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Student-centered learning has been largely a rhetorical distinction for decades--e.g., more group work or less group work--because, practically speaking, everything happened in the classroom.

Now, the distinction is not just rhetorical, but a life style distinction: scarcity learning (content delivery) in the classroom or abundance learning (discovery) often out in real-world situations. In scarcity learning, the student is the target for delivery systems, while in abundance learning the student is the locus, the starting point, of learning.

Creating SLOs or goals for a course is simple to us, usually.  We want students to learn certain skills, we create assignments that will help students reach those goals, and we’ll judge how well they have learned those skills. 

This graphic displays the three learning objectives for the course, and it connects the course assignment to the learning objectives.  Students can see—at a glance—that work none of course assignments are random or arbitrary (an occasional student complaint), but that each assignment links directly to a course learning objective.

The syllabus graphic is quite simple and it’s one that students easily understand.  Additionally, I use an expanded graphic (below) when thinking about small goals within the larger learning objectives.

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.

My thesis is this. We live in a world where much is changing, quickly. Economic crises, technology, ideological division, and a host of other factors have all had a profound influence on who we are and what we do in higher education. But when all is said and done, it is imperative that we not lose sight of what matters most. To paraphrase the oft-used maxim of the famous political consultant James Carville, it's the learning, stupid.

We believe that, to significantly increase higher education attainment rates, three intermediate outcomes must first occur: Higher education must use proven strategies to move students to completion. Quality data must be used to improve student performance and inform policy and decision-making at all levels. The outcomes of student learning must be defined, measured, and aligned with workforce needs. To achieve these outcomes (and thus improve success rates), Lumina has decided to pursue several specific strategies. I'll cite just a few of these many different strategies: We will advocate for the redesign, rebranding and improvement of developmental education. We will explore the development of alternative pathways to degrees and credentials. We will push for smoother systems of transferring credit so students can move more easily between institutions, including from community colleges to bachelor's degree programs.

"Lumina defines high-quality credentials as degrees and certificates that have well-defined and transparent learning outcomes which provide clear pathways to further education and employment."

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.

The vast majority of structured learning is content-rich and interaction-poor. That’s understandable in the context of a 20th century mindset and how learning professionals have been taught to develop ‘learning’ events. But it simply isn’t appropriate for today’s world.

Dr Ebbinghaus’ experiment revealed we suffer an exponential ‘forgetting curve’ and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice.

The need to become Interactivity Designers. That’s what they need to do.

Of the various ways to assess student learning outcomes, many faculty members prefer what are called “authentic” approaches that document student performance during or at the end of a course or program of study.  Authentic assessments typically ask students to generate rather than choose a response to demonstrate what they know and can do.  In their best form, such assessments are flexible and closely aligned with teaching and learning processes, and represent some of students more meaningful educational experiences.  In this paper, assessment experts Trudy Banta, Merilee Griffin, Theresa Flateby, and Susan Kahn describe the development of several promising authentic assessment approaches. 

Educators and policy makers in postsecondary education are interested in assessment processes that improve student learning, and at the same time provide comparable data for the purpose of demonstrating accountability.

Comparing Rubric Assessments to Standardized Tests

First, the university, a public institution of about 40,000 students in Ohio, needed to comply with the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), which requires that state institutions provide data about graduation rates, tuition, student characteristics, and student learning outcomes, among other measures, in the consistent format developed by its two sponsoring organizations, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

And finally, UC was accepted in 2008 as a member of the fifth cohort of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, a collaborative body with the goal of advancing knowledge about the effect of electronic portfolio use on student learning outcomes.  

Community as curriculum is not meant as a simple alternative to the package version of learning. It is, rather, meant to point to the learning that takes place on top of that model and to point to the strategies for continuing learning throughout a career. There is a base amount of knowledge that is required to be able to enter a community, and there are methods for acquiring the specific kinds of literacy needed to learn within a specific community.