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

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:56:55 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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."

Tags: teaching, concepts, history

by: Ashley Ater Kranov

At Colleges, Assessment Satisfies Only Accreditors - Letters to the Editor - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:48:03 -0000

Comments:

The challenge and another piece of evidence that the nuances of assessment as it related to teaching and learning remain elusive. - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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?

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

Tags: accreditation, assessment, faculty development

by: Gary Brown

Office of the President: Perspectives Home

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:16:49 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.”

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). - Nils Peterson

Tags: no_tag

by: Nils Peterson

News: Defining Accountability - Inside Higher Ed

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:49:20 -0000

Comments:

High level debates again - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.)

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.

Tags: accountability, accreditation

by: Gary Brown

WSU Today Online - Current Article List

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:29:58 -0000

Comments:

Note the criteria as it pertains to NWCC&U - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.

Tags: accreditation, NCATE

by: Gary Brown

Institutional - Community learning spectrum.pdf

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:36:03 -0000

Communities identify authentic problems that are inter-disciplinary and reach beyond the definition of the course.

Comments:

Communities identify authentic problems that are inter-disciplinary and reach beyond the definition of the course.
- Stephen Spaeth
Hey Stephen,
I am having trouble opening this link. Can you send another? - Theron DesRosier

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Intellectual property is shared

Tags: innovation, collaboration, iteams, PD

by: Stephen Spaeth

Accountability Issues Persist Under New Administration - Government - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:30:34 -0000

Comments:

The daily dose of calls for accountability--useful for those who are inclined to see OAI as the agent of their distress. - Gary Brown

Tags: accountability, accreditation

by: Gary Brown

THEN: Journal

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:57:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.

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 - Nils Peterson

Tags: no_tag

by: Nils Peterson

Wikis in the workplace: a practical introduction - Ars Technica

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:42:40 -0000

"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."

Comments:

"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." - Joshua Yeidel

Tags: wiki

by: Joshua Yeidel

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

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:54:21 -0000

Comments:

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

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Read methods online

Book of the month

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

Tags: evaluation, methods

by: Gary Brown

Student-Survey Results: Too Useful to Keep Private - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:25:39 -0000

Comments:

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

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"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.

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.

Tags: accountability, NSSE

by: Gary Brown

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

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:36:56 -0000

Comments:

I have nothing to add to this. - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

“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.

Tags: lecture, faculty development

by: Gary Brown

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

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:32:45 -0000

Comments:

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. - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.

Tags: students, technology

by: Gary Brown

5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:13:14 -0000

Comments:

5 use cases for wave.. - Matthew Tedder

Tags: media

by: Matthew Tedder

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

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:52:56 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.

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 - Nils Peterson

Tags: no_tag

by: Nils Peterson

Tom Vander Ark: How Social Networking Will Transform Learning

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:53:42 -0000

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."

Comments:

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."

- Theron DesRosier

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.

Tags: learning, web2.0, higher_education

by: Theron DesRosier

A Real-Life Lesson in Why Accountability Matters - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:40:14 -0000

Comments:

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

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"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.

Tags: accountability, accreditation, students

by: Gary Brown

Audio: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick - Community Colleges - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:33:15 -0000

Comments:

nothing new here beyond the headline, but another to save for our collection. "Transparency comes with risk," says Joe. - Gary Brown

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Joe D. May: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick

Tags: accountability, community colleges

by: Gary Brown

Google Wave Use Cases: Education

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:02:01 -0000

"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." "

Comments:

"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
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

Tags: higher_education, wave

by: Joshua Yeidel

Skim | Home

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:52:47 -0000

"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."

Comments:

"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." - Joshua Yeidel

Tags: pdf, software, mac, opensource, freeware

by: Joshua Yeidel