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A short summary of Carl Rogers' work and perspectives on teaching as 'facilitating learning'; core conditions for learning, etc - an interesting perspective from a psycho-therapist turned educational researcher. Worth a read :-)

Assessing How Students Learn Bill Cerbin In higher education the dominant mode of assessment is to measure what students have learned in a course or program. By measuring what students learn educators can monitor student progress, determine learning gaps and gains, and document achievement. But measuring what students learn is of limited use if our goal is to improve their future performance. It is akin to taking a person's temperature. You may learn the individual has a fever but the measurement produces no insight into the cause. Suppose we find that students score in the 60th percentile on a standardized test or that half the students in a course have significant writing problems. What should we do to improve future performance? Unfortunately, the assessment data provide little direction. The result is a kind of guesswork by which we consider alternative teaching practices or programs without understanding how or why they would work better than standard approaches.

Alverno's Eight Abilities Communication Make connections that create meaning between yourself and your audience. Learn to speak, read, write and listen effectively, using graphics, electronic media, computers and quantified data. Analysis Think clearly and critically. Fuse experience, reason and training into considered judgment. Problem Solving Define problems and their causes, and use a range of abilities and resources to reach decisions, make recommendations, or carry out plans. Valuing Recognize different value systems while holding strongly to your own ethic. Recognize the moral dimensions of your decisions and accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Social Interaction Know how to get things done in committees, task forces, team projects and other group efforts. Elicit the views of others and help reach conclusions. Developing a Global Perspective Act with an understanding of and respect for the economic, social and biological interdependence of global life. Effective Citizenship Be involved and responsible in the community. Act with an informed awareness of contemporary issues and their historical contexts. Develop leadership abilities. Aesthetic Engagement Engage with various forms of art and in artistic processes. Take and defend positions regarding the meaning and value of artistic expressions in the contexts from which they emerge.

T&L blogger Ryan Bretag recently sat down with his students and asked them about 21st-Century Learning strategies. Their suggestions are amazing. Read the whole piece here: http://www.techlearning.com/blogs.aspx?id=15776 Some snippets: Each discussion point started and ended with the focus on learning. For example, the students talked about creating a learning environment that was about learning not just memorization. To do this, they wanted to seek out partnerships both locally and globally in order to build connections that would foster a "learning to learn" movement where students are learning for learning, open to learning, and innovative. Clearly, textbooks were not fast enough nor diverse enough in their eyes. They longed for ways to interact with materials that were updated frequently and offered a wealth of perspectives. In fact, a good portion felt there was a need to move beyond the textbook because "information changes to rapidly" for textbooks to be the main source in the classroom. Along with this, information and resources needed to come in a variety of formats if the curriculum was going to remain progressive and current: narrative, fiction, digital, multimedia, and non-fiction.