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Nils Peterson

Half an Hour: Open Source Assessment - 0 views

halfanhour.blogspot.com/...open-source-assessment.html

Downes learning2.0 outcomes_assessment learning_community end_of_LMS

shared by Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10 - Cached
  • When posed the question in Winnipeg regarding what I thought the ideal open online course would look like, my eventual response was that it would not look like a course at all, just the assessment.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      I remembered this Downes post on the way back from HASTAC. It is some of the roots of our Spectrum I think.
  • The reasoning was this: were students given the opportunity to attempt the assessment, without the requirement that they sit through lectures or otherwise proprietary forms of learning, then they would create their own learning resources.
  • In Holland I encountered a person from an organization that does nothing but test students. This is the sort of thing I long ago predicted (in my 1998 Future of Online Learning) so I wasn't that surprised. But when I pressed the discussion the gulf between different models of assessment became apparent.Designers of learning resources, for example, have only the vaguest of indication of what will be on the test. They have a general idea of the subject area and recommendations for reading resources. Why not list the exact questions, I asked? Because they would just memorize the answers, I was told. I was unsure how this varied from the current system, except for the amount of stuff that must be memorized.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      assumes a test as the form of assessment, rather than something more open ended.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • As I think about it, I realize that what we have in assessment is now an exact analogy to what we have in software or learning content. We have proprietary tests or examinations, the content of which is held to be secret by the publishers. You cannot share the contents of these tests (at least, not openly). Only specially licensed institutions can offer the tests. The tests cost money.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      See our Where are you on the spectrum, Assessment is locked vs open
  • Without a public examination of the questions, how can we be sure they are reliable? We are forced to rely on 'peer reviews' or similar closed and expert-based evaluation mechanisms.
  • there is the question of who is doing the assessing. Again, the people (or machines) that grade the assessments work in secret. It is expert-based, which creates a resource bottleneck. The criteria they use are not always apparent (and there is no shortage of literature pointing to the randomness of the grading). There is an analogy here with peer-review processes (as compared to recommender system processes)
  • What constitutes achievement in a field? What constitutes, for example, 'being a physicist'?
  • This is a reductive theory of assessment. It is the theory that the assessment of a big thing can be reduced to the assessment of a set of (necessary and sufficient) little things. It is a standards-based theory of assessment. It suggests that we can measure accomplishment by testing for accomplishment of a predefined set of learning objectives.Left to its own devices, though, an open system of assessment is more likely to become non-reductive and non-standards based. Even if we consider the mastery of a subject or field of study to consist of the accomplishment of smaller components, there will be no widespread agreement on what those components are, much less how to measure them or how to test for them.Consequently, instead of very specific forms of evaluation, intended to measure particular competences, a wide variety of assessment methods will be devised. Assessment in such an environment might not even be subject-related. We won't think of, say, a person who has mastered 'physics'. Rather, we might say that they 'know how to use a scanning electron microscope' or 'developed a foundational idea'.
  • We are certainly familiar with the use of recognition, rather than measurement, as a means of evaluating achievement. Ludwig Wittgenstein is 'recognized' as a great philosopher, for example. He didn't pass a series of tests to prove this. Mahatma Gandhi is 'recognized' as a great leader.
  • The concept of the portfolio is drawn from the artistic community and will typically be applied in cases where the accomplishments are creative and content-based. In other disciplines, where the accomplishments resemble more the development of skills rather than of creations, accomplishments will resemble more the completion of tasks, like 'quests' or 'levels' in online games, say.Eventually, over time, a person will accumulate a 'profile' (much as described in 'Resource Profiles').
  • In other cases, the evaluation of achievement will resemble more a reputation system. Through some combination of inputs, from a more or less define community, a person may achieve a composite score called a 'reputation'. This will vary from community to community.
  • Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
     
    Fine piece, transformative. "were students given the opportunity to attempt the assessment, without the requirement that they sit through lectures or otherwise proprietary forms of learning, then they would create their own learning resources."
Nils Peterson

Accreditation and assessment in an Open Course - an opening proposal | Open Course in E... - 1 views

edfutures.com/...t-open-course-opening-proposal

shared by Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10 - Cached
  • A good example of this may be a learning portfolio created by a students and reviewed by an instructor. The instructor might be looking for higher orders of learning... evidence of creative thinking, of the development of complex concepts or looking for things like improvement.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10
       
      He starts with a portfolio reviewed by the instructor, but it gets better
  • There is a simple sense in which assessing people for this course involves tracking their willingness to participate in the discussion. I have claimed in many contexts that in fields in which the canon is difficult to identify, where what is 'true' is not possible to identify knowledge becomes a negotiation. This will certainly true in this course, so I think the most important part of the assessment will be whether the learner in question has collaborated, has participated has ENGAGED with the material and with other participants of the course.
  • What we need, then, is a peer review model for assessment. We need people to take it as their responsibility to review the work of others, to confirm their engagement, and form community/networks of assessment that monitor and help each other.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • (say... 3-5 other participants are willing to sign off on your participation)
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10
       
      peer credentialling.
  • Evidence of contribution on course projects
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10
       
      I would prefer he say "projects" where the learner has latitude to define the project, rather than a 'course project' where the agency seems to be outside the learner. See our diagram of last April, the learner should be working their problem in their community
  • I think for those that are looking for PD credit we should be able to use the proposed assessment model (once you guys make it better) for accreditation. You would end up with an email that said "i was assessed based on this model and was not found wanting" signed by facilitators (or other participants, as surely given the quality of the participants i've seen, they would qualify as people who could guarantee such a thing).
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10
       
      Peer accreditation. It depends on the credibility of those signing off see also http://www.nilspeterson.com/2010/03/21/reimagining-both-learning-learning-institutions/
  • I think the Otago model would work well here. I call it the Otago model as Leigh Blackall's course at Otago was the first time i actually heard of someone doing it. In this model you do all the work in a given course, and then are assessed for credit AFTER the course by, essentially, challenging for PLAR. It's a nice distributed model, as it allows different people to get different credit for the same course.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10
       
      Challenging for a particular credit in an established institutional system, or making the claim that you have a useful solution to a problem and the solution merits "credit" in a particular system's procedures.
Nils Peterson

2009 Annual Meeting | Conference Program - 0 views

www.aacu.org/...program.cfm

shared by Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09 - Cached
  • This session explores the notion that assessment for transformational learning is best utilized as a learning tool. By providing timely, transparent, and appropriate feedback, both to students and to the institution itself, learning is enhanced – a far different motive for assessment than is external accountability.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      need to get to these guys with our harvesting gradebook ideas...
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      decided to attend another session. Hersh was OK before lunch, but the talk by Pan looks more promising
  • Academic and corporate communities agree on the urgent need for contemporary, research-based pedagogies of engagement in STEM fields. Participants will learn how leaders from academic departments and institutions have collaborated with leaders from the corporate and business community in regional networks to ensure that graduates meet the expectations of prospective employers and the public.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      here is another session with links to CTLT work, both harvesting gradebook and the ABET work
  • Professor Pan will discuss the reflective teaching methods used to prepare students to recognize and mobilize community assets as they design, implement, and evaluate projects to improve public health.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      Students tasked to learn about a community, ride the bus, make a Doc appt. Then tasked to do a non-clinical health project in that community (they do plenty of clinical stuff elsewhere in the program). Project must build capacity in the community to survive after the student leaves. Example. Work with hispanic parents in Sacramento about parenting issue, ex getting kids to sleep on time. Student had identified problem in the community, but first project idea was show a video, which was not capacity building. Rather than showing the video, used the video as a template and made a new video. Families were actors. Result was spanish DVD that the community could own. Pan thinks this is increased capacity in the community.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Freshman Survey annually examines the academic habits of mind of entering first-year students.  Along with academic involvement, the survey examines diversity, civic engagement, college admissions and expectations of college. 
  • The project aims to promote faculty and student assessment of undergraduate research products in relation to outcomes associated with basic research skills and general undergraduate learning principles (communication and quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, and integration and application of knowledge).
  • They focus educators on the magnitude of the challenge to prepare an ever-increasingly diverse, globally-connected student body with the knowledge, ability, processes, and confidence to adapt to diverse environments and respond creatively to the enormous issues facing humankind.
  • One challenge of civic engagement in the co-curriculum is the merging of cost and outcome: creating meaningful experiences for students and the community with small staffs, on small budgets, while still having significant, purposeful impact. 
  • a)claims that faculty are the sole arbiters of what constitutes a liberal education and b) counter claims that student life professionals also possess the knowledge and expertise critical to defining students’ total learning experiences.  
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      also, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
  • This session introduces a three-year national effort to document how colleges and universities are using assessment data to improve teaching and learning and to facilitate the dissemination and adoption of best practices in the assessment of college learning outcomes.
  • Exciting pedagogies of engagement abound, including undergraduate research, community-engaged learning, interdisciplinary exploration, and international study.  However, such experiences are typically optional and non-credit-bearing for students, and/or “on top of” the workload for faculty. This session explores strategies for integrating engaged learning into the institutional fabric (curriculum, student role, faculty role) and increasing access to these transformative experiences.
  • hands-on experiential learning, especially in collaboration with other students, is a superior pedagogy but how can this be provided in increasingly larger introductory classes? 
  • As educators seek innovative ways to manage knowledge and expand interdisciplinary attention to pressing global issues, as students and parents look for assurances that their tuition investment will pay professional dividends, and as alumni look for meaningful ways to give back to the institutions that nurtured and prepared them, colleges and universities can integrate these disparate goals through the Guilds, intergenerational membership networks that draw strength from the contributions of all of their members.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      see Theron's ideas for COMM.
  • Civic engagement learning derives its power from the engagement of students with real communities—local, national, and global. This panel explores the relationship between student learning and the contexts in which that learning unfolds by examining programs that place students in diverse contexts close to campus and far afield.
  • For institutional assessment to make a difference for student learning its results must result in changes in classroom practice. This session explores ways in which the institutional assessment of student learning, such as the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, can be connected to our classrooms.
  • Interdisciplinary Teaching and Object-Based Learning in Campus Museums
  • To address pressing needs of their communities, government and non-profit agencies are requesting higher education to provide education in an array of human and social services. To serve these needs effectively, higher educationneeds to broaden and deepen its consultation with practitioners in designing new curricula. Colleges and universities would do well to consider a curriculum development model that requires consultation not only with potential employers, but also with practitioners and supervisors of practitioners.
  • Should Academics be Active? Campuses and Cutting Edge Civic Engagement
  • If transformational liberal education requires engaging the whole student across the educational experience, how can colleges and universities renew strategy and allocate resources effectively to support it?  How can assessment be used to improve student learning and strengthen a transformational learning environment? 
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      Purpose of university is not to grant degrees, it has something to do with learning. Keeling's perspective is that the learning should be transformative; changing perspective. Liberating and emancipatory Learning is a complex interaction among student and others, new knowledge and experience, event, own aspirations. learners construct meaning from these elements. "we change our minds" altering the brain at the micro-level Brain imaging research demonstrates that analogical learning (abstract) demands more from more areas of the brain than semantic (concrete) learning. Mind is not an abstraction, it is based in the brain, a working physical organ .Learner and the environment matter to the learning. Seeds magazine, current issue on brain imaging and learning. Segway from brain research to need for university to educate the whole student. Uses the term 'transformative learning' meaning to transform the learning (re-wire the brain) but does not use transformative assessment (see wikipedia).
  • But as public debates roil, higher education has been more reactive than proactive on the question of how best to ensure that today’s students are fully prepared for a fast-paced future.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Jan 09
       
      Bologna process being adopted (slowly) in EU, the idea is to make academic degrees more interchangeable and understandable across the EU three elements * Qualification Frameworks (transnational, national, disciplinary). Frameworks are graduated, with increasing expertise and autonomy required for the upper levels. They sound like broad skills that we might recognize in the WSU CITR. Not clear how they are assessed * Tuning (benchmarking) process * Diploma Supplements (licensure, thesis, other capstone activities) these extend the information in the transcript. US equivalent might be the Kuali Students system for extending the transcript. Emerging dialog on American capability This dialog is coming from 2 directions * on campus * employers Connect to the Greater Exceptions (2000-2005) iniative. Concluded that American HE has islands of innovation. Lead to LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) Initiative (2005-2015). The dialog is converging because of several forces * Changes in the balance of economic and political power. "The rise of the rest (of the world)" * Global economy in which innovation is key to growth and prosperity LEAP attempts to frame the dialog (look for LEAP in AACU website). Miami-Dade CC has announced a LEAP-derived covenant, the goals must span all aspects of their programs. Define liberal education Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world intellectual and practical skills responsibility integrative skills Marker of success is (here is where the Transformative Gradebook fits in): evidence that students can apply the essential learning outcomes to complex, unscripted problems and real-world settings Current failure -- have not tracked our progress, or have found that we are not doing well. See AACU employer survey 5-10% percent of current graduates taking courses that would meet the global competencies (transcript analysis) See NSSE on Personal and social responsibility gains, less tha
  • Dr. Pan will also talk about strategies for breaking down cultural barriers.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 24 Jan 09
       
      Pan. found a non-profit agency to be a conduit and coordinator to level the power between univ and grass roots orgs. helped with cultural gaps.
Gary Brown

Designing Effective Assessments: Q&A with Trudy Banta - 0 views

www.facultyfocus.com/...ssessments-qa-with-trudy-banta

institutional assessment program assessment assessment models

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • One-hundred forty-six assessment examples were sent to us, and we used all of those in one way or another in the book. I think it’s a pretty fair sample of what’s going on in higher education assessment. Yet most of the programs that we looked at had only been underway for two, three, or four years. When we asked what the long-term impact of doing assessment and using the findings to improve programs had been, in only six percent of the cases were the authors able to say that student learning had been improved.
  • Gary Brown on 16 Sep 09
     
    Though and advertisement for a workshop, Trudy Banta confirms our own suspicions. The blurb here further confirms that we need not look far for models--our energy will be better spent making our work at WSU a model.
Kimberly Green

Learning Assessments: Let the Faculty Lead the Way - Measuring Stick - The Chronicle of... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...26779

assessments

shared by Kimberly Green on 13 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Kimberly Green on 13 Sep 10
     
    Pat Hutchings Nice summary of the barriers to faculty involvemetn in useful assessment, and a suggestion that we look at the specific cases where it has been successful, despite the barriers. This short piece might be a good prompt for discussion with chairs, deans, assessment committees. Do we have any really strong models?
  • Kimberly Green on 13 Sep 10
     
    CTLT and Friends
Joshua Yeidel

Scholar Raises Doubts About the Value of a Test of Student Learning - Research - The Ch... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...65741

assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 02 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Beginning in 2011, the 331 universities that participate in the Voluntary System of Accountability will be expected to publicly report their students' performance on one of three national tests of college-level learning.
  • But at least one of those three tests—the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA—isn't quite ready to be used as a tool of public accountability, a scholar suggested here on Tuesday during the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research.
  • Students' performance on the test was strongly correlated with how long they spent taking it.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Besides the CLA, which is sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, other tests that participants in the voluntary system may use are the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency, from ACT Inc., and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress, offered by the Educational Testing Service.
  • The test has sometimes been criticized for relying on a cross-sectional system rather than a longitudinal model, in which the same students would be tested in their first and fourth years of college.
  • there have long been concerns about just how motivated students are to perform well on the CLA.
  • Mr. Hosch suggested that small groups of similar colleges should create consortia for measuring student learning. For example, five liberal-arts colleges might create a common pool of faculty members that would evaluate senior theses from all five colleges. "That wouldn't be a national measure," Mr. Hosch said, "but it would be much more authentic."
  • Mr. Shavelson said. "The challenge confronting higher education is for institutions to address the recruitment and motivation issues if they are to get useful data. From my perspective, we need to integrate assessment into teaching and learning as part of students' programs of study, thereby raising the stakes a bit while enhancing motivation of both students and faculty
  • "I do agree with his central point that it would not be prudent to move to an accountability system based on cross-sectional assessments of freshmen and seniors at an institution," said Mr. Arum, who is an author, with Josipa Roksa, of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press
  • Gary Brown on 02 Jun 10
     
    CLA debunking, but the best item may be the forthcoming book on "limited learning on College Campuses."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 25 Jun 10
     
    "Micheal Scriven and I spent more than a few years trying to apply his multiple-ranking item tool (a very robust and creative tool, I recommend it to others when the alternative is multiple-choice items) to the assessment of critical thinking in health care professionals. The result might be deemed partially successful, at best. I eventually abandoned the test after about 10,000 administrations because the scoring was so complex we could not place it in non-technical hands."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 25 Jun 10
     
    In comments on an article about CLA, Scriven's name comes up...
Joshua Yeidel

Cheaters Never Win, at Least in Physics, a Professor Finds - Wired Campus - The Chronic... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...21895

cheating teaching assessment

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 18 Mar 10
     
    "The professor said he did find a way to greatly reduce cheating on homework in his class. He switched to a "studio" model of teaching, in which students sit in small groups working through tutorials on computers while professors and teaching assistants roam the room answering questions, rather than a traditional lecture. With lectures, he detected cheating on about 11 percent of homework problems, but now he detects copying on only about 3 percent of them. It might help that he shares findings from his study to his students, showing them that cheaters are much more likely to get C's and D's on exams than those who work out homework problems on their own. "
  • Joshua Yeidel on 18 Mar 10
     
    A physics professor figures out how to detect cheating on homework, (an assessment), triangulates with another assessment (OK, it's an exam) to determine the impact on student learning, and modifies his teaching practice, reducing cheating from 11% to 3%.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Mar 10
     
    This is a happy ending and an interesting useful outcome from assessment. There is also a kind of "duh" quality to it, but that is not a problem. What I'm pondering, though, is the time and energy expended for a 7% gain. What I hope follows is further assessment of the gains for the other 93% relative to learning and attitude toward learning, school, and the subject matter.....
Gary Brown

A Measure of Learning Is Put to the Test - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124519

assessment accountability CLA

shared by Gary Brown on 20 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Others say those who take the test have little motivation to do well, which makes it tough to draw conclusions from their performance.
  • "Everything that No Child Left Behind signified during the Bush administration—we operate 180 degrees away from that," says Roger Benjamin, president of the Council for Aid to Education, which developed and promotes the CLA. "We don't want this to be a high-stakes test. We're putting a stake in the ground on classic liberal-arts issues. I'm willing to rest my oar there. These core abilities, these higher-order skills, are very important, and they're even more important in a knowledge economy where everyone needs to deal with a surplus of information." Only an essay test, like the CLA, he says, can really get at those skills.
  • "The CLA is really an authentic assessment process," says Pedro Reyes, associate vice chancellor for academic planning and assessment at the University of Texas system.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • "The Board of Regents here saw that it would be an important test because it measures analytical ability, problem-solving ability, critical thinking, and communication. Those are the skills that you want every undergraduate to walk away with." (Other large systems that have embraced the CLA include California State University and the West Virginia system.)
  • value added
  • We began by administering a retired CLA question, a task that had to do with analyzing crime-reduction strategies,
  • performance task that mirrors the CLA
  • Mr. Ernsting and Ms. McConnell are perfectly sincere about using CLA-style tasks to improve instruction on their campuses. But at the same time, colleges have a less high-minded motive for familiarizing students with the CLA style: It just might improve their scores when it comes time to take the actual test.
  • by 2012, the CLA scores of more than 100 colleges will be posted, for all the world to see, on the "College Portrait" Web site of the Voluntary System of Accountability, an effort by more than 300 public colleges and universities to provide information about life and learning on their campuses.
  • If familiarizing students with CLA-style tasks does raise their scores, then the CLA might not be a pure, unmediated reflection of the full range of liberal-arts skills. How exactly should the public interpret the scores of colleges that do not use such training exercises?
  • Trudy W. Banta, a professor of higher education and senior adviser to the chancellor for academic planning and evaluation at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, believes it is a serious mistake to publicly release and compare scores on the test. There is too much risk, she says, that policy makers and the public will misinterpret the numbers.
  • most colleges do not use a true longitudinal model: That is, the students who take the CLA in their first year do not take it again in their senior year. The test's value-added model is therefore based on a potentially apples-and-oranges comparison.
  • freshman test-takers' scores are assessed relative to their SAT and ACT scores, and so are senior test-takers' scores. For that reason, colleges cannot game the test by recruiting an academically weak pool of freshmen and a strong pool of seniors.
  • students do not always have much motivation to take the test seriously
  • seniors, who are typically recruited to take the CLA toward the end of their final semester, when they can already taste the graduation champagne.
  • Of the few dozen universities that had already chosen to publish CLA data on that site, roughly a quarter of the reports appeared to include erroneous descriptions of the year-to-year value-added scores.
  • It is clear that CLA scores do reflect some broad properties of a college education.
  • Students' CLA scores improved if they took courses that required a substantial amount of reading and writing. Many students didn't take such courses, and their CLA scores tended to stay flat.
  • Colleges that make demands on students can actually develop their skills on the kinds of things measured by the CLA.
  • Mr. Shavelson believes the CLA's essays and "performance tasks" offer an unusually sophisticated way of measuring what colleges do, without relying too heavily on factual knowledge from any one academic field.
  • Politicians and consumers want easily interpretable scores, while colleges need subtler and more detailed data to make internal improvements.
  • The CLA is used at more than 400 colleges
  • Since its debut a decade ago, it has been widely praised as a sophisticated alternative to multiple-choice tests
Nils Peterson

E-Portfolios for Learning: Limitations of Portfolios - 1 views

electronicportfolios.org/...limitations-of-portfolios.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 27 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Today, Shavelson, Klein & Benjamin published an online article on Inside Higher Ed entitled, "The Limitations of Portfolios." The comments to that article are even more illuminating, and highlight the debate about electronic portfolios vs. accountability systems... assessment vs. evaluation. These arguments highlight what I think is a clash in philosophies of learning and assessment, between traditional, behaviorist models and more progressive, cognitive/constructivist models. How do we build assessment strategies that bridge these two approaches? Or is the divide too wide? Do these different perspectives support the need for multiple measures and triangulation?
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 27 Oct 09
       
      Helen responds to CLA proponents
Nils Peterson

Edge: THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY By Don Tapscott - 1 views

www.edge.org/...tapscott09_index.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • For those of us like me who have been working on the Internet for years, it was very clear you couldn't encounter free software and you couldn't encounter Wikipedia and you couldn't encounter all of the wealth of cultural materials that people create and exchange, and the valuable actual software that people create, without an understanding that something much more complex is happening than the dominant ideology of the last 40 years or so. But you could if you weren't looking there, because we were used in the industrial system to think in these terms.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 28 Aug 09
       
      Hard to read because of the double negatives. He's saying there is lots of evidence of a new model in operation
  • It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 28 Aug 09
       
      and it has implications for assessment and vehicles for assessment (portfolios)
  • Theron DesRosier on 05 Jun 09
     
    "In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes like this: "I'm a professor and I have knowledge. You're a student, you're an empty vessel and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you."... The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either. "
Joshua Yeidel

A Measure of Learning Is Put to the Test - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124519

assessment higher_education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • "The CLA is really an authentic assessment process,"
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
       
      What is the meaning of "authentic" in this statement? It certainly isn't "situated in the real world" or "of intrinsic value".
  • add CLA-style assignments to their liberal-arts courses.
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
       
      Maybe the best way to prepare for the test, but the best way to develop analytical ability, et. al.?
  • the CLA typically reports scores on a "value added" basis, controlling for the scores that students earned on the SAT or ACT while in high school.
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
       
      If SAT and ACT are measuring the same things as CLA, then why not just use them? If they are measuring different things, why "control for" their scores?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • improved models of instruction.
  • it measures analytical ability, problem-solving ability, critical thinking, and communication.
  • "If a college pays attention to learning and helps students develop their skills—whether they do that by participating in our programs or by doing things on their own—they probably should do better on the CLA,"
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
       
      Just in case anyone missed the message: pay attention to learning, and you'll _probably_ do better on the CLA. Get students to practice CLA tasks, and you _will_ do better on the CLA.
  • "Standardized tests of generic skills—I'm not talking about testing in the major—are so much a measure of what students bring to college with them that there is very little variance left out of which we might tease the effects of college," says Ms. Banta, who is a longtime critic of the CLA. "There's just not enough variance there to make comparative judgments about the comparative quality of institutions."
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
       
      It's not clear what "standardized tests" means in this comment. Does the "lack of variance" apply to all assessments (including, e.g., e-portfolios)?
  • Can the CLA fill both of those roles?
  • Joshua Yeidel on 20 Sep 10
     
    A summary of the current state of "thinking" with regard to CLA. Many fallacies and contradictions are (unintentionally) exposed. At least CLA appears to be more about skills than content (though the question of how it is graded isn't even raised), but the "performance task" approach is the smallest possible step in that direction.
Gary Brown

71 Presidents Pledge to Improve Their Colleges' Teaching and Learning - Faculty - The C... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...125285

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 05 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • In a venture known as the Presidents' Alliance for Excellence in Student Learning and Accountability, they have promised to take specific steps to gather more evidence about student learning, to use that evidence to improve instruction, and to give the public more information about the quality of learning on their campuses.
  • The 71 pledges, officially announced on Friday, are essentially a dare to accreditors, parents, and the news media: Come visit in two years, and if we haven't done these things, you can zing us.
  • deepen an ethic of professional stewardship and self-regulation among college leaders
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  • Beginning in 2011, all first-year students at Westminster will be required to create electronic portfolios that reflect their progress in terms of five campuswide learning goals. And the college will expand the number of seniors who take the Collegiate Learning Assessment, so that the test can be used to help measure the strength of each academic major.
  • "The crucial thing is that all of our learning assessments have been designed and driven by the faculty," says Pamela G. Menke, Miami Dade's associate provost for academic affairs. "The way transformation of learning truly occurs is when faculty members ask the questions, and when they're willing to use what they've found out to make change.
  • Other assessment models might point some things out, but they won't be useful if faculty members don't believe in them."
  • "In the long term, as more people join, I hope that the Web site will provide a resource for the kinds of innovations that seem to be successful," he says. "That process might be difficult. Teaching is an art, not a science. But there is still probably a lot that we can learn from each other."
Gary Brown

More thinking about the alignment project « The Weblog of (a) David Jones - 0 views

davidtjones.wordpress.com/...ng-about-the-alignment-project

alignment

shared by Gary Brown on 14 May 10 - Cached
  • he dominant teaching experience for academics is teaching an existing course, generally one the academic has taught previously. In such a setting, academics spend most of their time fine tuning a course or making minor modifications to material or content (Stark, 2000)
  • many academic staff continue to employ inappropriate, teacher-centered, content focused strategies”. If the systems and processes of university teaching and learning practice do not encourage and enable everyday consideration of alignment, is it surprising that many academics don’t consider alignment?
  • student learning outcomes are significantly higher when there are strong links between those learning outcomes, assessment tasks, and instructional activities and materials.
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  • Cohen (1987) argues that limitations in learning are not mainly caused by ineffective teaching, but are instead mostly the result of a misalignment between what teachers teach, what they intend to teach, and what they assess as having been taught.
  • Make explicit the quality model.
  • Build in support for quality enhancement.
  • Institute a process for quality feasibility.
  • Levander and Mikkola (2009) describe the full complexity of managing alignment at the degree level which makes it difficult for the individual teacher and the program coordinator to keep connections between courses in mind.
  • Raban (2007) observes that the quality management systems of most universities employ procedures that are retrospective and weakly integrated with long term strategic planning. He continues to argue that the conventional quality management systems used by higher education are self-defeating as they undermine the commitment and motivation of academic staff through an apparent lack of trust, and divert resources away from the core activities of teaching and research (Raban, 2007, p. 78).
  • Ensure participation of formal institutional leadership and integration with institutional priorities.
  • Action research perspective, flexible responsive.
  • Having a scholarly, not bureaucratic focus.
  • Modifying an institutional information system.
  • A fundamental enabler of this project is the presence of an information system that is embedded into the everyday practice of teaching and learning (for both students and staff) that encourages and enables consideration of alignment.
  • Gary Brown on 14 May 10
     
    a long blog, but underlying principles align with the Guide to Effective Assessment on many levels.
Kimberly Green

Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) - 0 views

www.snaap.indiana.edu

national survey arts

shared by Kimberly Green on 09 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Kimberly Green on 09 Aug 10
     
    WSU is participating in this survey. Looks interesting, follow up on students who graduate with an arts degree. Could be useful in program assessment in a number of ways ( a model, sample questions, as well as ways to leverage nationally collected data.) Kimberly Welcome to the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an annual online survey, data management, and institutional improvement system designed to enhance the impact of arts-school education. SNAAP partners with arts high schools, art and design colleges, conservatories and arts programs within colleges and universities to administer the survey to their graduates. SNAAP is a project of the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research in collaboration with the Vanderbilt University Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Lead funding is provided by the Surdna Foundation, with major partnership support from the Houston Endowment, Barr Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, Educational Foundation of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. improvement system designed to enhance the impact of arts-school education. SNAAP partners with arts high schools, art and design colleges, conservatories and arts programs within colleges and universities to administer the survey to their graduates. SNAAP is a project of the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research in collaboration with the Vanderbilt University Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Lead funding is provided by the Surdna Foundation, with major partnership support from the Houston Endowment, Barr Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, Educational Foundation of America and the National Endowment for the Arts."
S Spaeth

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUC... - 1 views

www.educause.edu/...162420

John Seely Brown Learning 2.0 Educause

shared by S Spaeth on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • More than one-third of the world’s population is under 20. There are over 30 million people today qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. During the next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      quote from Sir John Daniel, 1996. The decade he speaks of has past
  • Open source communities have developed a well-established path by which newcomers can “learn the ropes” and become trusted members of the community through a process of legitimate peripheral participation.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      He describes an apprentice model, but we might also think about peripheral participation in terms of giving feedback using an educative rubric.
  • Lectures from model teachers are recorded on video and are then physically distributed via DVD to schools that typically lack well-trained instructors (as well as Internet connections). While the lectures are being played on a monitor (which is often powered by a battery, since many participating schools also lack reliable electricity), a “mediator,” who could be a local teacher or simply a bright student, periodically pauses the video and encourages engagement among the students by asking questions or initiating discussions about the material they are watching.
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  • The Faulkes Telescope Project and the Decameron Web are just two of scores of research and scholarly portals that provide access to both educational resources and a community of experts in a given domain. The web offers innumerable opportunities for students to find and join niche communities where they can benefit from the opportunities for distributed cognitive apprenticeship. Finding and joining a community that ignites a student’s passion can set the stage for the student to acquire both deep knowledge about a subject (“learning about”) and the ability to participate in the practice of a field through productive inquiry and peer-based learning (“learning to be”). These communities are harbingers of the emergence of a new form of technology-enhanced learning—Learning 2.0—which goes beyond providing free access to traditional course materials and educational tools and creates a participatory architecture for supporting communities of learners.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      Kramer's Plant Biotech group could be one of these. It needs tasks that permit legitimate peripheral participation. One of those could be peer assessment. Another could be social bookmarking. I now see it needs not just an _open_ platform, but an _extensible_ one. Here is where the hub and spoke model may play in.
    • S Spaeth
      S Spaeth on 06 Oct 09
       
      I infer that you are referring to this research group. http://www.officeofresearch.wsu.edu/missions/health/kramer.html I am curious to learn why you selected this lab as an example.
  • open participatory learning ecosystems
Gary Brown

Can We Afford Our State Colleges? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...22268

accountability reform

shared by Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • xperts do not agree on the precise numbers, but over the past generation we have moved from an environment in which states paid for 70 percent of cost and students paid 30 percent, to a situation in which those numbers have exactly reversed. Increasingly, tuition accounts for the lion’s share of institutional budgets, with state appropriations playing a minority role.
  • The sense I got Friday was that higher-education professionals do not expect the ”good old days” to return
  • the apparent consensus that public education needs to be more productive, because there was no discussion of the definition of productivity. 
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  • But even when instruction was (implicitly) assumed to be the measure of productivity, there was no discussion of measurable learning outcomes.
  • 5. It is true that public colleges do not measure learning outcomes. Neither does anyone else. U.S. universities resist this kind of accountability in every way they can think of. Since 1985, when the modern assessment movement gained traction, higher education can only be said to have been temporizing, getting ready to get ready through endless committees that go nowhere.
  • Most institutions continue to invoke apodictic notions of quality and refuse to define quality in modern terms (suitability to purpose; quality for whom and for what purpose) or to address the issue of value added, where career schools and community colleges will generally lead. At this time, there is virtually no institution-wide assessment system in place that would pass muster in a 501 measurement science course.
  • 6. Yes, public institutions need restructuring to make them more accountable and productive. Our independent colleges and universities need the same kind of restructuring and the agenda is rightfully one of public interest. The common perception that taxpayers do not support our private institutions is false.----------------------Robert W TuckerPresidentInterEd, Inc.www.InterEd.com
  • Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10
     
    Tucker's note in the comments again suggests the challenge and opportunity of the WSU model.
Nils Peterson

Foreign Policy: The Next Big Thing: Personalized Education - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

shared by Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • According to the analysis of business expert Clayton Christensen, personalized education is likely to begin outside formal school through a combination of entrepreneurial vendors on the one hand and ambitious students and parents on the other. Once far more efficient and effective education has been modeled in homes and clubs, those schools, communities, and/or societies that have the ambition, the means, and the willingness to take risks will follow suit.
  • Many more individuals will be well-educated because they will have learned in ways that suit them best. Even more importantly, these individuals will want to keep learning as they grow older because they have tasted success and are motivated to continue.
  • According to the analysis of business expert Clayton Christensen, personalized education is likely to begin outside formal school through a combination of entrepreneurial vendors on the one hand and ambitious students and parents on the other.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Apr 09
       
      That does seem right -- the system is unable to adapt and innovate and Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma seems to apply. But the previous paragraph, 'well programmed computers' seems to miss the collaborative, interpersonal, Web 2.0 potential for 1-1 tutoring.
  • S Spaeth on 20 Apr 09
     
    most of history, only the wealthy have been able to afford an education geared to the individual learner. For the rest of us, education has remained a mass affair, with standard curricula, pedagogy, and assessments. The financial crisis will likely change this state of affairs. With the global quest for long-term competitiveness assuming new urgency, education is on everyone's front burner. Societies are looking for ways to make quantum leaps in the speed and efficiency of learning. So long as we insist on teaching all students the same subjects in the same way, progress will be incremental. But now for the first time it is possible to individualize education-to teach each person what he or she needs and wants to know in ways that are most comfortable and most efficient, producing a qualitative spurt in educational effectiveness. In fact, we already have the technology to do so. Well-programmed computers-whether in the form of personal computers or hand-held devices-are becoming the vehicles of choice. They will offer many ways to master materials. Students (or their teachers, parents, or coaches) will choose the optimal ways of presenting the materials. Appropriate tools for assessment will be implemented.
Joshua Yeidel

News: Measuring 2-Year Students' Success - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...data

assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 21 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 21 Oct 10
     
    Measuring student success for federal purposes in community colleges -- and only one passing mention of learning. The factory model prevails -- stamp that widget (student) and send it out the door (they sell themselves!)
Joshua Yeidel

Students Know Good Teaching When They Get It, Survey Finds - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...11education.html

education value-added assessment teaching

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Dec 10
     
    ... as measured by student evals and "value-added modeling".  Note some of the student eval items, though... e.g., students agree or disagree with "In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes."
Joshua Yeidel

Digication :: NCCC Art Department Program Evaluation :: Purpose of Evaluation - 0 views

nwcc.digication.com/...Home

portfolio assessment program

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 27 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 27 Apr 10
     
    An eportfolio for program evaluation by the Northwest Connecticut Community College Art Department. Slick, well-organized, and pretty using Digication as a platform and host. A fine portfolio, which could well be a model for our programs, except that there is not a single direct measure of student learning outcomes.
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