55:00.002-05:00

From today's CHE.

Subjecting university teaching to the kind of public, widely shared standards of quality that we routinely apply to university research remains a bridge too far. Learning is too complex, we are told, and the available measures too crude. The specters of homogenization and government control are often invoked, and for good reason. It's not hard to imagine the consequences of assessment done wrong.

It is, by contrast, hard to fully imagine the consequences of assessment done right.

UMBC specializes in the task that every parent, pundit, and lawmaker in America most wants universities to accomplish: teaching young people to become great scientists and engineers. It may already be better at this than the Ivies and Research I universities that everyone knows.

But without reliable, public assessment information to prove that to the world, UMBC has few ways of elevating its standing to a level that matches the quality of its academic work.

Without a good measuring stick, great public universities can't prove their greatness. In the long run, that means we'll have fewer great public universities than we need. That shortage won't matter much to the institutions that control the existing higher-education power structure, or to the small number of privileged students who are allowed to attend them (that is, the groups that have the most to lose from shifting the terms of prestige toward learning). But it will be a slow-motion calamity for everyone else.

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

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-10-06T13:15:00.002-05:00

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

Reviewers unhappy with portfolio "stuff"

2010-10-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

From Campus Technology...

“Enough is enough,” say faculty members reviewing portfolio reports that resemble scrapbooks. “Where is the analysis?” they ask. “Where is the thinking?” Evidence-based learning concepts offer a way to re-frame the portfolio process so it produces meaningful and assessable evidence of achievement.

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

Texas A&M Assessment Conference: Call for Proposals

2010-09-30T12:52:00.002-05:00

The conference will be held February 20-22, 2011 in College Station. The deadline for submitting proposals is Oct. 15. More info at the conference web site.

Assessing assessment

2010-09-27T09:47:00.002-05:00

From a commentary in today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

I have long worried that most of us (certainly me) have thought of undergraduate education primarily in terms of our own course offerings. If we think beyond our personal teaching obligations, for the most part we think no farther than the responsibility of our department for undergraduate instruction -- although these days it is all too common for faculty members to restrict their teaching and their energy almost completely to the sphere of their own research interests. A much smaller number of us, I would guess, are also concerned with the overall education of our students, and participate in some sort of general education, working especially with underclass students.

Most colleges have general education programs or distribution plans to compel students to be exposed to some learning outside their major field. But the underlying reality is that the curriculum is primarily considered a collection (not usually a sequence) of discrete "courses." The main organizing conception of the curriculum (for upperclass students) is that of the "major," but most colleges do not have a theory about how the major relates to their four-year learning goals.

The sad fact is that even after a century of utilizing this form of undergraduate education, we have little systematic knowledge of whether it works, how well it works -- or, more important, whether alternative approaches (and there are many in play across the country) might work better. We are not agreed on what it means "to work". Most colleges do not have explicit cognitive goals either in our majors or for the college experience as a whole? Until we can state precisely what our educational goals are, it will not be possible to assess our success in meeting them.

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

Feeling each other's pain

2010-09-16T09:56:00.002-05:00

From today's Inside Higher Ed, reporting on the OECD's biennial higher ed conference.

The financial cutbacks for publicly supported colleges come even as government leaders...ask increasingly more of their postsecondary institutions in terms of expanding access for students, driving economic growth, and contributing to their countries’ social and cultural development.

Those ever-growing demands on colleges and universities are prompting politicians in many places to ask harder questions about postsecondary...productivity, quality, and performance. OECD officials have in recent years taken to talking about governments doing their “steering” of higher education “at a distance....I wonder whether that distance may be getting a little bit shorter.”

That idea is certainly likely to resonate with college officials in the United States, who have watched the last two federal government administrations aggressively reconsider higher education’s system of peer-reviewed quality assurance and, now, craft a brand-new mechanism for assessing the extent to which vocational programs prepare their students for jobs.

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Such searching for new metrics is also taking place in countries like Denmark, where government leaders have typically embraced “output-oriented numbers” such as the production of graduates to hold universities accountable....” Roos said that he is seeking to prod the conversation in a direction that would better measure how graduates of institutions like his contribute to society - such as “how much our students pay in taxes."

Yojana Sharma, a London-based writer on higher education, said she believed that institutions would (or at least should) increasingly be judged by clearer measures of what institutions contribute to their graduates. “We need to be capturing what it is that adds value to those students, for that really is the value of universities as well,” she said. “We have all these students coming off a conveyor belt with ‘B.A.’ stamped on their heads, and what really distinguishes them from each other?”

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Shinichi Yamamoto, of Hiroshima University's Research Institute on Higher Education, echoed that call, saying that in an increasingly knowledge-based society in which universities are expected “to play a more important role, why should we accept the reality” that higher education should make do with less? “Do we need to do more to appeal to the importance of higher education?” Why is our voice so small? he wondered.

Aims McGuinness, senior associate with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, said the answer to that question is attributable in part to the lack of sophistication of political leaders in many countries, where the audience for that message “is more like a parade than a fixed entity.” Significant turnover and short-term political thinking require college leaders to make their arguments to “people who don’t have a clue about a long-term agenda” for economic and social development.

But higher education leaders themselves are also responsible because too often they fail to show how their institutions are “really connected with the quality of life and long-term economy” in their states, regions or countries. Cash-strapped colleges are “ignoring access in their own area in search of paying students elsewhere,” he said. That, together with strategies at research-intensive institutions that too often focus on interests other than their communities’ needs, may make politicians think, “Why would you put the money down that kind of enterprise?” McGuinness said.

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

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-09-07T12:09:00.002-05:00

The September issue of AAC&U News is now available.

The challenge of value-added

2010-08-23T10:11:00.003-05:00

Kenneth Green in today's Inside Higher Ed...

Several quotes to whet your appetite to read the entire commentary:

The question of value added...looms large in the continuing public conversation about quality and reform across all levels of education.

Stated (too) simply, Astin’s research, based on multivariate analyses of large, multiple, and longitudinal cohorts of undergraduates across a wide array of colleges and universities, confirmed that the impact of the college experience at some institutions surpassed predicted outcomes (grades and other measures of academic performance; retention in specific majors; degree completion, student satisfaction with the college experience, etc.) while the collegiate experience at other institutions impeded some student outcomes.

...the 1984 Study Group argued that “higher education should ensure that the mounds of data already collected on students are converted into useful information and fed back [to campus officials and faculty] in ways that enhance student learning and lead to improvement in programs, teaching practices, and the environment in which teaching and learning take place. We argue that institutions should be accountable not only for stating their expectations and standards, but [also] for assessing the degree those ends have been met. In practical terms, our colleges must value information far more than current practices imply”

...most postsecondary institutions collect a rich array of data about their students that remain untouched for the purposes of analyzing impacts and outcomes.

Consider one example: student placement tests. Many colleges (especially large state institutions) require their students to take placement tests and/or “rising junior” examinations: the students who do not “pass” these exams must enroll in remedial courses. When they pass the remedial course, they move on, either to college level courses (placement tests) or to upper-class standing (rising junior exams).

What happens to the data about the student experience in these courses? Are the data – tests on mid-terms and finals, as well as other metrics – used to help assess the impact of the course or the effectiveness of the instructor? What about state systems that have a common (freshman placement or rising junior) exam but multiple remedial courses offered across multiple campuses? Are some courses, instructors, or institutions more effective than others? Are the data analyzed in a way that they can be used as a resource (“how do we do better?”) rather than a weapon (“your students failed!”)?

For thirty years, colleges and universities have operated under an outcomes mandate but without a consensual methodology for assessing outcomes.

Yet a quarter of a century after the 1984 Study Group’s Report, most colleges and universities have yet to “ensure that the mounds of data already collected on students are converted into useful information and fed back [to campus officials and faculty] in ways that enhance student learning and lead to improvement in programs, teaching practices, and the environment in which teaching and learning take place.”

But let’s acknowledge that the effective use of institutional data requires campus officials and policy makers to agree that the data will be used as a resource, not as a weapon. The challenge, as articulated by the 1984 Study Group, remains: how do we do better – how can we use and exploit data to aid and enhance program improvement efforts and professional development? In this context, value added analysis, done well and used appropriately, can be a powerful and useful resource.

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

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-08-05T08:41:00.001-05:00

The August issue of AAC&U News is now available.

Learning outcomes of study abroad

2010-07-23T09:20:00.002-05:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, on what ought to be the student learning outcomes of study abroad experiences.

New issue of Peer Review

2010-07-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

The new issue of the AAC&U publication, Peer Review is now available.

Can we all just get along?

2010-07-19T09:46:00.003-05:00

More from the Chronicle of Higher Education on peace talks between higher ed officials & school leaders over the issue of who's to blame for unsatisfactory student performance.

Higher-education officials have complained that too many students arrive at college unprepared, increasing the length of time and cost required to earn a degree, and leading to lower retention and graduation rates. School administrators say teacher preparation at the college level focuses too heavily on theory and too little on practice and subject-matter expertise.

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

Lurching toward authentic assessment: Stories from the battlefield

2010-07-19T09:38:00.002-05:00

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, news of ongoing efforts to improve the assessment of teacher training programs. From the article:

Before long, nearly every state should have the capacity to do the kinds of analysis that Louisiana has done, tracing schoolchildren's academic performance back to their teachers' teachers.

To many observers, these databases are a long-overdue step toward a real understanding of the quality of higher education.

But other people say poorly designed analyses might do more harm than good. The standardized tests that underlie these reports are themselves controversial, of course. Beyond that, some education deans worry that states will crunch the numbers in crude ways that misidentify teachers' effects on their students.

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

Academic outcomes of study abroad

2010-07-13T13:21:00.002-05:00

Study abroad is one of those high-impact educational practices that we're hearing so much about. At least we're hearing so much about how we need to be providing them for our students. Anyway, here's some evidence indicating that study abroad really can contribute to the achievement of certain student learning outcomes.

New issue of On Campus with Women

2010-07-07T09:45:00.002-05:00

The new issue of AAC&U's On Campus with Women is now available.

Results of tuning initiatives in USA are coming in

2010-06-24T10:38:00.002-05:00

Kevin Carey says:

I'm posting the Utah Final Tuning USA Report here. Take a look! It describes why the historians and physics professors in Utah think this is a good idea, what they did, and what they came up with in terms of outcomes and expectations for students. Nobody thinks the process is perfect or entirely complete, but it's fair to say they believe it was valuable and worth continuing.

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

Collegiate Lying Assessment?

2010-06-24T10:03:00.004-05:00

Sherman Dorn discusses another reason why we ought to be really skeptical about using standardized instruments to measure general education learning outcomes.

On its face, the CLA looks like a plausible assessment of reasoning skills in a written context.

But a funny thing happens once you remove either type of task from the subject in which it's embedded: those who are rating student responses do not have the substantive expertise to check student assertions.

...the scoring guidelines appear to ignore the veracity of student statements. It is entirely about whether someone can construct or criticize an argument in response to prompts.

...maybe we should acknowledge that if it's to have any value, a general-education program has to have some substance, and assessments of its success need to be rooted in the areas it putatively requires some learning in. Not writing and reasoning in general but writing and reasoning about the stuff that's in the gen-ed curriculum.

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

The white noise of accountability

2010-06-24T08:59:00.002-05:00

Grab your cup of coffee, relax, and settle down with this article from today's Inside Higher Ed. It's long and it will require re-reading for full understanding, but the questions Adelman asks and the thinking his questions might provoke make it worth the effort. A quote to get you going...

We are now surrounded by a veritable industry producing enormous quantities of data and information on various performances of institutions of higher education in the name of something called “accountability,” and it is fair to ask where this production sits in terms of the potential meaning of its banner. It is also necessary to note that, in the rhetoric of higher education, “institution” is usually the subject of sentences including “accountability,” as if a single entity were responsible for a raft of consequences. But, as noted below, when our students attend three or four schools, the subject of these sentences is considerably weakened in terms of what happens to those students. The relationship is attenuated.

For now we start with a postulate: however we define accountability, we are describing a relationship in which obligations and responsibilities dwell. Our questions sound simple: What kind of relationship? What kind of obligations? What kind of responsibilities? What actions within the relationship justify its type? The exploration is conducted not to convince you that one configuration is “better” than another, rather to make sure that we all think better about the dynamics of each one.

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

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-06-21T13:18:00.001-05:00

The June/July issue of AAC&U News is now available.

Bologna beyond Europe

2010-06-07T10:04:00.002-05:00

Several stories in the higher ed press report on the recent meeting of NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference, which concluded last Friday. Several sessions focused on the Bologna Process and how other countries, including the United States, are adapting elements of it. A few quotes from the Inside Higher Ed story:

...the transformation of European higher education in the past 11 years has been immense. The process, which is premised on “harmonizing” higher education systems throughout Europe and promoting mobility and credit transfer, has largely revolved around improving quality assurance mechanisms and developing comparable degree frameworks and student learning outcomes in specific disciplines. As part of this, universities have moved toward standardized degree cycles (including, in many countries, the three-year bachelor’s degree, which has caused headaches for graduate admissions officers in the United States). They’ve also stated expectations for what those degrees should mean.

A March report on the progress of the Bologna Process by the European University Association found that 77 percent of universities have reviewed the curriculums in all departments under the Bologna Process (compared to 55 percent in 2007). In addition, 53 percent of universities said that learning outcomes have been developed for all courses and 32 percent for some courses. “Bologna,” the association concluded, “has acted as a catalyst to improve quality of teaching and move towards student-centered learning.

In the United States, the Lumina Foundation for Education has plans to build upon a Bologna-inspired pilot project in which universities in three states moved toward “tuning” their degrees in six different fields of study. As part of the initial project, “Tuning USA,” faculty in Indiana (in education, chemistry and history), Minnesota (in graphic design and biology) and Utah (in history and physics) jointly conducted a four-way survey. For each discipline they asked employers, alumni, current students, and other faculty to identify general and subject-specific competencies and rank them. “So you begin to develop a picture of the subject,” explained Birtwistle, who is a consultant to the Lumina project. “You begin to frame the subject, you begin to be able to say what the subject is, and what the students know, understand and are able to do as a result of studying that subject.” Birtwistle emphasized, too, that tuning is a faculty-led process.

Speakers during Friday’s session noted the difficulty of defining an American baccalaureate degree without using the words “credits” or “hours.” “What do we mean as a country by what a degree represents and what the learning is that’s behind a degree?

This last is a particular problem, especially as so many institutions race headlong toward putting more and more courses online. A "semester credit hour" (SCH) used to equate to the amount of time spent in class per week. In the new world of online education, this has become completely meaningless. As long as we were starting with courses originally designed for face-to-face delivery and retooling them for online delivery, it wasn't too hard to keep the content the same in terms of SCHs. But now that courses are being designed from scratch for online delivery, those guidelines are gone. So how do you determine what the content of a course is that's supposed to be worth, say, three SCHs at the freshman level, the junior level?

Why [this discussion] is significant in an American context is it redefines what we mean by quality,” she said. “And quality is student learning. Quality in our current framework is based on institutional reputation and student inputs,” i.e. the scores and backgrounds that students bring into college, rather than those they leave with. “We can’t get to the 60 percent degree attainment that we need without really focusing on quality,” she said, in reference to Lumina’s objective of improving college access. McKiernan acknowledged, however, the challenges in developing common degree frameworks in the United States, where top-down attempts at reform are suspect.

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

New issue of AAC&U's Bringing Theory to Practice

2010-06-02T10:24:00.001-05:00

The new issue of Bringing Theory to Practice is now available.

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-05-04T10:05:00.001-05:00

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

The Accountability/Improvement Paradox

2010-04-30T11:11:00.002-05:00

From today's Inside Higher Ed:

In the academic literature and public debate about assessment of student learning outcomes, it has been widely argued that tension exists between the two predominant presses for higher education assessment: the academy's internally driven efforts as a community of professional practitioners to improve their programs and practices, and calls for accountability by various policy bodies representing the “consuming public.”

...much more than merely a mismatch exists between the two perspectives; there is an inherent paradox in the relationship between assessment for accountability and for improvement. More importantly, there is an imbalance in emphasis that is contributing to a widening gap between policy makers and members of the academy with regard to their interests in and reasons for engaging in assessment. Specifically, not enough attention is being paid to the quality of measurement (and thought) in the accountability domain, which undermines the quality of assessment activity on college campuses.

The root of the paradoxical tension between forces that shape external accountability and those that promote quality improvement is the discrepancy between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for engaging with assessment. When the question “why do assessment?” arises, often the answer is “because we have to.” Beyond this reaction to the external pressure is a more fundamental reason: professional responsibility.

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

New issue of Peer Review

2010-04-30T09:32:00.002-05:00

The new issue of the AAC&U publication, Peer Review is now available.

Standards for independent study programs

2010-04-23T09:55:00.002-05:00

Independent study programs may also serve as high-impact educational practices, when done well. Here's a discussion, from today's Inside Higher Ed, about considerations along those lines. A couple of quotes to get you going:

Academic credit should be awarded only for work that advances the education of students, within the curriculum, usually as defined by the faculty as a whole.

In situations involving individual arrangements in serious matters (including awarding academic credit), prior approval procedures and written documentation are good practice and protect everyone: the student, the faculty member, and the institution.

Conflicts of interest exist and can be addressed through disclosure and review of proposed activities by disinterested parties.

All three of these principles support the conclusion you’ve reached, which is that individual arrangements between students and faculty members should fall under the general oversight of “the faculty,” not just be idiosyncratic personal arrangements. These arrangements should be documented, reviewed to assure they meet the standards established by the faculty and also reviewed to protect all parties to them. The faculty should be protected against charges of favoritism and capricious grading. Students should be on notice of what is required of them, applicable deadlines and standards that must be met. The academic unit should have records sufficient to document the award of academic credit meeting institutional standards.

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

DoL releases new rules for 'educational' internships

2010-04-22T11:16:00.002-05:00

Internships are supposed to be one of those high-impact educational practices, right? So it's of interest to Assess this! when things like this happen.

Amid increasing national attention to unpaid internships, the U.S. Department of Labor released a statement on Wednesday that clarifies employers' and colleges' roles under federal law.

The document applies a six-part test from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which derives from a 1947 Supreme Court decision involving railroad-company trainees, to modern-day interns in the for-profit sector. For interns to work for private companies without compensation, the Labor Department says, their positions must meet six criteria.

First, "the internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment."

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

Data-driven difficulties

2010-04-22T11:11:00.002-05:00

Today's Dean Dad blog entry discusses why it's so difficult to actually do data-driven. He begins like this:

From much of the discussion of 'data-driven' reforms that take place at the national level, you'd think that all that we'd need to do is educate some administrators on the use and interpretation of data, tell them to use what they've learned, and that would be that.

If only it were that easy...

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

I spent the day with rubrics and spreadsheets.

2010-04-20T09:24:00.002-05:00

Libby Gruner writes an occasional column for Inside Higher Ed.

This is not exactly the life I envisioned when I began my graduate work....

But the rubrics and the spreadsheets happen to be part of the job too, right now, and I'm learning to embrace them. The rubrics, after all, will help us to evaluate the job we're doing in the new program I'm helping to build. If we don't write them well, they're just busy work, but if we really think through them carefully we might learn something from them. (Yes, I still retain some of that youthful naïveté!) The spreadsheets are simply the easiest way I know to organize and compare the data my program is collecting — about courses, about workshops offered and taken, about summer training plans. They're not lovely, nor can I make them do everything I want them to (yet), but they are a useful tool.

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

à la DETC?

2010-04-20T09:05:00.002-05:00

Inside Higher Ed also reports on an apparently bogus accreditation organization for distance education programs:

Officials at the Distance Education and Training Council, a Washington-based accrediting body, woke up Monday morning to find that the agency had acquired an unwelcome twin overseas.

The body was tipped off to the existence of a Web site for an organization with the same name, with a British Web domain and a Cyprus address, that claims to be “the leading global membership organization for the open and distance education community.”

The Washington-based council believes the organization to be an accreditation mill -- a phony accrediting body designed to lend a veneer of legitimacy to bogus institutions.

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

à la VSA?

2010-04-20T08:56:00.003-05:00

Here's a story from today's Inside Higher Ed about an effort to develop a new national accountability system for community colleges that is inevitably being compared to the Voluntary System of Accountability for public four-year institutions. A voice that's prominently featured in this story and in this discussion is that of Eileen Baccus, a good friend of my university, whose very sensible comments from the story follow:

Baccus reiterated that it is important for the colleges themselves to be first to define accountability for community colleges. With growing federal and private sector interest in community colleges, she said, there will be accountability systems created. "Do we want someone else to impose these measures, or do we want to say that here are measures we can endorse?" she said.

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

à la Bologna?

2010-04-19T09:14:00.002-05:00

Also from the April 18 edition of University World News, two more stories about international regional collaboration in higher education:

CARIBBEAN: Call for regional collaboration

ANGOLA: Call for increased higher education cooperation

Background & progress of Bologna Process

2010-04-19T08:59:00.004-05:00

From the April 18 edition of University World News:

The Hungarian and Austrian Ministers for Science and Research, Education and Culture who were responsible for the 2010 Bologna ministerial meeting have released a magazine summing up the Bologna achievements and capturing many of its dimensions.

Together with the Spanish Minister of Education, now chairing the Bologna process in the capacity of holding the Presidency of the European Union, the ministers' release captures the many dimensions in the Bologna process.

The magazine is a much needed simplification of what the Bologna process is about: most notably greater accountability of degrees and study periods among European nations as a pre-condition for increased mobility during and after graduation.

.... The consensus is that the Bologna process has released new energy and a new spirit of collaboration and new goals for European higher education institutions.

Some say the Bologna process is the major impulse for university reforms ever, as expressed by E Stephen Hunt at the US Department of Education:

"The Bologna process is almost certainly the most important multinational reform of higher education undertaken since the teaching guilds and the student nations established the revolutionary concepts of the studium generale and universities in the 11th and 12th centuries," Hunt writes.

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

New organization for assessment professionals

2010-04-14T20:09:00.001-05:00

Here's a post that appeared on the ASSESS listserv today:

Dear Colleagues:

I am pleased and honored to announce the formation of a new association for assessment practitioners, one that focuses on assessment practice and the factors that affect it. Designed in collaboration with a number of other assessment professionals, including Marilee Bresciani, Susan Hatfield, Ephraim Schechter, Linda Suskie, and Jon Wergin, the association will provide resources of many kinds to assessment practitioners, from assessment directors to individual faculty to graduate students.

During my tenure as Director of Assessment and Senior Scholar at the American Association for Higher Education, I had worked to organize the valuable but somewhat inchoate resources of that organization into a coherent and accessible source for information about assessment practice. Though AAHE closed before any of that work came to full fruition, I had still harbored the hope that such a source could be built. I believe that we are on the threshold of doing so.

The Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education will be housed at the University of Kentucky, the current home of the ASSESS listserv, which will become a part of AALHE. Thanks to the efforts of Marsha Watson, Kentucky’s Director of Assessment, the University is providing physical and virtual space, staff and technical support, and seed money for a first conference in June 2011.

Although the website is only now being designed, our intent is to provide a wide range of resources to those who are interested in improving student learning through assessment. In addition to the ASSESS listserv, the website will offer the following features:

• A moderated, wiki-like resource area in which practitioners can post assessment tools and strategies, from successful plans through course-based rubrics;
• A threaded blogging area on selected topics in assessment, from assessing general education to the ethics of assessment practice;
• Publications, including a juried e-journal and a quarterly newsletter;
• Communities of practice, aimed at serving different populations, from Assessment Directors to graduate students, as well as separate communities of practice for each of the accreditation regions;
• Regularly scheduled virtual conversations and webinars on specific topics;
• An annual face-to-face conference, with virtual elements.

Because the association will be largely virtual, dues and expenses will be relatively low, but we are hoping that interest will be high. In addition, some of the features, like the ASSESS listserv, will be open to non-members as well. We expect to be operational in at least some of the areas listed above by June 30, 2010, and we welcome your suggestions for services other than what’s mentioned above as we go through the design-and-implementation process.

If you want to visit our website to see its development before June 30, feel free to do so; the URL is www.aalhe.org.

Robert T. Mundhenk
Visiting Scholar, The Higher Learning Commission
Former Director of Assessment and Senior Scholar, AAHE

Winter 2010 issue of AAC&U's Liberal Education

2010-04-14T10:45:00.001-05:00

The new issue of the AAC&U publication, Liberal Education is now available.

Comparing Rubric Assessments to Standardized Tests

2010-04-09T16:03:00.003-05:00

Here's a quote from the lead article in the new issue of AAC&U News.

When the CLA results arrived eight months later, the UC team compared the outcomes of the two assessments. “We found no statistically significant correlation between the CLA scores and the portfolio scores,” Escoe says. “In some ways, it’s a disappointing finding. If we’d found a correlation, we could tell faculty that the CLA, as an instrument, is measuring the same things that we value and that the CLA can be embedded in a course. But that didn’t happen.” There were many factors that may have contributed to the lack of correlation, she says, including the fact that the CLA is timed, while the rubric assignments are not; and that the rubric scores were diagnostic and included specific feedback, while the CLA awarded points “in a black box”: if a student referred to a specific piece of evidence in a critical-thinking question, he or she simply received one point. In addition, she says, faculty members may have had exceptionally high expectations of their honors students and assessed the e-portfolios with those high expectations in mind—leading to results that would not correlate to a computer-scored test. In the end, Escoe says, the two assessments are both useful, but for different things. The CLA can provide broad institutional data that satisfies VSA requirements, while rubric-based assessment provides better information to facilitate continuous program improvement.

And now for the rest of the story...

April issue of AAC&U News is available

2010-04-09T15:57:00.001-05:00

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

New issues of AAC&U News

2010-03-10T15:59:00.001-06:00

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

New issue of AAC&U's Diversity & Democracy

2010-02-19T10:28:00.005-06:00

The new issue of Diversity & Democracy, is now available. This is of particular interest to my colleagues in Houston because our city will host the AAC&U-sponsored conference entitled Facing the Divides: Diversity, Learning, and Pathways to Inclusive Excellence next October. Conference info and the call for proposals are now available online.

Atlantic Assessment Conference - early registration deadline

2010-02-16T14:19:00.001-06:00

The early registration deadline (that means it's cheaper) for the Atlantic Assessment Conference is Feb. 19.

NILOA's February newsletter

2010-02-16T13:28:00.011-06:00

This newsletter provides updates on the NILOA project and on student learning outcomes assessment.

NILOA Occasional Papers

Connecting the Dots Between Learning and Resources by Jane Wellman
With all the talk about the need for more accountability, surprisingly little is known about what kind of resources an institution needs in order to produce a given level of student attainment. Jane Wellman charts this territory and discovers some surprises, such as how conclusions about cost-effectiveness change when the metric is cost-per-degree rather than the traditional cost-per-enrollment. One result is that, contrary to popular belief, community colleges are not cheap when it comes to cost-per-degree. Another important insight—again against the grain of conventional wisdom—is that simply investing more money does not appear to produce more or better outcomes. As Wellman points out, the key to productivity is intentionally targeted investments.

Three Promising Alternatives for Assessing College Students' Knowledge and Skills by Trudy Banta, Merilee Griffin, Teresa Flateby, and Susan Kahn
Of the various ways to assess student learning outcomes, many faculty members prefer what are called “authentic” approaches that document student performance during or at the end of a course or program of study. In this paper, assessment experts Trudy Banta, Merilee Griffin, Teresa Flateby, and Susan Kahn describe the development of several promising authentic assessment approaches. The contributors draw on their rich assessment experience to illustrate how portfolios, common analytic rubrics, and online assessment communities can more effectively link assessment practices to pedagogy.

Assessment, Accountability, and Improvement: Revisiting the Tension by Peter Ewell
In 1987, Peter Ewell delivered a paper at the AAHE Assessment Forum entitled “Assessment, Accountability, and Improvement: Managing the Contradiction.” This NILOA Occasional Paper analyzes what is the same and what has changed over the past two decades, and offers suggestions for how institutions can manage the persistent tension between the twin purposes of assessment in the current higher education environment.

News

We collect news items from a variety of sources related to learning outcomes assessment for our website. Listed below are some from the past month:

Going Public
Douglas C. Bennett, President of Earlham College, suggests each institution having a public learning audit document and gives the example of what this means for Earlham College as a way for public accountability.

Measuring Student Learning, Globally
This article discusses the possibility of having a world learning outcomes assessment spearheaded by the OECD.

More Transparency
Martha Kanter, from the US Education Department, calls for more transparency in the way higher education does accreditation.

What's Next?
Paul E. Lingenfelter, President of SHEEO, writes an informal and conversational piece of his advice to coping with states' budget meltdowns.

Upcoming Conferences

A number of conferences and retreats on learning outcomes and assessment are listed on our online calendar. Below are some that will take place soon:

On Feb. 19-20 the Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching & Learning is putting on the conference, "Assessment for the Changing Learning Environment," in Bloomington, MN. Please visit their website for more information.
On Feb. 21-23 the 10th Annual Texas A&M Assessment Conference, "Seeing 2020: Building on a decade of assessment" will take place at College Station, TX. Visit their website for more information.
On March 9th from 3-4:30 EST, Innovative Educators is hosting a webcast given by Terri Flateby entitled, "Designing Meaningful Assessment to Improve Student Affairs Outcomes and Satisfy Accreditation Demands." More can be found at IE's website.
March 19th is the deadline for proposals to the 2010 Assessment Institute in Indianapolis. More can be found at their website.

Website updates

We are updating a few things on our website and need your help:

Are you part of a learning outcomes assessment community, either online or local? We would like to include a directory of these communities on our website. Please let use know about your group here.
Help us make our website better by filling out a short five question survey.

learningoutcomesassessment.org

New issue of AAC&U News

2010-02-03T15:38:00.001-06:00

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

Assessment of learning is more complicated than it is (?)

2010-01-27T12:03:00.004-06:00

More reporting by Inside Higher Ed from last week's meetings of AAC&U and CHEA. Selected quotes:

Despite the uptick in activity, "I still feel like there's no there there" when it comes to colleges' efforts to measure student learning, Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, said in a speech at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation meeting Tuesday.

Views like Carey's, which are widely held by policy experts who look at higher education from the outside, tend to aggravate faculty members and other professionals in the industry to no end...given how much assessment activity is unfolding on the campuses.

That's where the disconnect comes in. Most of the assessment activity on campuses can be found in nooks and crannies of the institutions - by individual professors, or in one department - and it is often not tied to goals set broadly at the institutional level. Some of it has been undertaken directly in response to the outside calls for accountability, and seems workmanlike - testing or measurement done for measurement's sake.

To be ultimately successful, any meaningful assessment effort must be embraced widely by instructors...and to do that, "you've got to start this conversation as an instructional conversation that includes assessment".... It must begin with agreement (in a department, a college, and ultimately across a discipline or institution) about the learning goals that students should derive from the curriculum - and then intensive work to infuse the skills needed to reach those goals into the curriculum, course by course....

But that sort of assessment alone doesn't meet what McWalters called the "other part of the test" - the comparability goal on which policy makers insist to hold institutions accountable. "A legitimate process for evaluating learning outcomes," Carey told the CHEA meeting Tuesday, "has to...be consistent, it needs to be understandable to someone other than the institution itself, and...it needs to be judged relative to some kind of standard."

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

Getting engaged is more complicated than it is (?)

2010-01-27T11:23:00.002-06:00

Inside Higher Ed reporting on a session at the recent AAC&U annual meeting. Selected quotes:

The unsurprising fact that students are very different from one another, and the slightly less expected reality that any individual student can be significantly more or less engaged at various points in his or her academic career, suggest the need for a far more nuanced understanding of the "student engagement" theory of learning than has sometimes been the case....

Summing up findings from a research effort that has a primary goal of showing how individualized and ever-changing student "engagement" is predictably challenging, as the researchers were quick to note. But one of their primary (preliminary) recommendations is that precisely because engagement is dynamic rather than static, college officials trying to measure the impact of engagement on student performance should consider changing the unit of measurement from overall grade point average to performance in an academic term, or even a single course.

The study suggests a "complex," and unclear, relationship between engagement and student grades, the researchers say. "Some students need to achieve a certain level of grades before they feel engaged...while for other students, there appeared to be little or no connection between how enmeshed they felt in their work and their grades in those courses.

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

New issue of Diversity & Democracy

2010-01-26T16:34:00.001-06:00

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

Encouraging student participation in large classes

2010-01-06T14:34:00.001-06:00

Here are some good ideas from the folks at Faculty Focus.

Data-informed vs. data-driven decision making

2010-01-06T14:15:00.002-06:00

This article from Inside Higher Ed describes a project sponsored by Jobs for the Future and the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability. The article begins by saying...

"Student success" programs of various types - learning communities, first-year experience programs, and the like - have proliferated on college campuses, driven by the reality that it's easier to keep current students than recruit new ones. The programs are popular, but as is true of just about all campus efforts these days, they are open to scrutiny about their effectiveness -- and their cost effectiveness.

Teagle Foundation's Fall '09 newsletter

2010-01-04T11:31:00.003-06:00

Lots of good stuff here.

Q&A with Linda Suskie

2010-01-04T09:14:00.000-06:00

Brief, but useful. Click here.

New issue of Bringing Theory to Practice

2009-12-17T08:36:00.002-06:00

The December 2009 issue of the newsletter for AAC&U's Bringing Theory to Practice project is now available. Items include:

Revamping the Teacher-Scholar Model at Washington & Lee University
BTtoP's Latest Major Push for Transformative and Sustainable Campus Change for Learning: "2010-2012: Focus on Faculty"
Letter from the Director—The Bringing Theory to Practice Project: Years of Focus on Faculty

New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability

2009-12-14T09:26:00.002-06:00

From a member of this new organization’s board of directors…

A few years ago I heard the president of one of our finest research universities say, “Great universities measure what they value.”

He was emphasizing a commitment to ambitious goals and rigorous self-discipline, while describing the metrics he planned to use to monitor progress toward the aspirations of his institution to become even greater in national and international stature.

I have no doubt he personally, and also his faculty and administrative leaders, deeply value student learning. But the metrics they employed emphasized research grants, faculty memberships in prestigious societies, citations, publications, etc. The systematic assessment of student learning was not visible in the metrics assembled to monitor progress toward their goals. We tend to take student learning for granted.

Perhaps it is not yet a consensus, but I believe there is a growing conviction within American higher education that all students need to learn more, and more of our students need to achieve high levels of knowledge and skill in order to realize their potential for productive lives in the 21st century. We value student learning. We are likely to expand what students know and can do if we set clear goals and take account of what they are learning.

These views and this conviction are being promulgated by the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability. I have joined the board of this organization, and I invite you to visit its website, www.newleadershipalliance.org, in order to learn more about the movement it hopes to foster.

I hope you will take a moment to review the website. I will be grateful in the coming months and years for your counsel and your participation in these efforts to advance both the depth and breadth of learning among students attending our colleges and universities.

With every good wish,

Paul E. Lingenfelter, President
State Higher Education Executive Officers

I've got to start working smarter.

2009-12-12T12:11:00.001-06:00

Today I'm thinking about working smarter. That's because we're nearing the end of an extremely busy semester. Until today I hadn't posted anything on this blog for several weeks. To put it very simply, I had other things to do. You know how it is.

Something I was doing previously was perusing sites like Academic Impressions, Innovative Educators, and Faculty Focus for tidbits that I'd then feature as separate items on this blog. Well, I'm trying something different, as you can tell by looking at the other items I've posted this morning. From time to time (on a regular schedule, I hope), I'll post an item similar to this one in which I remind readers to take a look at the latest offerings from these organizations, each of which has some very good stuff.

Go ahead and take a look at them right now. You'll find something that interests you.

Gotta give 'em credit...

2009-12-12T11:48:00.001-06:00

From the article:

But while Phoenix may have framed its academic information (as many colleges do) in the most flattering possible ways, it remains virtually alone among its peers in the for-profit sector of higher education in revealing this sort of information.

"But we seem to be coming toward a tipping point [in favor of being more transparent], and I would bet that in the next three to five years, there will be a lot more easily accessible, publicly available data about the performance of many of our institutions."

The big challenge for Phoenix (to the extent that a university with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit is challenged) and its peers in for-profit higher education is the perceived need to measure themselves not against one another, but against the traditional institutions -- largely community colleges and open-access public institutions -- with which they compete for students. With Phoenix and its peers charging significantly higher tuitions than most public institutions, for-profit colleges are feeling pressure (from regulators more than consumers, at least so far) to prove that the education they are delivering is worth the higher price.

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

Academic Impressions

2009-12-12T11:25:00.002-06:00

Much like Innovative Educators (see the post before last), Academic Impressions also offers conferences, webinars, etc. that are generally of high quality.

Things we can learn from the for-profits

2009-12-12T11:06:00.002-06:00

From the article:

Some for-profit institutions emphasize instructor training in a way that more traditional institutions should emulate, according to the report. The University of Phoenix, for example, "has required faculty to participate in a four-week training program that includes adult learning theory," the report said.

The report says for-profit institutions' attention to costs and outcomes, driven by the need for profit, provides a guideline for how traditional colleges can pay attention to student achievement rates.

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

Innovative Educators

2009-12-12T11:01:00.001-06:00

Innovative Educators maintains an ongoing list of professional development opportunities in several formats including face-to-face, webinars, & other variations, some free, some for pay. We've sampled some of their wares and generally it's good stuff. Take a look.

Tools of Engagement: Technologies and Strategies for All Learning Styles

2009-10-31T12:18:00.002-05:00

Brief article on the Faculty Focus site.

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

2009-10-31T10:49:00.003-05:00

That'll teach UF to downplay zombie threat!

Increasing engagement among online students

2009-10-31T10:42:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-17T12:42:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-10-17T12:00:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-10T15:39:00.001-05:00

Here is the UMass handbook for academic program assessment.

Think-alouds as assessment strategy

2009-10-10T15:33:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-10T15:15:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-10T15:09:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-10T12:16:00.003-05:00

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

2009-10-10T10:40:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-09T22:07:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-08T08:31:00.002-05:00

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

New issue of AAC&U News

2009-10-06T12:01:00.002-05:00

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

How to have high impact in hard times

2009-10-04T11:22:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-03T12:15:00.002-05:00

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...

Thailand: Rankings vs. assessments

2009-09-27T12:30:00.002-05:00

In the Bangkok Post, Vasu Thirsak writes that...

The recent hoopla over university 'rankings' was ill-conceived because the focus should have been on self-improvement, not which university was better than another.

When the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (Onesqa) released its assessment of the quality of university-level institutions recently, there were complaints and a few hostilities here and there against what most people perceived as being the Thai-university "rankings."

Of course, Onesqa was quick to emphasize that the report did not "rank" Thailand's universities, but its voice was not heard over the boisterous din of detractors.

All of this sounds pretty familiar too.

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

Australia: Home-grown rankings gain support

2009-09-27T12:17:00.003-05:00

Here are some quotes from The Australian. Some of this sounds very familiar.

Support is growing across the higher education sector for an independent national university ranking system that would be more comprehensive than the Shanghai Jiao Tong survey of world universities.

Monash University vice-chancellor Ed Byrne advocated a national ranking system to enhance the sector's performance in line with national needs. Professor Byrne said too much emphasis was placed on the internationally recognised Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, which focused on research and hard sciences.

He recommended an Australian system that would also give due weight to teaching, learning and community engagement.

"It would be interesting to have for Australia an agreed national ranking system that would look at research output, educational excellence and community engagement in a way that the government and the Australian people could have confidence in," he said.

Such a ranking could provide universities with a strong guide for assessing their own performance. But, as with all rankings, Professor Byrne said, care should be taken not to over-emphasise comparative standings.

Ross Williams, author of the discontinued Melbourne Institute rankings of Australian universities, backed the idea. He suggested that a new system could take into account the different missions of universities.

Professor Williams said such a system could act as an additional check on the performance indicators the federal government was looking to introduce, such as the Excellence in Research initiative.

But he cautioned that it was important there be several different rankings that differentiated between the various missions of universities. He said attempts at an aggregated single ranking tended to be simplistic and distorting and risked causing "mission drift".

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

Quality assurance in Europe

2009-09-27T12:08:00.003-05:00

University World News tells us that:

In its first report on progress in quality assurance in higher education, the European Commission has pointed to significant developments towards greater transparency and credibility over the past few years. Progress has not only been made in the way universities deal internally with quality assurance, but also on external evaluation of institutions and programmes. Many new national quality assurance agencies have been established and there is increased awareness of European standards and guidelines on quality assurance.

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

Quality, and not just counts, counts.

2009-09-27T11:51:00.002-05:00

The University World News summarizes an Australian article that expresses something I've been thinking regarding rapidly growing emphasis on improving retention and graduation rate numbers. Here are a couple of quotes:

As a key performance indicator in university quality assurance processes, the retention of students in their studies is an issue of concern worldwide. Implicit in the process of quality assurance is quality improvement. In an article titled Improving student retention in higher education, published in the latest edition of Australian Universities' Review, authors Glenda Crosling, Margaret Heagney and Liz Thomas examine student retention from a teaching and learning perspective, in terms of approaches that have an impact on students' decisions to continue with or withdraw from their studies.

One way to improve quality in regard to student retention is to identify influences and causes of student retention and attrition. Engaging students in their studies has been identified as important in retaining students and stemming attrition. Institutions have shared responsibility to facilitate student engagement.

Some reasons why students leave are beyond the control of institutions, but the organisation and delivery of the curriculum is an area over which universities and colleges have significant autonomy. Addressing student retention via learning, teaching and curricular developments has the advantage of meeting the needs of all students - not just those either identified as at risk, or who proactively seek additional support.

Trudy Banta on designing effective assessments

2009-09-21T22:52:00.002-05:00

In a Faculty Focus article, Trudy Banta answers some questions about assessment prior to her upcoming online seminar.

Merisotis and Lumina: Balancing quantity with quality

2009-09-13T11:03:00.002-05:00

One of the most hope-inspiring figures among those leading the struggle for excellence in higher education is Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation. What Lumina calls their Big Goal is to “increase the nation’s level of high-quality college degrees and credentials to 60% by 2025.” You’ve heard others say similar things, including President Obama.

What I find hopeful about Lumina are a couple of things in particular. One is that they’re walking the walk by funding worthy initiatives, including one of the best-known – Achieving the Dream.

But the other thing that I find especially hopeful about Merisotis and Lumina is that, among the players who genuinely have enough clout to make a difference, they place as much emphasis on improving the quality of our students’ learning as on increasing the numbers of degree holders. I fully support the calls for, and efforts toward, increasing retention and graduation rates and getting more of our citizens into college and out the door with diploma in hand. President Obama, state higher education coordinating boards, institutional, state, national, and global leaders – I’m with you in this effort.

What sometimes worries me, though, is the lack of balance between calls for quantity and quality. To put it very bluntly, I don’t care if we graduate lots more students unless they know and can do the things that are required to make our communities – local, state, national, and global – safer, freer, and more cooperative, prosperous, and enlightened.

So here are a few quotes from a recent interview with Merisotis. I picked the first quote for a reason that’s pretty obvious. The second shows the balanced approach that I admire. The third is his reply to a question about another balancing act – between resources committed to instruction vs. to research. And the fourth addresses still another type of balance

…college attainment rates are rising in almost every industrialised or post-industrial country in the world except the US. Today in some countries, more than half of young adults are degree holders. What's especially disturbing, given the increasingly global nature of the economy, is that attainment rates in many other countries continue to climb while ours remains stagnant.

Expansion can and must take place without a dilution of quality. Our goal very explicitly states that we want 60% of Americans to have "high-quality degrees and credentials," and we have initially defined those as degrees and credentials that have "well-defined and transparent learning outcomes which provide clear pathways to future education and employment." We have just begun the work of defining, fleshing out and reaching consensus on the learning outcomes we should seek and we are absolutely committed to maintaining - even improving - the quality of American degrees and credentials.

In a world of limited resources, we need to invest the funds where they are likely to have the most impact on our society. In this case, that is in the learning that students receive from higher education, which translates into broad societal benefits as well as benefits to individuals. The research role of higher education is critical to the innovation that we need, to be at the cutting edge of change as a nation. But that role is and should be limited to a relatively small number of institutions.

Do you see higher education as a route to a specific occupation or area of employment, or rather more broadly? It's not an "either-or" proposition. Rather, it's "both-and." Higher education must prepare students for the world of work while it also helps shape them more broadly as citizens of their nation and the world at large.

AdultStudent.com

2009-09-12T13:40:00.002-05:00

Just found this. Looks like there might be some good stuff here.

Service learning resources

2009-09-12T13:23:00.002-05:00

Some resources on service learning, compiled by Innovative Educators:

Can we talk?

2009-09-12T12:21:00.002-05:00

Do's and don'ts for more effective classroom discussions.

You’ve got to love academia’s ironic practice of tossing graduate students and inexperienced professors into discussion groups and symposia. Even seasoned hands often find leading discussion-based classes quite challenging. They run counter to our training: responsibility is in the hands of non-experts (students), agendas are fungible, concrete data is elusive, and outcomes are unpredictable.

Don’t despair; student-centered classes are generally more rewarding than presentation-style counterparts. The smaller rosters give the professor a chance to get to know students, be astonished by them, and learn from them. Skillfully done discussions empower students, make the proverbial light bulbs snap on with the greatest regularity, and force students to plumb the intricacies of a subject rather than just trying to figure out your grading angle. The trick for leaders is getting the hang of them.

Political science profs exploring new ways

2009-09-12T12:15:00.003-05:00

Couple of quotes from a recent article in Inside Higher Ed

Practicality was a major theme at teaching sessions here at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Many professors expressed dissatisfaction with traditional teaching methods – and also discussed the need to find alternatives that don’t either take so much time that they can’t do their research or hijack the syllabus away from the material they would like to cover.

There was a general consensus that there are ways to better engage political science students -- but also that these methods take much more time and, in some cases, cost more money. Many of the ideas discussed here were attempts to challenge the traditional lecture format “without ruining your life....”

A twist on embedded assessment of writing

2009-09-12T12:08:00.002-05:00

Here's another angle on embedded assessment of writing proficiency that is also an example of collaboration between academic affairs and student affairs.

In recent years, Brown University has asked its incoming freshmen to write candid letters to their academic advisers. To students, the objectives seemed simple: to introduce themselves, to share goals for the next four years, and to show they had read the summer reading assignment.

There was no promise of confidentiality, but some incoming freshmen in the classes of 2011 and 2012, just out of high school and perhaps a bit naive, concluded that only their advisers would read the letters....Instead, the students’ letters were also read by staff of the university’s writing center, who gave advisers a heads up on which freshmen might need extra help with their writing.

Making feedback in online courses more engaging

2009-09-12T12:01:00.001-05:00

Here's a brief item from Faculty Focus.