Skip to main content

Home/ CTLT and Friends/ Group items tagged learning

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Gary Brown

Many College Boards Are at Sea in Assessing Student Learning, Survey Finds - Leadership... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...124349

accountability assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • While oversight of educational quality is a critical responsibility of college boards of trustees, a majority of trustees and chief academic officers say boards do not spend enough time discussing student-learning outcomes, and more than a third say boards do not understand how student learning is assessed, says a report issued on Thursday by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.
  • While boards should not get involved in the details of teaching or ways to improve student-learning outcomes, they must hold the administration accountable for identifying needs in the academic programs and then meeting them, the report says. Boards should also make decisions on where to allocate resources based on what works or what should improve.
  • The most commonly received information by boards was college-ranking data
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Boards should expect to receive useful high-level information on learning outcomes, the report says, and should make comparisons over time and to other institutions. Training in how to understand academic and learning assessments should also be part of orientation for new board members.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Sep 10
     
    This piece coupled with the usual commentary reveal again the profound identity crisis shaking education in this country.
Gary Brown

Comments on the report - GEVC Report Comments - University College - Washington State U... - 2 views

universitycollege.wsu.edu/...default.aspx

general education

shared by Gary Brown on 23 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • My primary concern rests with the heavy emphasis on "outcomes based" learning. First, I find it difficult to imagine teaching to outcomes as separate from teaching my content -- I do not consider "content" and "outcomes" as discrete entities; rather, they overlap. This overlap may partly be the reason for the thin and somewhat unconvincing literature on "outcomes based learning." I would therefore like to see in this process a thorough and detailed analysis of the literature on "outcomes" vs content-based learning, followed by thoughtful discussion as to whether the need to focus our energies in a different direction is in fact warranted (and for what reasons). Also, perhaps that same literature can provide guidance on how to create an outcomes driven learning environment while maintaining the spirit of the academic (as opposed to technocratically-oriented) enterprise.
  • Outcomes are simply more refined ways of talking about fundamental purposes of education (on the need for positing our purposes in educating undergraduates, see Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges, ch. 3). Without stating our educational purposes clearly, we can't know whether we are achieving them. "
  • I've clicked just about every link on this website. I still have no idea what the empirical basis is for recommending a "learning goals" based approach over other approaches. The references in the GEVC report, which is where I expected to find the relevant studies, were instead all to other reports. So far as I could tell, there were no direct references to peer-reviewed research.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I do not want to read the "three volumes of Pascaralla and Terenzini." Instead, I would appreciate a concise, but thorough, summary of the empirical findings. This would include the sample of institutions studied and how this sample was chosen, the way that student outcomes were measured, and the results.I now understand that many people believe that a "learning goals" approach is desirable, but I still don't understand the empirical basis for their beliefs.
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

Disciplines Follow Their Own Paths to Quality - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Educa... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...125055

assessment accreditation critical thinking

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • But when it comes to the fundamentals of measuring and improving student learning, engineering professors naturally have more to talk about with their counterparts at, say, Georgia Tech than with the humanities professors at Villanova
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10
       
      Perhaps this is too bad....
  • But there is no nationally normed way to measure the particular kind of critical thinking that students of classics acquire
  • er colleagues have created discipline-specific critical-reasoning tests for classics and political science
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Political science cultivates skills that are substantially different from those in classics, and in each case those skills can't be measured with a general-education test.
  • he wants to use tests of reasoning that are appropriate for each discipline
  • I believe Richard Paul has spent a lifetime articulating the characteristics of discipline based critical thinking. But anyway, I think it is interesting that an attempt is being made to develop (perhaps) a "national standard" for critical thinking in classics. In order to assess anything effectively we need a standard. Without a standard there are no criteria and therefore no basis from which to assess. But standards do not necessarily have to be established at the national level. This raises the issue of scale. What is the appropriate scale from which to measure the quality and effectiveness of an educational experience? Any valid approach to quality assurance has to be multi-scaled and requires multiple measures over time. But to be honest the issues of standards and scale are really just the tip of the outcomes iceberg.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10
       
      Missing the notion that the variance is in the activity more than the criteria.  We hear little of embedding nationally normed and weighted assignments and then assessing the implementation and facilitation variables.... mirror, not lens.
  • the UW Study of Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL). Results from the UW SOUL show that learning in college is disciplinary; therefore, real assessment of learning must occur (with central support and resources)in the academic departments. Generic approaches to assessing thinking, writing, research, quantitative reasoning, and other areas of learning may be measuring something, but they cannot measure learning in college.
  • It turns out there is a six week, or 210+ hour serious reading exposure to two or more domains outside ones own, that "turns on" cross domain mapping as a robust capability. Some people just happen to have accumulated, usually by unseen and unsensed happenstance involvements (rooming with an engineer, son of a dad changing domains/careers, etc.) this minimum level of basics that allows robust metaphor based mapping.
Theron DesRosier

pagi: eLearning - 0 views

pagi.wikidot.com/elearning

citing CTLT

shared by Theron DesRosier on 02 Mar 09 - Cached
  • ePortfolio ePortfolios, the Harvesting Gradebook, Accountability, and Community (!!!) Harvesting gradebook Learning from the transformative grade book Implementing the transformed grade book Transformed gradebook worked example (!!) Best example: Calaboz ePortfolio (!!) Guide to Rating Integrative & Critical Thinking (!!!) Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education Hub and spoke model of course design (!!!) ePortfolio as the core learning application Case Studies of Electronic Portfolios for Learning
  • Theron DesRosier on 02 Mar 09
     
    Nils found this. It is a Spanish concept map on eLearning that includes CTLT and the Harvesting Gradebook.
Theron DesRosier

Handheld Learning 2008 - Home - 0 views

www.handheldlearning2008.com/home

handheld learning

shared by Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08
     
    The Handheld Learning Conference is the international signature event for learning using mobile or ubiquitous technologies.
Gary Brown

Assess this! - 5 views

assessory.blogspot.com

assessment ;

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Assess this! is a gathering place for information and resources about new and better ways to promote learning in higher education, with a special focus on high-impact educational practices, student engagement, general or liberal education, and assessment of learning.
  • If you'd like to help make Assess this! more useful, there are some things you can do. You can comment on a post by clicking on the comments link following the post.
  • 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. In this paper, assessment experts Trudy Banta, Merilee Griffin, Teresa Flateby, and Susan Kahn describe the development of several promising authentic assessment approaches.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Going PublicDouglas C. Bennett, President of Earlham College, suggests each institution having a public learning audit document and gives the example of what this means for Earlham College as a way for public accountability.
  • More TransparencyMartha Kanter, from the US Education Department, calls for more transparency in the way higher education does accreditation.
  • Despite the uptick in activity, "I still feel like there's no there there" when it comes to colleges' efforts to measure student learning, Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, said in a speech at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation meeting Tuesday.
  • Most of the assessment activity on campuses can be found in nooks and crannies of the institutions - by individual professors, or in one department - and it is often not tied to goals set broadly at the institutional level.
  • Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
  • Gary Brown on 16 Feb 10
     
    A very interesting useful site where we might help ourselves by getting involved.
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.
Joshua Yeidel

News: 'You Can't Measure What We Teach' - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...humanities

assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10
     
    "Despite those diverging starting points, the discussion revealed quite a bit more common ground than any of the panelists probably would have predicted. Let's be clear: Where they ended up was hardly a breakthrough on the scale of solving the Middle East puzzle. But there was general agreement among them that: * Any effort to try to measure learning in the humanities through what McCulloch-Lovell deemed "[Margaret] Spellings-type assessment" -- defined as tests or other types of measures that could be easily compared across colleges and neatly sum up many of the learning outcomes one would seek in humanities students -- was doomed to fail, and should. * It might be possible, and could be valuable, for humanists to reach broad agreement on the skills, abilities, and knowledge they might seek to instill in their students, and that agreement on those goals might be a starting point for identifying effective ways to measure how well students have mastered those outcomes. * It is incumbent on humanities professors and academics generally to decide for themselves how to assess whether their students are learning, less to satisfy external calls for accountability than because it is the right thing for academics, as professionals who care about their students, to do. "
  • Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10
     
    Assessment meeting at the accreditors -- driven by expectations of a demand for accountability, with not one mention of improvement.
Gary Brown

Changing Higher Education: An Interview with Lloyd Armstrong, USC « Higher Ed... - 1 views

highereducationmanagement.wordpress.com/...rview-with-lloyd-armstrong-usc

outcomes change

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Mar 10 - Cached
  • There are obviously real concerns that outcomes measures are measuring the right outcomes.   However, those expressing those concerns seldom are ready to jump in to try to figure out how to measure what they think is important – a position that is ultimately untenable
  • Learning outcomes risk changing the rules of the game by actually looking at learning itself, rather than using the surrogates of wealth, history, and research.  Since we have considerable data that show that these surrogates do not correlate particularly well with learning outcomes (see e.g. Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges),
  •  As Bok pointed out, to improve learning outcomes, the faculty would have to learn to teach in new ways.  Most academic leaders would prefer not to get into a game that would require that kind of change!  In fact, at this point I believe that the real, critical, disruptive innovation in higher education is transparent learning outcomes measures.  Such measures are likely to enable the innovations discussed in the first question to transform from sustaining to disruptive.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Mar 10
     
    another executive source, but notes the critical underpinning reason we NEED to do our work.
Gary Brown

News: No Letup From Washington - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...hlc

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 13 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Virtually all of the national higher education leaders who spoke to the country's largest accrediting group sent a version of the same message: The federal government is dead serious about holding colleges and universities accountable for their performance, and can be counted on to impose undesirable requirements if higher education officials don't make meaningful changes themselves.
  • "This is meant to be a wakeup call," Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, said in Monday's keynote address
  • I believe it’s wise for us to assume they will have little reservation about regulating higher education now that they know it is too important to fail."
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Obama administration will be tough on colleges because its officials value higher education and believe it needs to perform much better, and successfully educate many more students, to drive the American economy.
  • In her own speech to the Higher Learning Commission’s members on Sunday, Sylvia Manning, the group’s president, cited several signs that the new administration seemed willing to delve into territory that not long ago would have been viewed as off-limits to federal intrusion. Among them: A recently published “draft” of a guide to accreditation that many accrediting officials believe is overly prescriptive. A just-completed round of negotiations over proposed rules that deal with the definition of a “credit hour” and other issues that touch on academic quality -- areas that have historically been the province of colleges and their faculties. And, of special relevance for the Higher Learning Commission, a trio of critical letters from the Education Department’s inspector general challenging the association’s policies and those of two other regional accreditors on key matters -- and in North Central’s case, questioning its continued viability. With that stroke, Manning noted, the department’s newfound activism “has come to the doorstep, or into the living room, of HLC.”
  • Pressure to measure student learning -- to find out which tactics and approaches are effective, which create efficiency without lowering results -- is increasingly coming from what Broad called the Obama administration's "kitchen cabinet," foundations like the Lumina Foundation for Education (which she singled out) to which the White House and Education Department are increasingly looking for education policy help.
  • She cited an October speech in which the foundation's president, Jamie P. Merisotis, said that student learning should be recognized as the "primary measure of quality in higher education," and heralded the European Union's Bologna process as a potential path for making that so
  • we cannot lay low and hope that the glare of the spotlight will eventually fall on others," Broad told the Higher Learning Commission audience.
  • While higher ed groups have been warned repeatedly that they must act before Congress next renews the Higher Education Act -- a process that will begin in earnest in two or three years -- the reality is that politicians in Washington no longer feel obliged to hold off on major changes to higher education policy until that main law is reviewed. Congress has passed "seven major pieces of legislation" related to higher education in recent years, and "I wish I could tell you that the window is open" until the next reauthorization, Broad said. "But we cannot presume that we have the luxury of years within which to get our collective house in order. We must act quickly."
  • But where will such large-scale change come from? The regional accreditors acting together to align their standards? Groups of colleges working together to agree on a common set of learning outcomes for general education, building on the work of the American Association of Colleges and Universities? No answers here, yet.
  • Gary Brown on 13 Apr 10
     
    Note the positions of the participants
Joshua Yeidel

ILT - Nov 2009 issue - 0 views

viewer.zmags.com/...2637a8ed

learning social learning

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 16 Apr 10
     
    "In three issues for Inside Learning Technologies, Jane Hart shares the rpos and cons of building three types of social learning environment, and how to deliver them at low or no cost."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 16 Apr 10
     
    Assessment is not even mentioned, but the series is still useful.
Theron DesRosier

The Future of Thinking - The MIT Press - 0 views

mitpress.mit.edu/...default.asp

mit education web2.0

shared by Theron DesRosier on 22 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 22 Apr 10
     
    "Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of "institution" as a "mobilizing network"-emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change-and explore the implications for higher education."
  • Theron DesRosier on 22 Apr 10
     
    A new book by Cathy Davidson.
Joshua Yeidel

Refining the Recipe for a Degree, Ingredient by Ingredient - Government - The Chronicle... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...125545

assessment accreditation outcomes

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 04 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Supporters of the Lumina project say it holds the promise of turning educational assessment from a process that some academics might view as a threat into one that holds a solution, while also creating more-rigorous expectations for student learning. Mr. Jones, the Utah State history-department chairman, recounted in an essay published in the American Historical Association's Perspectives on History how he once blithely told an accreditation team that "historians do not measure their effectiveness in outcomes." But he has changed his mind. The Lumina project, and others, help define what learning is achieved in the process of earning a degree, he said, moving beyond Americans' heavy reliance on the standardized student credit hour as the measure of an education. "The demand for outcomes assessment should be seized as an opportunity for us to actually talk about the habits of mind our discipline needs to instill in our students," Mr. Jones wrote. "It will do us a world of good, and it will save us from the spreadsheets of bureaucrats."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 04 Jan 11
     
    Lumina Foundation pushes a Eurpopean-style process to define education goals state- and nation-wide, with mixed success. "Chemistry, history, math, and physics have been among the most successful", whileothers have had a hard time beginning. "Supporters of the Lumina project say it holds the promise of turning educational assessment from a process that some academics might view as a threat into one that holds a solution, while also creating more-rigorous expectations for student learning. Mr. Jones, the Utah State history-department chairman, recounted in an essay published in the American Historical Association's Perspectives on History how he once blithely told an accreditation team that "historians do not measure their effectiveness in outcomes." But he has changed his mind. The Lumina project, and others, help define what learning is achieved in the process of earning a degree, he said, moving beyond Americans' heavy reliance on the standardized student credit hour as the measure of an education. "The demand for outcomes assessment should be seized as an opportunity for us to actually talk about the habits of mind our discipline needs to instill in our students," Mr. Jones wrote. "It will do us a world of good, and it will save us from the spreadsheets of bureaucrats."
Theron DesRosier

OECD Feasibility Study for the International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Ou... - 3 views

www.oecd.org/...61291_40624662_1_1_1_1,00.html

assessment accountability accreditation

shared by Theron DesRosier on 01 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 01 Jul 10
     
    "What is AHELO? The OECD Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) is a ground-breaking initiative to assess learning outcomes on an international scale by creating measures that would be valid for all cultures and languages. Between ten and thirty-thousand higher education students in over ten different countries will take part in a feasibility study to determine the bounds of this ambitious project, with an eye to the possible creation of a full-scale AHELO upon its completion."
Nils Peterson

Does having a computer at home improve results at school? | A World Bank Blog on ICT us... - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...home-access

shared by Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between and rich and poor? and Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? In this case, Vigdor and Ladd found that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      so there is some contextualization of computers in the home that is also needed... as I find when my daughter wants to spend computer time dressing up Barbie.
  • A 2010 report from the OECD (Are New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? [pdf]) considers a number of studies, combined with new analysis it has done based on internationally comparable student achievement data (PISA), and finds that indeed that gains in educational performance are correlated with the frequency of computer use at home.
  • One way to try to make sense of all of these studies together is to consider that ICTs may function as a sort of 'amplifier' of existing learning environments in homes.  Where such environments are conducive to student learning (as a result, for example, of strong parental direction and support), ICT use can help; where home learning environments are not already strong (especially, for example, where children are left unsupervised to their own devices -- pun intended), we should not be surprised if the introduction of ICTs has a negative effect on learning.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • On a broader note, and in response to his reading of the Vigdor/Ladd paper, Warschauer states on his insightful blog that the "aim of our educational efforts should not be mere access, but rather development of a social environment where access to technology is coupled with the most effective curriculum, pedagogy, instruction, and assessment."
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      specific things need to be done to 'mobilize' the learning latent in the computing environment.
Gary Brown

Community Colleges Must Focus on Quality of Learning, Report Says - Students - The Chro... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...125344

quality

shared by Gary Brown on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Increasing college completion is meaningless unless certificates and degrees represent real learning, which community colleges must work harder to ensure, says a report released on Thursday by the Center for Community College Student Engagement.
  • This year's report centers on "deep learning," or "broadly applicable thinking, reasoning, and judgment skills—abilities that allow individuals to apply information, develop a coherent world view, and interact in more meaningful ways."
  • 67 percent of community-college students said their coursework often involved analyzing the basic elements of an idea, experience, or theory; 59 percent said they frequently synthesized ideas, information, and experiences in new ways. Other averages were lower: 56 percent of students, for example, reported being regularly asked to examine the strengths or weaknesses of their own views on a topic. And just 52 percent of students said they often had to make judgments about the value or soundness of information as part of their academic work.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • One problem may be low expectations,
  • 37 percent of full-time community-college students spent five or fewer hours a week preparing for class. Nineteen percent of students had never done two or more drafts of an assignment, and 69 percent had come to class unprepared at least once.
  • Nearly nine in 10 entering students said they knew how to get in touch with their instructors outside of class, and the same proportion reported that at least one instructor had learned their names. But more than two-thirds of entering students and almost half of more-seasoned students said they had never discussed ideas from their coursework with instructors outside of class.
  • This year's report also strongly recommends that colleges invest more in professional development, for part-time as well as full-time faculty. "The calls for increased college completion come at a time of increasing student enroll­ments and draconian budget cuts; and too often in those circumstances, efforts to develop faculty and staff take low priority,"
  • Lone Star College's Classroom Research Initiative, a form of professional development based on inquiry. Since last year, about 30 faculty members from the community college's five campuses have collaborated to examine assessment data from the report's surveys and other sources and to propose new ways to try to improve learning.
Gary Brown

A Final Word on the Presidents' Student-Learning Alliance - Measuring Stick - The Chron... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...27535

accreditation.

shared by Gary Brown on 22 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • I was very pleased to see the responses to the announcement of the Presidents’ Alliance as generally welcoming (“commendable,” “laudatory initiative,” “applaud”) the shared commitment of these 71 founding institutions to do more—and do it publicly and cooperatively—with regard to gathering, reporting, and using evidence of student learning.
  • establishing institutional indicators of educational progress that could be valuable in increasing transparency may not suggest what needs changing to improve results
  • As Adelman’s implied critique of the CLA indicates, we may end up with an indicator without connections to practice.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The Presidents’ Alliance’s focus on and encouragement of institutional efforts is important to making these connections and steps in a direct way supporting improvement.
  • Second, it is hard to disagree with the notion that ultimately evidence-based improvement will occur only if faculty members are appropriately trained and encouraged to improve their classroom work with undergraduates.
  • Certainly there has to be some connection between and among various levels of assessment—classroom, program, department, and institution—in order to have evidence that serves both to aid improvement and to provide transparency and accountability.
  • Presidents’ Alliance is setting forth a common framework of “critical dimensions” that institutions can use to evaluate and extend their own efforts, efforts that would include better reporting for transparency and accountability and greater involvement of faculty.
  • there is wide variation in where institutions are in their efforts, and we have a long way to go. But what is critical here is the public commitment of these institutions to work on their campuses and together to improve the gathering and reporting of evidence of student learning and, in turn, using evidence to improve outcomes.
  • The involvement of institutions of all types will make it possible to build a more coherent and cohesive professional community in which evidence-based improvement of student learning is tangible, visible, and ongoing.
Gary Brown

Struggling Students Can Improve by Studying Themselves, Research Shows - Teaching - The... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...64004

feedback peer review

shared by Gary Brown on 13 Feb 10 - Cached
  • "We're trying to document the role of processes that are different from standard student-outcome measures and standard ability measures,
  • We're interested in various types of studying, setting goals for oneself, monitoring one's progress as one goes through learning a particular topic."
  • Mr. Zimmerman has spent most of his career examining what can go wrong when people try to learn new facts and skills. His work centers on two common follies: First, students are often overconfident about their knowledge, assuming that they understand material just because they sat through a few lectures or read a few chapters. Second, students tend to attribute their failures to outside forces ("the teacher didn't like me," "the textbook wasn't clear enough") rather than taking a hard look at their own study habits.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • That might sound like a recipe for banal lectures about study skills. But training students to monitor their learning involves much more than simple nagging, Mr. Zimmerman says. For one thing, it means providing constant feedback, so that students can see their own strengths and weaknesses.
  • or one thing, it means providing constant feedback, so that students can see their own strengths and weaknesses.
  • "The first one is, Give students fast, accurate feedback about how they're doing. And the second rule, which is less familiar to most people, is, Now make them demonstrate that they actually understand the feedback that has been given."
  • "I did a survey in December," he says. "Only one instructor said they were no longer using the technique. Twelve people said they were using the technique 'somewhat,' and eight said 'a lot.' So we were pleased that they didn't forget about us after the program ended."
  • "Only one instructor said they were no longer using the technique. Twelve people said they were using the technique 'somewhat,' and eight said 'a lot.' So we were pleased that they didn't forget about us after the program ended."
  • And over time, we've realized that these methods have a much greater effect if they're embedded within the course content.
  • "Once we focus on noticing and correcting errors in whatever writing strategy we're working on, the students just become junkies for feedback,"
  • "Errors are part of the process of learning, and not a sign of personal imperfection," Mr. Zimmerman says. "We're trying to help instructors and students see errors not as an endpoint, but as a beginning point for understanding what they know and what they don't know, and how they can approach problems in a more effective way."
  • Errors are part of the process of learning, and not a sign of personal imperfection,"
  • Self-efficacy" was coined by Albert Bandura in the 1970's
  • "Self-efficacy" was coined by Albert Bandura in the 1970's,
  • The 1990 paper from _Educational Psychologist_ 25 (1), pp. 3-17) which is linked above DOES include three citations to Bandura's work.
  • The 1990 paper from _Educational Psychologist_ 25 (1), pp. 3-17) which is linked above DOES include three citations to Bandura's work.
  • What I am particularly amazed by is that the idea of feedback, reflection and explicitly demonstrated understanding (essentially a Socratic approach of teaching), is considered an innovation.
  • Gary Brown on 13 Feb 10
     
    selected for the focus on feedback. The adoption by half or fewer, depending, is also interesting as the research is of the type we would presume to be compelling.
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.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 347 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page