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Gary Brown

Free Online Courses, at a Very High Price - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...48777

Open education Western Governors competency credentialing

shared by Gary Brown on 14 Oct 09 - Cached
  • At this point in the openness conversation, the example you hear over and over is a little-known university in Utah that took the old model, and, in the words of its president, "blew that up." That is Western Governors University—a nonprofit, accredited online institution that typically charges $2,890 per six-month term—where students advance by showing what they've learned, not how much time they've spent in class. It's called competency-based education. It means you can fast-forward your degree by testing out of stuff you've already mastered. Some see a marriage of open content and competency-based learning as a model for the small-pieces-loosely-joined chain of cheaper, fragmented education. "We view the role of the university of the future as measuring and credentialing learning, not the source of all learning," says Robert W. Mendenhall, the president.
  • Gary Brown on 14 Oct 09
     
    Wiley gets prime time along with challenges to open ed from the "Chronicle of Ancient Education," but blooming in the desert is an emergent species of education. This piece echoes cites Nils' has marked in emerging market nations, but through the Chronicle's lens.
Peggy Collins

Clemson University e-portfolio winners - 3 views

www.clemson.edu/...news.html

shared by Peggy Collins on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 28 Jul 10
     
    Students used different technologies, not one set mandated system for the e-portfolios. In 2006, Clemson University implemented the ePortfolio Program that requires all undergraduates to create and submit a digital portfolio as evidence of academic and experiential mastery of Clemson's core competencies. Students collect work from their classes and elsewhere, connecting (tagging) it to the competencies (Written and Oral Communication; Reasoning, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving; Mathematical, Scientific and Technological Literacy; Social Science and Cross-Cultural Awareness; Arts and Humanities; and Ethical Judgment) throughout their undergraduate experience.
Gary Brown

Saving Public Universities - 0 views

www.convergemag.com/...aving-Public-Universities.html

Western Governors

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Many public universities do offer online courses while primarily maintaining traditional ones. But the public higher-education model for the future may already exist: the completely online Western Governors University (WGU), launched in 1998. Back then, it was described as highly controversial. Now WGU is the largest virtual university in the United States, using technology to offer a flexible structure and reasonable pricing to meet adult learners’ needs.
  • keeps its costs down by relying heavily on technology and independent learning resources, and by using a student-centric model versus a professor-centric approach
  • Additionally WGU is the first and only system that gives students credit for what they know rather than the courses they complete.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “As you take a course at WGU, you pass it by passing certain tests along the way,” Thomasian said. “Your tests aren’t on a set schedule in terms of, ‘You have to take it this month or that month.’ You can start moving those tests ahead, passing that competency and moving to the end of the course, and passing the competency for that.”
  • It was fun to cross the 10,000 student threshold about two years ago,” Partridge said, “and we’re right at the door of 20,000 right now.”
  • Now he said the university enrolls approximately 1,000 new students each month.
  • Gary Brown on 17 Aug 10
     
    The rise of the faculty free institution--should we worry?
Joshua Yeidel

Using Outcome Information: Making Data Pay Off - 1 views

www.urban.org/...311040.html

assessment outcomes

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 22 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 22 Sep 10
     
    Sixth in a series on outcome management for nonprofits. Grist for the mill for any Assessment Handbook we might make. "Systematic use of outcome data pays off. In an independent survey of nearly 400 health and human service organizations, program directors agreed or strongly agreed that implementing program outcome measurement had helped their programs * focus staff on shared goals (88%); * communicate results to stakeholders (88%); * clarify program purpose (86%); * identify effective practices (84%); * compete for resources (83%); * enhance record keeping (80%); and * improve service delivery (76%)."
Gary Brown

Western Governors U. President Wins a McGraw Prize in Education - The Ticker - The Chro... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...27252

outcomes competency future of education

shared by Gary Brown on 28 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • The university's president, Robert W. Mendenhall, was cited for creating "a compelling example of how technology and a competency-based academic model -- where students earn degrees by demonstrating what they know and can do -- can expand access to higher education."
  • Gary Brown on 28 Sep 10
     
    Western Governor's getting some attention
Jayme Jacobson

Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge ... - 0 views

209.85.173.132/search

core skill s 21st century learning transmedia navigation distributed cognition

shared by Jayme Jacobson on 11 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Participatory culture: 21st Century Media Education “We have also identified a set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture:
  • Complex relations of “informal” and “formal” learning
  • We need far more knowledge on the development of learning interests and learning pathways over time and space - and their influences.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Play — the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solvingPerformance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discoverySimulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processesAppropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media contentMultitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacitiesCollective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goalJudgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sourcesTransmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalitiesNetworking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate informationNegotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.”
  • The power of the social: How do learners leverage social networks and affiliative ties? What positionings and accountabilities do they enable that matter for learning? The power of the setting: How do learners exploit the properties of settings to support learning, and how do they navigate the boundaries? The power of imagination: What possible courses of action do learners consider, as they project possible selves, possible achievements, and reflect on the learning they need to get there?
  • We have spent too much time in the dark about these issues that matter for learning experiences and pathways.
  • Jayme Jacobson on 11 Mar 09
     
    This is a great list of core competencies. Should use (cite) in forming the participatory learning strategies.
  • Theron DesRosier on 13 Mar 09
     
    Hey Jayme, Nice list. Another skill you talked about earlier was translation. Where does that fit? Is it a subskill of Negotiation?
Joshua Yeidel

Shaping Strategy in a World of Constant Disruption | BNET - 0 views

www.bnet.com/2439-13056_23-238787.html

higher education strategy

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 03 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 03 Mar 09
     
    Hammered by relentless technological change, many companies take a reactive stance: They focus solely on keeping up, protecting their existing markets, and improving their performance. But a few companies take a proactive stance by executing shaping strategies: They use technology changes to create new business ecosystems that benefit themselves and other participants. Take Google's AdSense: It has reinvented the advertising business by enabling advertisers, content providers, and potential customers to connect with one another quickly, easily, and cheaply. To succeed, a shaping strategy needs a critical mass of participants, say Hagel, Brown, and Davison. Shapers can attract them by: * Convincingly articulating opportunities available to participants * Defining standards and practices that make participation easy and affordable * Demonstrating they have the conviction and resources for success and won't compete against participants Well-executed shaping strategies mobilize masses of players to learn from and share risk with one another - creating a profitable future for all.
Gary Brown

Law Schools Resist Proposal to Assess Them Based on What Students Learn - Curriculum - ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...63494

assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 11 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Law schools would be required to identify key skills and competencies and develop ways to test how well their graduates are learning them under controversial revisions to accreditation standards being proposed by the American Bar Association.
  • Several law deans said they have enough to worry about with budget cuts, a tough job market for their graduates, and the soaring cost of legal education without adding a potentially expensive assessment overhaul.
  • "It is worth pausing to ask how the proponents of outcome measures can be so very confident that the actual performance of tasks deemed essential for the practice of law can be identified, measured, and evaluated," said Robert C. Post, dean of Yale Law School.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The proposed standards, which are still being developed, call on law schools to define learning outcomes that are consistent with their missions and to offer curricula that will achieve those outcomes. Different versions being considered offer varying degrees of specificity about what those skills should include.
  • Phillip A. Bradley, senior vice president and general counsel for Duane Reade, a large drugstore chain, likened law schools to car companies that are "manufacturing something that nobody wants." Mr. Bradley said many law firms are developing core competencies they expect of their lawyers, but many law schools aren't delivering graduates who come close to meeting them.
  • Gary Brown on 11 Jan 10
     
    The homeopathic fallacy again, and as goes law school, so goes law....
Nils Peterson

Views: Changing the Equation - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...bassis

shared by Nils Peterson on 25 Mar 10 - Cached
  • But each year, after some gnashing of teeth, we opted to set tuition and institutional aid at levels that would maximize our net tuition revenue. Why? We were following conventional wisdom that said that investing more resources translates into higher quality and higher quality attracts more resources
  • But each year, after some gnashing of teeth, we opted to set tuition and institutional aid at levels that would maximize our net tuition revenue. Why? We were following conventional wisdom that said that investing more resources translates into higher quality and higher quality attracts more resource
  • But each year, after some gnashing of teeth, we opted to set tuition and institutional aid at levels that would maximize our net tuition revenue. Why? We were following conventional wisdom that said that investing more resources translates into higher quality and higher quality attracts more resources
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • year we strug
  • year we strug
  • those who control influential rating systems of the sort published by U.S. News & World Report -- define academic quality as small classes taught by distinguished faculty, grand campuses with impressive libraries and laboratories, and bright students heavily recruited. Since all of these indicators of quality are costly, my college’s pursuit of quality, like that of so many others, led us to seek more revenue to spend on quality improvements. And the strategy worked.
  • Based on those concerns, and informed by the literature on the “teaching to learning” paradigm shift, we began to change our focus from what we were teaching to what and how our students were learning.
  • No one wants to cut costs if their reputation for quality will suffer, yet no one wants to fall off the cliff.
  • When quality is defined by those things that require substantial resources, efforts to reduce costs are doomed to failure
  • some of the best thinkers in higher education have urged us to define the quality in terms of student outcomes.
  • Faculty said they wanted to move away from giving lectures and then having students parrot the information back to them on tests. They said they were tired of complaining that students couldn’t write well or think critically, but not having the time to address those problems because there was so much material to cover. And they were concerned when they read that employers had reported in national surveys that, while graduates knew a lot about the subjects they studied, they didn’t know how to apply what they had learned to practical problems or work in teams or with people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
  • Our applications have doubled over the last decade and now, for the first time in our 134-year history, we receive the majority of our applications from out-of-state students.
  • We established what we call college-wide learning goals that focus on "essential" skills and attributes that are critical for success in our increasingly complex world. These include critical and analytical thinking, creativity, writing and other communication skills, leadership, collaboration and teamwork, and global consciousness, social responsibility and ethical awareness.
  • despite claims to the contrary, many of the factors that drive up costs add little value. Research conducted by Dennis Jones and Jane Wellman found that “there is no consistent relationship between spending and performance, whether that is measured by spending against degree production, measures of student engagement, evidence of high impact practices, students’ satisfaction with their education, or future earnings.” Indeed, they concluded that “the absolute level of resources is less important than the way those resources are used.”
  • After more than a year, the group had developed what we now describe as a low-residency, project- and competency-based program. Here students don’t take courses or earn grades. The requirements for the degree are for students to complete a series of projects, captured in an electronic portfolio,
  • students must acquire and apply specific competencies
  • Faculty spend their time coaching students, providing them with feedback on their projects and running two-day residencies that bring students to campus periodically to learn through intensive face-to-face interaction
  • After a year and a half, the evidence suggests that students are learning as much as, if not more than, those enrolled in our traditional business program
  • As the campus learns more about the demonstration project, other faculty are expressing interest in applying its design principles to courses and degree programs in their fields. They created a Learning Coalition as a forum to explore different ways to capitalize on the potential of the learning paradigm.
  • a problem-based general education curriculum
  • At the very least, finding innovative ways to lower costs without compromising student learning is wise competitive positioning for an uncertain future
  • the focus of student evaluations has changed noticeably. Instead of focusing almost 100% on the instructor and whether he/she was good, bad, or indifferent, our students' evaluations are now focusing on the students themselves - as to what they learned, how much they have learned, and how much fun they had learning.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 25 Mar 10
       
      gary diigoed this article. this comment shines another light -- the focus of the course eval shifted from faculty member to course & student learning when the focus shifted from teaching to learning
  • Gary Brown on 25 Mar 10
     
    A must read spotted by Jane Sherman--I've highlighed, as usual, much of it.
Nils Peterson

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Page 3 | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...who-needs-harvard.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 13 Aug 09 - Cached
  • If open courseware is about applying technology to sharing knowledge, and Peer2Peer is about social networking for teaching and learning, Bob Mendenhall, president of the online Western Governors University, is proudest of his college's innovation in the third, hardest-to-crack dimension of education: accreditation and assessment.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 09
       
      Spoke too soon
  • Theron DesRosier on 13 Aug 09
     
    "We said, 'Let's create a university that actually measures learning,' " Mendenhall says. "We do not have credit hours, we do not have grades. We simply have a series of assessments that measure competencies, and on that basis, award the degree." WGU began by convening a national advisory board of employers, including Google and Tenet Healthcare. "We asked them, 'What is it the graduates you're hiring can't do that you wish they could?' We've never had a silence after that question." Then assessments were created to measure each competency area. Mendenhall recalls one student who had been self-employed in IT for 15 years but never earned a degree; he passed all the required assessments in six months and took home his bachelor's without taking a course.
Joshua Yeidel

Who's Most Capable of Making Decisions? - 0 views

blogs.salon.com/...21.html

web_2;0

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 01 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 01 Jun 09
     
    Offers a chart of the competencies of various kinds of people, and two processes for making decisions, one for "complicated (not complex)" problems, and one for complex problems, based in part on Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds". Also a list of types of questions that fall into the two categories.
Gary Brown

For Accreditation, a Narrow Window of Opportunity - Commentary - The Chronicle of Highe... - 4 views

chronicle.com/...65980

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 24 Jun 10 - Cached
  • After two years as president of the American Council on Education, I feel compelled to send a wake-up call to campus executives: If federal policy makers are now willing to bail out the nation's leading banks and buy equity stakes in auto makers because those companies are "too big to fail," they will probably have few reservations about regulating an education system that they now understand is "too important to fail."
  • Regardless of party, policy makers are clearly aware of the importance of education and are demanding improved performance and more information, from preschool to graduate school. In this environment, we should expect college accreditation to come under significant scrutiny.
  • It has also clearly signaled its interest in using data to measure institutional performance and student outcomes, and it has invested in state efforts to create student-data systems from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Higher education has so far navigated its way through the environment of increased regulatory interest without substantial changes to our system of quality assurance or federally mandated outcomes assessment. But that has only bought us time. As we look ahead, we must keep three facts in mind: Interest in accountability is bipartisan, and the pendulum has swung toward more regulation in virtually all sectors. The economic crisis is likely to spur increased calls from policy makers to control college prices and demonstrate that students are getting value for the dollar. The size of the federal budget deficit will force everyone who receives federal support to produce more and better evidence that an investment of federal funds will pay dividends for individuals and society.
  • If we do not seize the opportunity to strengthen voluntary peer accreditation as a rigorous test of institutional quality, grounded in appropriate measures of student learning, we place at risk a precious bulwark against excessive government intervention, a bulwark that has allowed American higher education to flourish. When it comes to safeguarding the quality, diversity, and independence of American higher education, accreditors hold the keys to the kingdom.
  • all accreditors now require colleges and universities to put more emphasis on measuring student-learning outcomes. They should be equally vigilant about ensuring that those data are used to achieve improvements in outcomes
  • share plain-language results of accreditation reviews with the public.
  • It takes very little close reading to see through the self-serving statements here: namely that higher education institutions must do a better PR job pretending they are interested in meaningful reform so as to head off any real reform that migh come from the federal authorities.
  • THEREFORE, let me voice a wakeup call for those who are really interested in reform--not that there are many.1.There will never be any meaningful reform unless we have a centralized and nationalized higher educational system. Leaving higher education in the hands of individual institutions is no longer effective and is in fact what has led to the present state we find ourselves in. Year after countless year we have been promised changes in higher education and year after year nothing changes. IF CHANGE IS TO COME IT MUST BE FORCED ONTO HIGHER EDUCATION FROM THE OUTSIDE.
  • Higher education in America can no longer afford to be organized around the useless market capitalism that forces too many financially marginalized institutions to compete for less and less.
  • Keeping Quiet by Pablo NerudaIf we were not so singled-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.
  • Gary Brown on 24 Jun 10
     
    It is heating up again
Nils Peterson

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine - 0 views

www.wired.com/...1

shared by Nils Peterson on 18 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Milner sounds more like a traditional media mogul than a Web entrepreneur. But that’s exactly the point. If we’re moving away from the open Web, it’s at least in part because of the rising dominance of businesspeople more inclined to think in the all-or-nothing terms of traditional media than in the come-one-come-all collectivist utopianism of the Web. This is not just natural maturation but in many ways the result of a competing idea — one that rejects the Web’s ethic, technology, and business models. The control the Web took from the vertically integrated, top-down media world can, with a little rethinking of the nature and the use of the Internet, be taken back. This development — a familiar historical march, both feudal and corporate, in which the less powerful are sapped of their reason for being by the better resourced, organized, and efficient — is perhaps the rudest shock possible to the leveled, porous, low-barrier-to-entry ethos of the Internet Age. After all, this is a battle that seemed fought and won — not just toppling newspapers and music labels but also AOL and Prodigy and anyone who built a business on the idea that a curated experience would beat out the flexibility and freedom of the Web.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Aug 10
       
      An interesting perspective, goes along with another piece I diigoed in Educause Review that was exploring the turning of the tide against EduPunk. What is problematic with the graphic at the lead of this article is that it does not account for the volume of traffic, its all scaled to 100%. So while web's market share is falling as a percent of total packets, and video market share is growing, its not clear that web use (esp for tasks related to learning) is declining.
  • You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service. You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone.
  • This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser as the center of the computing world appeared inevitable. It seemed just a matter of time before the Web replaced PC application software
  • But there has always been an alternative path, one that saw the Web as a worthy tool but not the whole toolkit. In 1997, Wired published a now-infamous “Push!” cover story, which suggested that it was time to “kiss your browser goodbye.”
  • “Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we? But the center of interactive media — increasingly, the center of gravity of all media — is moving to a post-HTML environment,” we promised nearly a decade and half ago. The examples of the time were a bit silly — a “3-D furry-muckers VR space” and “headlines sent to a pager” — but the point was altogether prescient: a glimpse of the machine-to-machine future that would be less about browsing and more about getting.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Aug 10
       
      While the mode is different, does that mean that the independent creation of content and the peer-communities go away because the browser does? Perhaps, because the app is a mechanism to monetize and control content and interaction.
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."
Joshua Yeidel

University World News - US: America can learn from Bologna process - 0 views

www.universityworldnews.com/article.php

Bologna higher_education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 22 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 22 Sep 10
     
    Lumina proposes that the US "adapt and apply the lessons learned from the Bologna Process in the EU, which has developed methodologies that "uniquely focus on linking student learning and the outcomes of higher education" -- tautological though that sounds.
  • Joshua Yeidel on 22 Sep 10
     
    Apparently the "audacious" discussion in the WCET webinar yesterday (to be linked) featuring Ellen Wagner and Peter Smith is old hat in Europe. A national "degree framework" is almost inconceivable in the US, but 'tuning' -- "faculty-led approach that involves seeking input from students, recent graduates and employers to establish criterion-referenced learning outcomes and competencies" -- sounds a lot like in goal-setting.
Gary Brown

The Future of Wannabe U. - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...124917

outcomes numbers

shared by Gary Brown on 18 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Alice didn't tell me about the topics of her research; instead she listed the number of articles she had written, where they had been submitted and accepted, the reputation of the journals, the data sets she was constructing, and how many articles she could milk from each data set.
  • colleges and universities have transformed themselves from participants in an audit culture to accomplices in an accountability regime.
  • higher education has inaugurated an accountability regime—a politics of surveillance, control, and market management that disguises itself as value-neutral and scientific administration.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • annabe administrator noted that the recipient had published well more than 100 articles. He never said why those articles mattered.
  • And all we have are numbers about teaching. And we don't know what the difference is between a [summary measure of] 7.3 and a 7.7 or an 8.2 and an 8.5."
  • The problem is that such numbers have no meaning. They cannot indicate the quality of a student's education.
  • or can the many metrics that commonly appear in academic (strategic) plans, like student credit hours per full-time-equivalent faculty member, or the percentage of classes with more than 50 students. Those productivity measures (for they are indeed productivity measures) might as well apply to the assembly-line workers who fabricate the proverbial widget, for one cannot tell what the metrics have to do with the supposed purpose of institutions of higher education—to create and transmit knowledge. That includes leading students to the possibility of a fuller life and an appreciation of the world around them and expanding their horizons.
  • But, like the fitness club's expensive cardio machines, a significant increase in faculty research, in the quality of student experiences (including learning), in the institution's service to its state, or in its standing among its peers may cost more than a university can afford to invest or would even dream of paying.
  • Such metrics are a speedup of the academic assembly line, not an intensification or improvement of student learning. Indeed, sometimes a boost in some measures, like an increase in the number of first-year students participating in "living and learning communities," may even detract from what students learn. (Wan U.'s pre-pharmacy living-and-learning community is so competitive that students keep track of one another's grades more than they help one another study. Last year one student turned off her roommate's alarm clock so that she would miss an exam and thus no longer compete for admission to the School of Pharmacy.)
  • Even metrics intended to indicate what students may have learned seem to have more to do with controlling faculty members than with gauging education. Take student-outcomes assessments, meant to be evaluations of whether courses have achieved their goals. They search for fault where earlier researchers would not have dreamed to look. When parents in the 1950s asked why Johnny couldn't read, teachers may have responded that it was Johnny's fault; they had prepared detailed lesson plans. Today student-outcomes assessment does not even try to discover whether Johnny attended class; instead it produces metrics about outcomes without considering Johnny's input.
  • Gary Brown on 18 Oct 10
     
    A good one to wrestle with.  It may be worth formulating distinctions we hold, and steering accordingly.
Gary Brown

Does testing for statistical significance encourage or discourage thoughtful ... - 1 views

genuineevaluation.com/urage-thoughtful-data-analysis

statistics

shared by Gary Brown on 27 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Does testing for statistical significance encourage or discourage thoughtful data analysis? Posted by Patricia Rogers on October 20th, 2010
  • Epidemiology, 9(3):333–337). which argues not only for thoughtful interpretation of findings, but for not reporting statistical significance at all.
  • We also would like to see the interpretation of a study based not on statistical significance, or lack of it, for one or more study variables, but rather on careful quantitative consideration of the data in light of competing explanations for the findings.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • we prefer a researcher to consider whether the magnitude of an estimated effect could be readily explained by uncontrolled confounding or selection biases, rather than simply to offer the uninspired interpretation that the estimated effect is significant, as if neither chance nor bias could then account for the findings.
  • Many data analysts appear to remain oblivious to the qualitative nature of significance testing.
  • statistical significance is itself only a dichotomous indicator.
  • it cannot convey much useful information
  • Even worse, those two values often signal just the wrong interpretation. These misleading signals occur when a trivial effect is found to be ’significant’, as often happens in large studies, or when a strong relation is found ’nonsignificant’, as often happens in small studies.
  • Another useful paper on this issue is Kristin Sainani, (2010) “Misleading Comparisons: The Fallacy of Comparing Statistical Significance”Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Vol. 2 (June), 559-562 which discusses the need to look carefully at within-group differences as well as between-group differences, and at sub-group significance compared to interaction. She concludes: ‘Readers should have a particularly high index of suspicion for controlled studies that fail to report between-group comparisons, because these likely represent attempts to “spin” null results.”
  • Gary Brown on 27 Oct 10
     
    and at sub-group significance compared to interaction. She concludes: 'Readers should have a particularly high index of suspicion for controlled studies that fail to report between-group comparisons, because these likely represent attempts to "spin" null results."
Nils Peterson

Independent School Educators' List (ISED-L): Re: 21st Century Computer Skills - 0 views

ised-l.blogspot.com/...tury-computer-skills_8677.html

global competence

shared by Nils Peterson on 17 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 17 Feb 09
     
    21st century skills, its not about computer skills, its about skillfulness using communication tools.
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.
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