n this paper, we revisit these findings by comparing the practices of discursive production and participation among top U.S. political blogs on the left, right, and center during Summer, 2008. Based on qualitative coding of the top 155 political blogs, our results reveal significant cross-ideological variations along several important dimensions. Notably, we find evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation across political blogs. Sites on the left adopt more participatory technical platforms; are comprised of significantly fewer sole-authored sites; include user blogs; maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content; include longer narrative and discussion posts; and (among the top half of the blogs in our sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization as well as discursive production.
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A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right | Berkman Center - 1 views
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Public Higher Education Is 'Eroding From All Sides,' Warn Political Scientists - Facult... - 2 views
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The ideal of American public higher education may have entered a death spiral, several scholars said here Thursday during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. That crisis might ultimately harm not only universities, but also democracy itself, they warned.
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And families who are frozen out of the system see public universities as something for the affluent. They'd rather see the state spend money on health care."
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Cultural values don't support the liberal arts. Debt-burdened families aren't demanding it. The capitalist state isn't interested in it. Universities aren't funding it."
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Instead, all of public higher education will be essentially vocational in nature, oriented entirely around the market logic of job preparation. Instead of educating whole persons, Ms. Brown warned, universities will be expected to "build human capital," a narrower and more hollow mission.
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His own campus, Mr. Nelson said, has recently seen several multimillion-dollar projects that were favorites of administrators but were not endorsed by the faculty.
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Instead, he said that faculty activists should open up a more basic debate about the purposes of education. They should fight, he said, for a tuition-free public higher-education system wholly subsidized by the federal government.
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The issues are taking root in disciplinary discussions, so perhaps awareness and response will sprout.
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Disciplines Follow Their Own Paths to Quality - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Educa... - 2 views
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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
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But there is no nationally normed way to measure the particular kind of critical thinking that students of classics acquire
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er colleagues have created discipline-specific critical-reasoning tests for classics and political science
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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.
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he wants to use tests of reasoning that are appropriate for each discipline
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Revolution, Facebook-Style - Can Social Networking Turn Young Egyptians Into a Force fo... - 0 views
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Freedom of speech and the right to assemble are limited in Egypt, which since 1981 has been ruled by Mubarak's National Democratic Party under a permanent state-of-emergency law. An estimated 18,000 Egyptians are imprisoned under the law, which allows the police to arrest people without charges, allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government. Newspapers are monitored by the Ministry of Information and generally refrain from directly criticizing Mubarak. And so for young people in Egypt, Facebook, which allows users to speak freely to one another and encourages them to form groups, is irresistible as a platform not only for social interaction but also for dissent.
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East Bay Express : Print This Story - 0 views
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It's not the African American aspect of this story that interests me. It is the aspect of attitudes--whether they be ethnically correlated or not. Politically problematic but I think this includes, at its core, crucial factors to consider. I think this research would have been better conducted not in consideration of ethnicity but rather groups as determined by criteria derived from factor analysis. To me, the point is that memes matter. Both behavioral and belief memes can characterize groups of friends (a better unit of study than a nebulous ethnicity) and provide them with a baseline of comparative likelinesses in achievements of various kinds.
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Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com - 0 views
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The writing was also often associated with accomplishing an immediate, concrete goal, such as organizing a group of people or accomplishing a political end, says Paul M. Rogers, one of the study's authors. The immediacy might help explain why students stayed so engaged, he says.
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The City Where Diploma Dreams Go to Die - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views
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Another single-measure assessment with political implications. The comments unpack some of the complexities behind "graduation rates".
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shared by Nils Peterson on 24 Jul 10
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Education Department Proposes To End Federal Funding To For-Profit Colleges Whose Stude... - 2 views
www.huffingtonpost.com/...nding-jobs-loans_n_657821.html
assessment stakeholder financial aid higher_education accountability
shared by Nils Peterson on 24 Jul 10
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The Education Department proposed much-anticipated regulations Friday that would cut off federal aid to for-profit college programs if too many of their students default on loans or don't earn enough after graduation to repay them.
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To qualify for federal student aid programs, career college programs must prepare students for "gainful employment."
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But shares were mixed among companies such as ITT Educational Services Inc., Corinthian Colleges Inc., Education Management Corp. and Career Education Corp. Those companies operate career colleges focusing more on two-year programs or lower-income students and may need to make big changes
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Teacher unions fighting accountability - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com - 2 views
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Teacher unions fighting accountability
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Enough. It is time teachers embraced accountability. Time parents, students and government did, too
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this is an argument about the future -- and whether this country will have one
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Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
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Another call for accountability...again from the side of the political spectrum that I think we should consider allies...
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Blog U.: The Challenge of Value-Added - Digital Tweed - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views
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Quoting a 1984 study, "higher education should ensure that the mounds of data already collected on students are converted into useful information and fed back [to campus officials and faculty] in ways that enhance student learning and lead to improvement in programs, teaching practices, and the environment in which teaching and learning take place." The example given is an analysis of test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District by the LA Times.
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It's going to take some assessment (and political) smarts to deflect the notion that existing data can be re-purposed easily to assess "value-added".
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For-Profit Hearing: Legislation Might Include All Colleges & Greed is Good « ... - 2 views
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Democrats were being unfair in singling out the for-profit institutions. Senator Enzi, the ranking minority member on the Committee, followed up with a statement released on the HELP webpage. Enzi said. “It is naïve to think that these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector.”
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Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) asked if “student loans should be extended to programs that are not accredited.” Ms. Asher gave a polite lesson on the difference between accrediting institution and accrediting program.
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Finances in higher education is confusing and accreditation is confusing
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Ms. Asher was also a champion of reviewing the financial incentives for colleges. “We need to shift incentives for colleges to focus on outcomes for students.”
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GE Reform Process - Revising General Education: Comments and Questions - University Col... - 0 views
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I actually learned something in these classes for 3 main reasons. The first reason was that the class size was small, and my interaction with my classmates and professor/teacher made the material meaningful and educational. Secondly, the essays required for these classes pushed me in my writing skills, and promoted independent research and construction of ideas through writing.
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Taking the class with students who were serious and knowledgeable about their field of study made my experience educational. Sitting in a large lecture hall with 200 other students who also are taking the class just to get the requirement is not educationally stimulating.
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Spending money on classes that don’t have any impact is especially hard now that tuition has gone through the roof. Requiring less classes of greater quality will help alleviate this problem and help students graduate on time.
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I also think that if there are going to be any cut-backs on classes it should be done on GE classes. Also, the writing portfolio process is tedious for DDP students, especially for those who transferred from a community college. Honestly the hardest part of the process was not the proctored test (I received a pass with distinction) but hunting down professors to sign the required
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Likewise, if we eliminate western history, mythology, philosophy and comparative politics, we abandon our common heritage and reduce our graduates to individuals with technical skills but no understanding of how America became the greatest nation in history and of our individual responsibilities as productive and educated citizens
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The Future of Wannabe U. - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views
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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.
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colleges and universities have transformed themselves from participants in an audit culture to accomplices in an accountability regime.
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higher education has inaugurated an accountability regime—a politics of surveillance, control, and market management that disguises itself as value-neutral and scientific administration.
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annabe administrator noted that the recipient had published well more than 100 articles. He never said why those articles mattered.
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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."
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The problem is that such numbers have no meaning. They cannot indicate the quality of a student's education.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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A good one to wrestle with. It may be worth formulating distinctions we hold, and steering accordingly.
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2009 Annual Meeting | Conference Program - 0 views
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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.
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decided to attend another session. Hersh was OK before lunch, but the talk by Pan looks more promising
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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.
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here is another session with links to CTLT work, both harvesting gradebook and the ABET work
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Interdisciplinary Teaching and Object-Based Learning in Campus Museums
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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.
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Should Academics be Active? Campuses and Cutting Edge Civic Engagement
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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?
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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).
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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.
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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
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Dr. Pan will also talk about strategies for breaking down cultural barriers.
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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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GothamSchools - 0 views
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Stanford professor, Linda Darling-Hammond, will chair Obama's transition team studying education policy. This sounds unremarkable, but just like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein are lightning rods, so is Darling-Hammond. The main reason is that Darling-Hammond has been consistently skeptical of the nameless movement's efforts to shake up public schools. She has criticized Teach For America, the alternative certification program for teachers; criticized high-stakes testing, and criticized No Child Left Behind for narrowing the curriculum.
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Gates Foundation will steer its education giving in a new direction But how much impact... - 0 views
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Gates Foundation will steer its education giving in a new direction But how much impact will the billions have?
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techPresident - Daily Digest: Did the Internet Matter? - 0 views
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"Does the Internet Matter?": That's the title of a new report out from Temple University's Institute for Business and Information Technology. Making use of some techPresident data, Temple's Sunil Wattal, David Schuff, and Munir Mandviwalla considered how social media in particular shaped the '08 presidential primaries. Their conclusion? While YouTube and MySpace may help lesser-known candidates find footing, only blogs seem to correlate with boosts in Gallup poll numbers. ( You might notice that the report requires a password, but we've got one for you: "templeowls.")
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From the Techapresident post: "Does the Internet Matter?": That's the title of a new report out from Temple University's Institute for Business and Information Technology. Making use of some techPresident data, Temple's Sunil Wattal, David Schuff, and Munir Mandviwalla considered how social media in particular shaped the '08 presidential primaries. Their conclusion? While YouTube and MySpace may help lesser-known candidates find footing, only blogs seem to correlate with boosts in Gallup poll numbers. ( You might notice that the report requires a password, but we've got one for you: "templeowls.")
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techPresident - How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them. - 0 views
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While much of the tech industry and blogosphere is pondering who President-elect Barack Obama might appoint as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer--Eric Schmidt? Jeff Bezos? Larry Lessig?--a bunch of heavy-hitting public interest groups in Washington and a couple of civic-minded techies out in Seattle have each launched promising interventions in the discussion.
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Find Your social media - 0 views
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State and local governments: Showcase your social media adoption and see what your peers are doing. Government and elected officials: Promote your social media activities and increase your followers. Citizens: Get connected with your local government officials and activities. Get started now by searching for your city, your state, your county, or a government official!
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Use this to find social media links to city, state, county, or a government officials.