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Gary Brown

Learning to Hate Learning Objectives - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49399

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Perhaps learning objectives make sense for most courses outside the humanities, but for me—as, no doubt, for many others—they bear absolutely no connection to anything that happens in the classroom.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      The homeopathic fallacy, debunked by volumes of research...
  • The problem is, this kind of teaching does not correlate with the assumption of my local accreditation body, which sees teaching—as perhaps it is, in many disciplines—as passing on a body of knowledge and skills to a particular audience.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      A profoundly dangerous misperception of accreditation and its role.
  • We talked about the ways in which the study of literature can help to develop and nurture observation, analysis, empathy, and self-reflection, all of which are essential for the practice of psychotherapy,
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      Reasonable outcomes, with a bit of educational imagination and an understanding of assessment obviously underdeveloped.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • They will not achieve any "goals or outcomes." Indeed, they will not have "achieved" anything, except, perhaps, to doubt the value of terms like "achievement" when applied to reading literature.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      good outcome
  • To describe this as a learning objective is demeaning and reductive to all concerned.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      Only in the sense Ralph Tyler criticized, and he is the one who coined the term and developed the concept.
  • except to observe certain habits of mind, nuances of thinking, an appreciation for subtleties and ambiguities of argument, and an appreciation of the capacity for empathy, as well as the need, on certain occasions, to resist this capacity. There is no reason for anyone to take the course except a need to understand more about the consciousness of others, including nonhuman animals.
Gary Brown

Accrediting Agencies Confront New Challenges - Letters to the Editor - The Chronicle of... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...63530

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 19 Jan 10 - Cached
  • The Chronicle, December 17). In an era of global expansion in higher education, accreditation agencies are increasingly confronted with myriad challenges surrounding various forms of distance education (whether virtual, so-called branch campuses, or study abroad) and cross-institutional certification.
  • the American Academy for Liberal Education is particularly well placed to view this changing pedagogical and institutional landscape, both domestically and worldwide.
  • AALE goes several steps further in evaluating whether institutions meet an extensive set of pedagogical standards specifically related to liberal education—standards of effective reasoning, for instance, and broad and deep learning. This level of assessment requires extensive classroom visitations, conversations with students and faculty members, and the time to assess the climate of learning at every institution we visit.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Innovation and quality in higher education can only join hands when institutions aspire—and are held to—independent, third-party standards of assessment.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Jan 10
     
    a small but clear stress made for independent review
Gary Brown

Educators Mull How to Motivate Professors to Improve Teaching - Curriculum - The Chroni... - 4 views

chronicle.com/...63718

assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
  • "Without an unrelenting focus on quality—on defining and measuring and ensuring the learning outcomes of students—any effort to increase college-completion rates would be a hollow effort indeed."
  • If colleges are going to provide high-quality educations to millions of additional students, they said, the institutions will need to develop measures of student learning than can assure parents, employers, and taxpayers that no one's time and money are being wasted.
  • "Effective assessment is critical to ensure that our colleges and universities are delivering the kinds of educational experiences that we believe we actually provide for students," said Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, during the opening plenary. "That data is also vital to addressing the skepticism that society has about the value of a liberal education."
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • But many speakers insisted that colleges should go ahead and take drastic steps to improve the quality of their instruction, without using rigid faculty-incentive structures or the fiscal crisis as excuses for inaction.
  • Handing out "teacher of the year" awards may not do much for a college
  • W.E. Deming argued, quality has to be designed into the entire system and supported by top management (that is, every decision made by CEOs and Presidents, and support systems as well as operations) rather than being made the responsibility solely of those delivering 'at the coal face'.
  • I see as a certain cluelessness among those who think one can create substantial change based on volunteerism
  • Current approaches to broaden the instructional repertoires of faculty members include faculty workshops, summer leave, and individual consultations, but these approaches work only for those relatively few faculty members who seek out opportunities to broaden their instructional methods.
  • The approach that makes sense to me is to engage faculty members at the departmental level in a discussion of the future and the implications of the future for their field, their college, their students, and themselves. You are invited to join an ongoing discussion of this issue at http://innovate-ideagora.ning.com/forum/topics/addressing-the-problem-of
  • Putting pressure on professors to improve teaching will not result in better education. The primary reason is that they do not know how to make real improvements. The problem is that in many fields of education there is either not enough research, or they do not have good ways of evaluationg the results of their teaching.
  • Then there needs to be a research based assessment that can be used by individual professors, NOT by the administration.
  • Humanities educatiors either have to learn enough statistics and cognitive science so they can make valid scientific comparisons of different strategies, or they have to work with cognitive scientists and statisticians
  • good teaching takes time
  • On the measurement side, about half of the assessments constructed by faculty fail to meet reasonable minimum standards for validity. (Interestingly, these failures leave the door open to a class action lawsuit. Physicians are successfully sued for failing to apply scientific findings correctly; commerce is replete with lawsuits based on measurement errors.)
  • The elephant in the corner of the room --still-- is that we refuse to measure learning outcomes and impact, especially proficiencies generalized to one's life outside the classroom.
  • until universities stop playing games to make themselves look better because they want to maintain their comfortable positions and actually look at what they can do to improve nothing is going to change.
  • Gary Brown on 25 Jan 10
     
    our work, our friends (Ken and Jim), and more context that shapes our strategy.
  • Matthew Tedder on 26 Jan 10
     
    How about using examples of highly motivational lecture and teaching techniques like the Richard Dawkins video I presented on this forum, recently. Even if teacher's do not consciously try to adopt good working techniques, there is at least a strong subconscious human tendency to mimic behaviors. I think that if teachers see more effective techniques, they will automatically begin to adopt adopt them.
Nils Peterson

WSU Today Online - Professor brings new approach into classroom - 3 views

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

shared by Nils Peterson on 09 Mar 10 - Cached
  • What do Wikipedia, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Threadless Tees have in common? All were created outside the traditional product development model using a mass collaborative approach. In mass collaborative product development (MCPD), large groups of people compete and collaborate globally to develop new products and services.
  • the MCPD phenomenon is under way in the management and business communities. But few have examined it from an engineering design standpoint.
  • A more natural process
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • companies are trying out MCPD to not only foster a more collaborative workplace but to bring in outside innovation
  • But engineering curricula, said Panchal, tends to remain focused on traditional approaches to product development.
  • “This is not a hierarchical model," said Panchal. "Rather, people self-select activities they’re interested in."
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 10 Mar 10
       
      see various harvesting gradebook ideas from 2008, student finds problem in community, that becomes a motivating spine for their personal curriculum
  • Gary Brown on 09 Mar 10
     
    collaborative development on our doorstep. We should introduce ourselves.
Gary Brown

How Colleges Could Better Prepare Students to Tackle Society's Problems - Students - Th... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65123

experiential-learning

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Employers increasingly want to hire students who are highly adaptive, who can work in a fast-paced environment, be creative and problem-solve—and these are not necessarily core skills universities focus on. Most universities focus on knowledge acquisition, but what the world requires is much more about learning how to work within a fast-changing environment and be a leader in that context.
  • social entrepreneurship is relevant in different disciplines
  • We're not just bringing them into the classroom, but we're involving them in more research collaborations and conversations, so the learning students do is guided by that.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • I just heard from a faculty member at Cornell who has increased the amount of experiential learning she requires for class projects. More students are asking for it, and she's using every opportunity to get people out in the community or talking to people so they can engage in real-world experience.
  • Maryland has created a Center for Social Value Creation
  • Siloed disciplines are one of our biggest challenges. The world doesn't operate in disciplines—its problems and organizations are cross-cutting. The more interdisciplinary people can think and learn, the more equipped they will be to deal with the complexity of the real world.
Theron DesRosier

Virtual-TA - 2 views

www.virtual-ta.com/how-we-do-it.php

virtual ta outsource assessment

shared by Theron DesRosier on 07 Apr 10 - Cached
  • We also developed a technology platform that allows our TAs to electronically insert detailed, actionable feedback directly into student assignments
  • Your instructors give us the schedule of assignments, when student assignments are due, when we might expect to receive them electronically, when the scored assignments will be returned, the learning outcomes on which to score the assignments, the rubrics to be used and the weights to be applied to different learning outcomes. We can use your rubrics to score assignments or design rubrics for sign-off by your faculty members.
  • review and embed feedback using color-coded pushpins (each color corresponds to a specific learning outcome) directly onto the electronic assignments. Color-coded pushpins provide a powerful visual diagnostic.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • We do not have any contact with your students. Instructors retain full control of the process, from designing the assignments in the first place, to specifying learning outcomes and attaching weights to each outcome. Instructors also review the work of our TAs through a step called the Interim Check, which happens after 10% of the assignments have been completed. Faculty provide feedback, offer any further instructions and eventually sign-off on the work done, before our TAs continue with the remainder of the assignments
  • Finally, upon the request of the instructor, the weights he/she specified to the learning outcomes will be rubric-based scores which are used to generate a composite score for each student assignment
  • As an added bonus, our Virtual-TAs provide a detailed, summative report for the instructor on the overall class performance on the given assignment, which includes a look at how the class fared on each outcome, where the students did well, where they stumbled and what concepts, if any, need reinforcing in class the following week.
  • We can also, upon request, generate reports by Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This report can be used by the instructor to immediately address gaps in learning at the individual or classroom level.
  • Think of this as a micro-closing-of-the-loop that happens each week.  Contrast this with the broader, closing-the-loop that accompanies program-level assessment of learning, which might happen at the end of a whole academic year or later!
  • Theron DesRosier on 07 Apr 10
     
    I went to Virtual TA and Highlighted their language describing how it works.
Gary Brown

Texas Law Requires Professors to Post Details of Their Teaching Online - Faculty - The ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65450

student evaluations accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 07 May 10 - Cached
  • Faculty members and administrators in Texas are speaking out about a recent state law that requires them to post specific, detailed information about their classroom assignments, curricula vitae, department budgets, and the results of student evaluations.
  • Beginning this fall, universities will have to post online a syllabus for every undergraduate course, including major assignments and examinations, reading lists, and course descriptions.
  • All of the information must be no more than three clicks away from the college's home page.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "the worst example of government meddling at a huge cost to the public and for zero public good that I have ever seen."
  • "You get the feeling that the government sees us as slackers," she says. By requiring professors to list every assignment, she says the law interferes with her ability to respond to students' interests and current events and shift to different topics during the semester.
  • Gary Brown on 07 May 10
     
    another to watch--the politization of the, well, everything
Gary Brown

In Hunt for Prestige, Colleges May Undermine Their Public Mission - Government - The Ch... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65640

research future of educaiton

shared by Gary Brown on 21 May 10 - Cached
  • many large research universities are placing too much priority on activities that raise the profile and prestige of their institutions but do little to improve undergraduate education.
  • "In some of these places, undergraduate education has never been a top priority," says Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability.
  • While its grants and gifts have gone up, the percentage of money it spends on core teaching and student services has gone down. Many students, of course, benefit from the private support and research dollars, as the university has built better facilities and attracted world-class faculty members.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But the research aspirations of many large universities are in conflict with their founding principles, Ms. Wellman says, especially as undergraduate admissions has become more selective
  • another result of the chase for research dollars is that measures for faculty assessment and promotion rely too heavily on the research output and publication and too little on the quality of classroom teaching.
  • "I'm not pushing for banning research," he says, but there should be more flexibility and balance in the criteria."
  • Gary Brown on 21 May 10
     
    Nothing new, but affirmation of our perceptons.
Peggy Collins

FERPA and social media - 1 views

www.facultyfocus.com/...ferpa-and-social-media

higher_education web2.0

shared by Peggy Collins on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 07 Feb 11
     
    FERPA is one of the most misunderstood regulations in education. It is commonly assumed that FERPA requires all student coursework to be kept private at all times, and thus prevents the use of social media in the classroom, but this is wrong. FERPA does not prevent instructors from assigning students to create public content as part of their course requirements. If it did, then video documentaries produced in a communications class and shown on TV or the Web, or public art shows of student work from an art class, would be illegal. As one higher education lawyer put it
Gary Brown

No Tests, No Grades = More Graduates? - 0 views

www.convergemag.com/...-No-Grades-More-Graduates.html

tests learning & work

shared by Gary Brown on 08 Sep 09 - Cached
  • At an alternative high school in Newark, students will make presentations instead of taking tests and receive written progress reports instead of grades. They will use few textbooks and divide their school weeks between the classroom and an internship,
  • Gary Brown on 08 Sep 09
     
    inch by inch new models make the news and subsequently make progress
Gary Brown

NCATE - public - Home Page - 0 views

ncate.org/...2309_TeacherEdRequirements.asp

accreditation NCATE authentic learning

shared by Gary Brown on 24 Jun 09 - Cached
  • “The new focus will help close the gap between theory and practice, and assure that teacher education program candidates are able to help diverse students be successful learners,” says NCATE president James G. Cibulka. “In the past, accreditation wrapped clinical experience around coursework. This approach reverses the priority, encouraging institutions to place teacher candidates in year-long training programs and wrap coursework around clinical practice.”
  • “However, regardless of pathway, all candidates should meet the same set of high standards.”
  • Gary Brown on 24 Jun 09
     
    Note shift in NCATE accreditation to make the authentic or clinical training central; the classroom should supplement the authentic. There is also an emphasis on bringing change or transformation to the world.
Peggy Collins

Wired Campus: Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...index.php

twitter classroom web 2.0

shared by Peggy Collins on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 21 Apr 09
     
    Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter and in the comments from one student...I am one of Cole's "experimental lab rats," and I must say that Cole and his colleague changed the way that I view teaching and learning. That course disrupted my notions of participation, identity, and community, and the changes are for the better. The course was so intellectually stimulating that when the course ended, I experienced a tremendous loss. The loss was so great that I felt myself trying to create Twitter communities in my future classes because I missed that engagement. If you are curious about our course, visit my course blog. https://blogs.psu.edu/mt4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=655&tag=CI597C&limit=20 From there, you can access other students' blogs and see some of the other conversations that ensued.
Nils Peterson

Change Magazine - The New Guys in Assessment Town - 0 views

www.changemag.org/...full-assessment-town.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 05 May 09 - Cached
  • if one of the institution’s general education goals is critical thinking, the system makes it possible to call up all the courses and programs that assess student performance on that outcome.
  • bringing together student learning outcomes data at the level of the institution, program, course, and throughout student support services so that “the data flows between and among these levels”
  • Like its competitors, eLumen maps outcomes vertically across courses and programs, but its distinctiveness lies in its capacity to capture what goes on in the classroom. Student names are entered into the system, and faculty use a rubric-like template to record assessment results for every student on every goal. The result is a running record for each student available only to the course instructor (and in a some cases to the students themselves, who can go to the system to  get feedback on recent assessments).
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      sounds like harvesting gradebook. assess student work and roll up
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      This system has some potential for formative use at the per-student leve.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • “I’m a little wary.  It seems as if, in addition to the assessment feedback we are already giving to students, we might soon be asked to add a data-entry step of filling in boxes in a centralized database for all the student learning outcomes. This is worrisome to those of us already struggling under the weight of all that commenting and essay grading.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      its either double work, or not being understood that the grading and the assessment can be the same activity. i suspect the former -- grading is being done with different metrics
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      I am in the unusual position of seeing many papers _after_ they have been graded by a wide variety of teachers. Many of these contain little "assessment feedback" -- many teachers focus on "correcting" the papers and finding some letter or number to assign as a value.
  • “This is where we see many institutions struggling,” Galvin says. “Faculty simply don’t have the time for a deeper involvement in the mechanics of assessment.” Many have never seen a rubric or worked with one, “so generating accurate, objective data for analysis is a challenge.”  
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      Rather than faculty using the community to help with assessment, they are outsourcing to a paid assessor -- this is the result of undertaking this thinking while also remaining in the institution-centric end of the spectrum we developed
  • I asked about faculty pushback. “Not so much,” Galvin says, “not after faculty understand that the process is not intended to evaluate their work.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      red flag
  • the annual reports required by this process were producing “heaps of paper” while failing to track trends and developments over time. “It’s like our departments were starting anew every year,” Chaplot says. “We wanted to find a way to house the data that gave us access to what was done in the past,” which meant moving from discrete paper reports to an electronic database.
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      It's not clear whether the "database" is housing measurements, narratives and reflections, or all of the above.
  • Can eLumen represent student learning in language? No, but it can quantify the number of boxes checked against number of boxes not checked.”
  • developing a national repository of resources, rubrics, outcomes statements, and the like that can be reviewed and downloaded by users
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      in building our repository we could well open-source these tools, no need to lock them up
  • “These solutions cement the idea that assessment is an administrative rather than an educational enterprise, focused largely on accountability. They increasingly remove assessment decision making from the everyday rhythm of teaching and learning and the realm of the faculty.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 06 May 09
       
      Over the wall assessment, see Transformative Assessment rubric for more detail
Nils Peterson

Why Web 2.0 is Important to Higher Education -- Campus Technology - 0 views

campustechnology.com/...rtant-to-Higher-Education.aspx

shared by Nils Peterson on 15 Apr 09 - Cached
  • If you are a faculty member and you are still walking into the classroom with a lecture in mind and "the points to cover," as I did for many years, you are living in the past, a past that is now obsolete.
Nils Peterson

The Edurati Review: Can "The Least Of Us" Disrupt and Change Education for "The Rest Of... - 1 views

www.eduratireview.com/...-of-us-disrupt-and-change.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 05 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Internet access brings knowledge and information to the poor around the world. The reality is that a poor person is more likely to gain access to the Internet and the world of knowledge and information that it brings, than he or she is to get well-trained teacher in school.Disruption will come when the poor of the world figure out ways to educate themselves and their neighbors via the Internet. Of course this education won’t match the focus, rigor, and quality of Western schools, but never the less, the drive and need to learn will create a youth movement in these developing countries for using the Internet as a tool to educate themselves and others.And if all one has is the Internet, one is eventually going to get very good at using it to meet their needs. He or she will develop methods and practices that seem strange, different, and unorthodox. They will rely on the Internet as a source of education.Some in the West might begin to look at these poor kids in developing countries teaching themselves and their neighbors without classrooms and without teachers. Some might begin to wonder and ask, "If it works for them, might it work for us?" Some might adopt some of these strange, different, and unorthodox practices.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 Oct 09
       
      Specualtion on the source of "disruption" to education. Might fit Clayton Christiansen's definition, and the author speculates it would be powered by youth, following previous youth movements.
Gary Brown

Higher Education: Assessment & Process Improvement Group News | LinkedIn - 1 views

www.linkedin.com/news

standardized tests value-added class size evaluating teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Gary Brown on 17 Oct 09
     
    lots about program effectiveness implied here, notably having good teachers in succession.
Gary Brown

News: Turning Surveys Into Reforms - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...nsse

assessment NSSE Closing the loop

shared by Gary Brown on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, warned those gathered here that they would be foolish to think that accountability demands were a thing of the past.
  • She said that while she is “impressed” with the work of NSSE, she thinks higher education is “not moving fast enough” right now to have in place accountability systems that truly answer the questions being asked of higher education. The best bet for higher education, she said, is to more fully embrace various voluntary systems, and show that they are used to promote improvements.
  • One reason NSSE data are not used more, some here said, was the decentralized nature of American higher education. David Paris, executive director of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, said that “every faculty member is king or queen in his or her classroom.” As such, he said, “they can take the lessons of NSSE” about the kinds of activities that engage students, but they don’t have to. “There is no authority or dominant professional culture that could impel any faculty member to apply” what NSSE teaches about engaged learning, he said.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • She stressed that NSSE averages may no longer reflect any single reality of one type of faculty member. She challenged Paris’s description of powerful faculty members by noting that many adjuncts have relatively little control over their pedagogy, and must follow syllabuses and rules set by others. So the power to execute NSSE ideas, she said, may not rest with those doing most of the teaching.
  • Research presented here, however, by the Wabash College National Study of Liberal Arts Education offered concrete evidence of direct correlations between NSSE attributes and specific skills, such as critical thinking skills. The Wabash study, which involves 49 colleges of all types, features cohorts of students being analyzed on various NSSE benchmarks (for academic challenge, for instance, or supportive campus environment or faculty-student interaction) and various measures of learning, such as tests to show critical thinking skills or cognitive skills or the development of leadership skills.
  • The irony of the Wabash work with NSSE data and other data, Blaich said, was that it demonstrates the failure of colleges to act on information they get -- unless someone (in this case Wabash) drives home the ideas.“In every case, after collecting loads of information, we have yet to find a single thing that institutions didn’t already know. Everyone at the institution didn’t know -- it may have been filed away,” he said, but someone had the data. “It just wasn’t followed. There wasn’t sufficient organizational energy to use that data to improve student learning.”
  • “I want to try to make the point that there is a distinction between participating in NSSE and using NSSE," he said. "In the end, what good is it if all you get is a report?"
  • Kimberly Green on 26 Oct 09
     
    An interesting discussion, exploring basic questions CTLT folks are familiar with, grappling with the question of how to use survey data and how to identify and address limitations. 10 years after launch of National Survey of Student Engagement, many worry that colleges have been speedier to embrace giving the questionnaire than using its results. And some experts want changes in what the survey measures. I note these limitations, near the end of the article: Adrianna Kezar, associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, noted that NSSE's questions were drafted based on the model of students attending a single residential college. Indeed many of the questions concern out-of-class experiences (both academic and otherwise) that suggest someone is living in a college community. Kezar noted that this is no longer a valid assumption for many undergraduates. Nor is the assumption that they have time to interact with peers and professors out of class when many are holding down jobs. Nor is the assumption -- when students are "swirling" from college to college, or taking courses at multiple colleges at the same time -- that any single institution is responsible for their engagement. Further, Kezar noted that there is an implicit assumption in NSSE of faculty being part of a stable college community. Questions about seeing faculty members outside of class, she said, don't necessarily work when adjunct faculty members may lack offices or the ability to interact with students from one semester to the next. Kezar said that she thinks full-time adjunct faculty members may actually encourage more engagement than tenured professors because the adjuncts are focused on teaching and generally not on research. And she emphasized that concerns about the impact of part-time adjuncts on student engagement arise not out of criticism of those individuals, but of the system that assigns them teaching duties without much support. S
  • Gary Brown on 02 Nov 09
     
    Repeat of highlighted resource, but merits revisiting.
Gary Brown

An Expert Surveys the Assessment Landscape - Student Affairs - The Chronicle of Higher ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...48945

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Oct 09 - Cached
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 29 Oct 09
       
      Illustration of a vision of assessment that separates assessment from teaching and learning.
  • If assessment is going to be required by accrediting bodies and top administrators, then we need administrative support and oversight of assessment on campus, rather than once again offloading more work onto faculty members squeezed by teaching & research inflation.
  • Outcomes assessment does not have to be in the form of standardized tests, nor does including assessment in faculty review have to translate into percentages achieving a particular score on such a test. What it does mean is that when the annual review comes along, one should be prepared to answer the question, "How do you know that what you're doing results in student learning?" We've all had the experience of realizing at times that students took in something very different from what we intended (if we were paying attention at all). So it's reasonable to be asked about how you do look at that question and how you decide when your current practice is successful or when it needs to be modified. That's simply being a reflective practitioner in the classroom which is the bare minimum students should expect from us. And that's all assessment is - answering that question, reflecting on what you find, and taking next steps to keep doing what works well and find better solutions for the things that aren't working well.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • We need to really show HOW we use the results of assessment in the revamping of our curriculum, with real case studies. Each department should insist and be ready to demonstrate real case studies of this type of use of Assessment.
  • Socrates said "A life that is not examined is not worth living". Wonderful as this may be as a metaphor we should add to it - "and once examined - do something to improve it".
Gary Brown

Renewed Debate Over the 3-Year B.A. - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Ed... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49043

3 year degree outcomes incoming future

shared by Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Zemsky, chairman of the Learning Alliance for Higher Education, wrote in The Chronicle in August. Shifting to a three-year baccalaureate, Zemsky added, would force universities to "judge whether their shorter degree programs were achieving the same learning outcomes as their four-year programs had promised; they would find themselves in need of the performance measures they had hitherto eschewed." The idea has stirred some support, as well as considerable opposition.
  • the reality is that the question of whether or not this makes sense may have already been made for us by the Bologna Process, which has been moving toward mainstreaming and standardizing three-year degrees across the European Union and beyond (46 countries are participating) for some time now.
  • This idea treats an academic credit as a purchasable commodity, and a college experience as quantifiable, subject to rules of efficiency rather than humane values. In reality, so-called "credits" have no standard meaning or value. Furthermore, the idea on its own is superficial. Why not two years? One? Five?
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • For those who see college as a place to learn marketable skills, the less time and money it takes, the better. For others who see college as a place to learn to think and to learn about the world and others as broadly as possible, and to grow into one's own, why rush? (The Choice, NYTimes.com)
  • they might want to rethink not just what time of year and how long students are in the classroom, but how student accomplishment is measured.
  • The high schools are not going to suddenly become more rigorous because the colleges reduce their expectations.
  • Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09
     
    Today's rip-tide toward measures, this time from Alexander and Zemsky (and others), and the implications of standardized measures.
Gary Brown

Has Accreditation Produced an Ethical Business Climate? - Letters to the Editor - The C... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49058

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Institutions that choose to seek program accreditation must, in the finite world of budgets, shift funds away from many struggling departments and toward the chosen few to ensure that all criteria, from faculty credentials and salaries to high-tech classrooms and generous support staff, are not only met but exceeded.
  • Last year's economic crisis, fueled largely by the graduates of elite, accredited M.B.A. programs who flocked into banking and Wall Street, suggests a startling ethical blindness, social irresponsibility, and historical ignorance.
  • What good are accrediting agencies that take no responsibility for the behavior of those they accredit?
  • Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09
     
    We might choose to help our accreditors by forwarding a response to this letter in our Rain King write up.
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