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Ashley Ater Kranov

Teaching Experiment Decodes a Discipline - Teaching - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49140

teaching concepts history

shared by Ashley Ater Kranov on 25 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Several years ago, a small group of faculty members at Indiana University at
    Bloomington decided to do something about the problem. The key, they concluded,
    was to construct every history course around two core skills of their
    discipline: assembling evidence and interpreting it.
  • The historians at Indiana have tried to help students through several specific
    bottlenecks by dividing large concepts into smaller, evidence-related steps. (See the box below.)
  • "Students come into our classrooms believing that history is about stories full
    of names and dates," says Arlene J. Díaz, an associate professor of history at
    Indiana who is one of four directors of the department's History Learning
    Project, as the redesign effort is known. But in courses, "they discover that
    history is actually about interpretation, evidence, and argument."
Gary Brown

At Colleges, Assessment Satisfies Only Accreditors - Letters to the Editor - The Chronicle ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...49236

accreditation assessment faculty development

shared by Gary Brown on 24 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Some of that is due to the influence of the traditional academic freedom that faculty members have enjoyed. Some of it is ego. And some of it is lack of understanding of how it can work. There is also a huge disconnect between satisfying outside parties, like accreditors and the government, and using assessment as a quality-improvement system.
  • We are driven by regional accreditation and program-level accreditation, not by quality improvement. At our institution, we talk about assessment a lot, and do just enough to satisfy the requirements of our outside reviewers.
  • Standardized direct measures, like the Major Field Test for M.B.A. graduates?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The problem with the test is that it does not directly align with our program's learning outcomes and it does not yield useful information for closing the loop. So why do we use it? Because it is accepted by accreditors as a direct measure and it is less expensive and time-consuming than more useful tools.
  • Without exception, the most useful information for improving the program and student learning comes from the anecdotal and indirect information.
  • We don't have the time and the resources to do what we really want to do to continuously improve the quality of our programs and instruction. We don't have a culture of continuous improvement. We don't make changes on a regular basis, because we are trapped by the catalog publishing cycle, accreditation visits, and the entrenched misunderstanding of the purposes of assessment.
  • The institutions that use it are ones that have adequate resources to do so. The time necessary for training, whole-system involvement, and developing the programs for improvement is daunting. And it is only being used by one regional accrediting body, as far as I know.
  • Until higher education as a whole is willing to look at changing its approach to assessment, I don't think it will happen
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 24 Nov 09
     
    The challenge and another piece of evidence that the nuances of assessment as it related to teaching and learning remain elusive.
Nils Peterson

Office of the President: Perspectives Home - 1 views

president.wsu.edu/perspectives

shared by Nils Peterson on 22 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Clearly, a world-class research university cannot long
    stand on such a shaky IT foundation. In fact, in
    the  generally glowing accreditation report filed
    by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and
    Universities about our university this summer, one
    recommendation read: “The Committee recommends
    that Washington State University provide contemporary
    information management systems that will address the
    needs of the future for its student, academic and
    management support requirements.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Nov 09
       
      Perhaps the President recalls the Spring preliminary accreditation report more clearly than the final report sent to him in the summer and linked at accreditation.wsu.edu which does not have the "glowing" comments but does say

      "...the Commission finds that Recommendations 1,2, and 3 of the Spring 2009 Comprehensive Evaluation Report are areas where Washington State University is substantially in compliance with Commission criteria for accreditation, but in need of improvement. The two additional Recommendations follow below.

      Recommendation 2 states that the implementation of the educational assessment plan remains inconsistent across the University despite promising starts and a number of exemplary successes in selected programs. The Commission therefore recommends that the Universìty continue to enhance and strengthen its assessment process. This process needs to be extended to all of the University's educational programs, including graduate programs, and programs offered at the branch campuses (Standard 2.8).
Gary Brown

News: Defining Accountability - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...aei

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • they should do so in ways that reinforce the behaviors they want to see -- and avoid the kinds of perverse incentives that are so evident in many policies today.
  • This is especially true, several speakers argued, on the thorniest of higher education accountability questions -- those related to improving student outcomes.
  • Oh, and one or two people actually talked about how nice it would be if policy makers still envisioned college as a place where people learn about citizenship or just become educated for education's sake.)
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • only if the information they seek to collect is intelligently framed, which the most widely used current measure -- graduation rates -- is not
  • "work force ready"
  • Accountability is not quite as straightforward as we think," said Rhoades, who described himself as "not a 'just say no' guy" about accountability. "It's not a question of whether [colleges and faculty should be held accountable], but how, and by whom," he said. "It's about who's developing the measures, and what behaviors do they encourage?"
  • federal government needs to be the objective protector of taxpayers' dollars,"
  • Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said that government regulation would be a major mistake, but said that accreditors needed to come to agreement on "community-driven, outcomes-based standards" to which colleges should be held.
  • But while they complain when policy makers seek to develop measures that compare one institution against another, colleges "keep lists of peers with which they compare themselves" on many fronts, Miller said.
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09
     
    High level debates again
Gary Brown

WSU Today Online - Current Article List - 1 views

www.wsutoday.wsu.edu/...Publications.asp

accreditation NCATE

shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09 - Snapshot

  • National and state agencies have renewed accreditation for WSU's College of Education, which earned praise as “a standout institution.”





    The ratings came after voluntary reviews by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and Washington State’s Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB). Both accreditation teams, which work cooperatively, visited WSU last spring.

  • accredited institutions must:





    * Carefully assess this knowledge and skill to determine that candidates may graduate.





    * Have partnerships with schools that enable candidates to develop the skills necessary to help students learn.





    * Prepare candidates to understand and work with diverse student populations.





    * Have faculty who model effective teaching practices.





    * Have the resources, including information technology resources, necessary to prepare candidates to meet new standards.

  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09
     
    Note the criteria as it pertains to NWCC&U
Stephen Spaeth

Institutional - Community learning spectrum.pdf - 3 views

mail.google.com/mail

innovation collaboration iteams PD

shared by Stephen Spaeth on 14 Nov 09 - No snapshot
  • Intellectual property is shared
  • Stephen Spaeth
    Stephen Spaeth on 14 Nov 09
     
    Communities identify authentic problems that are inter-disciplinary and reach beyond the definition of the course.
  • Theron DesRosier
    Theron DesRosier on 19 Nov 09
     
    Hey Stephen,
    I am having trouble opening this link. Can you send another?
Gary Brown

Accountability Issues Persist Under New Administration - Government - The Chronicle of High... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49190

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09
     
    The daily dose of calls for accountability--useful for those who are inclined to see OAI as the agent of their distress.
Nils Peterson

THEN: Journal - 0 views

thenjournal.org/248

shared by Nils Peterson on 18 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Fourth, an observation: Schools tend to pose problems to students in the form of puzzles far more than in the form of games. This can result in students being taught to think that there is an answer to every question, a solution to every problem. There is an endless array of secrets that others know and you don’t. When students leave school they frequently find that problems in the “real world” tend not to have “once and for all” solutions. Many problems seem to have no solution at all. People create problems themselves and solve problems created by others. They begin to think in terms of strategies for coping with their problems, strategies that serve their ends but can be expected to conflict with other people’s goals. Therefore a puzzle-based education might not prepare people for life after school as well as a game-based education might.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Nov 09
       
      posted as a response to the HASTAC conversation, it is an interesting exploration of a dichotomy -- puzzles (closed-ended problems) vs games (open-ended problems) and the impact on learning on using one vs the other
Joshua Yeidel

Wikis in the workplace: a practical introduction - Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...welcome-to-the-wiki-party.ars

wiki

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 18 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Joshua Yeidel
    Joshua Yeidel on 18 Nov 09
     
    "The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples."
Gary Brown

Read methods online for free - Methodspace - home of the Research Methods community - 0 views

www.methodspace.com/...read-methods-online-for-free

evaluation methods

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Read methods online

  • Book of the
    month


    What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and
    Evaluation Practice?

  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    This site may be valuable for professional development. We have reason to explore what the evaluation community holds as "credible" evidence, which is the chapter the group is reading this month.
Gary Brown

Student-Survey Results: Too Useful to Keep Private - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49128

accountability NSSE

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • "There are … disturbing signs that many students who do earn degrees have not actually mastered the reading, writing, and thinking skills we expect of college graduates. Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined."
  • But a major contributing factor is that the customers of higher education—students, parents, and employers—have few true measures of quality on which to rely. Is a Harvard education really better than that from a typical flagship state university, or does Harvard just benefit from being able to enroll better students? Without measures of value added in higher education, that's difficult, if not impossible, to determine.
  • Yet what is remarkable about the survey is that participating institutions generally do not release the results so that parents and students can compare their performance with those of other colleges.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Requiring all colleges to make such information public would pressure them to improve their undergraduate teaching
  • It would empower prospective students and their parents with solid information about colleges' educational quality and help them make better choices. To make that happen, the federal government should simply require that any institution receiving federal support—Pell Grants, student loans, National Science Foundation grants, and so on—make its results public on the Web site of the National Survey of Student Engagement in an open, interactive way.
  • Indeed, a growing number of organizations in our economy now have to live with customer-performance measures. It's time higher education did the same.
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    The whites of the eyes--the perceptions and assumptions behind the push for accountability. I note in particular the notion that higher education will understand comparisons of the NSSE as an incentive to improve.
Gary Brown

News: Fans and Fears of 'Lecture Capture' - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...capture

lecture faculty development

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • “Well-attended lectures were well-watched; poorly attended lectures were not watched,” Stringer said, pointing to research she had conducted at Stanford. "If you’re bad, you’re bad. If you’re bad online, you’re bad in lectures, students don’t come.”
  • Our students at Berkeley tell us that this is supplemental material, and it doesn’t affect their decision to attend class,” said Mara Hancock, director for educational technologies at the University of California at Berkeley
  • The faculty’s general unwillingness to work with lecture capture technology prompted Purdue to enlist the educational technology firm Echo360 to formulate a work-around solution that would require minimal cooperation from professors.
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    I have nothing to add to this.
Gary Brown

Students Unimpressed with Faculty Use of Ed Tech -- Campus Technology - 0 views

campustechnology.com/...th-faculty-use-of-ed-tech.aspx

students technology

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • 8 percent of students indicated that their instructors "understand technology and fully integrate it into their classes."
  • 74 percent of higher education instructors polled indicated that they "incorporate technology into every class or nearly every class," and 67 percent said they were "satisfied with their technology professional development."
  • The report also found that students now more than ever are using technology regularly in preparation for class: 81 percent of them this year said they use technology every day before class to prepare compared with 63 percent last year.
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    The lack of mental models is revealed here in numbers. What faculty perceive as substantial technology integration is perceived somewhat differently by students according to this study.
Matthew Tedder

5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases - 2 views

mashable.com/...google-wave-use-cases

media

shared by Matthew Tedder on 16 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Matthew Tedder
    Matthew Tedder on 16 Nov 09
     
    5 use cases for wave..
Nils Peterson

From SMCEDU: 5 Steps to Make the Social Web Work for Higher Ed - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...bring_the_web_to_higher_ed.php

shared by Nils Peterson on 12 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • At a kickoff event tonight in Richmond, Virginia, I got to participate in a panel discussion and hear questions from an audience of college students and professors. One of the questions posed was how those in academia can best put the social web to work for themselves. Far beyond Facebook and LinkedIn, how can this community harness the Internet to be smarter, more efficient, and more productive? Read on for our top five ideas.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 12 Nov 09
       
      The 5 steps
      1. Find your network, they say Twitter is a good way to do this
      2. Keep up, they say RSS of the blogs of key players you found
      3. Create your identity, get beyound the one you have with Facebook and consider yourname.com
      4. Contribute content to the conversation, start a blog or website
      5. Continue to explore and adopt new tools
Theron DesRosier

Tom Vander Ark: How Social Networking Will Transform Learning - 2 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...l-networking-wit_b_349467.html

learning web2.0 higher_education

shared by Theron DesRosier on 12 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement
  • I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement.
  • Theron DesRosier
    Theron DesRosier on 12 Nov 09
     
    Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    From his post:

    "There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'"

    "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas."

    "Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement"

    "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."


Gary Brown

A Real-Life Lesson in Why Accountability Matters - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49067

accountability accreditation students

shared by Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • "Change is in the wind,"

  • "All we have is this campus," says Raven Curling, a biology and pre-dental student who is also president of the student government. "It feels like we're a university without university standards."


    Policy wonks and education reformers talk often about the importance of accountability and about the responsibilities of trustees to set and enforce standards. All that jargon moves from abstraction to reality when you see the price students pay for inattention.

  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09
     
    more focus on provostial numbers, but the import is still the same--"accountability is in the wind."
Gary Brown

Audio: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick - Community Colleges - The Chronicle of ... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49087

accountability community colleges

shared by Gary Brown on 11 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Joe D. May: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick
  • Gary Brown
    Gary Brown on 11 Nov 09
     
    nothing new here beyond the headline, but another to save for our collection. "Transparency comes with risk," says Joe.
Joshua Yeidel

Google Wave Use Cases: Education - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...e_wave_use_cases_education.php

higher_education wave

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Joshua Yeidel
    Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09
     
    "After searching some public 'waves,' we came across an educational wave. Entitled 'Wave in Class,' the wave was started to explore concepts like "Collaborative Note Taking" and "Wave as a Debate Host." "
  • Joshua Yeidel
    Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09
     
    So it begins... the usual range of reactrions when a new technology is introduced, and educators begin to spin salvation or doom on top of it. Interestingly, there are already a couple of comments on this blog that use Wave concepts to challenge the context (the "class").
Joshua Yeidel

Skim | Home - 2 views

skim-app.sourceforge.net

pdf software mac opensource freeware

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09 - Snapshot
  • Joshua Yeidel
    Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09
     
    "Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.

    Stop printing and start skimming."
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