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Not exactly, but faculty members and students at Rutgers University are embarking this week on a two-year effort  to "cultivate small acts of courtesy and compassion" on the New Brunswick campus.

being civil is more than just demonstrating good manners.

"Living together more civilly means living together more peacefully, more kindly, and more justly," she says. Rutgers, Ms. Hull hopes, will become a "warmer, closer community" as a result of Project Civility

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.

In case it hasn’t already become obvious, I am among those who view rankings with some cynicism due to their past misuses and abuses. At the same time, I must concede that they can be a useful tool to help guide institutional improvement.

Indeed, rankings are part of the nature of education. Like it or not, comparisons are unavoidable.

To further complicate the utility of these rankings, it appears that not a single perspective was included from outside the Ivory Towers.

Empowerment Evaluation in Stanford University's School of Medicine

Empowerment evaluation provides a method for gathering, analyzing, and sharing data about a program and its outcomes and encourages faculty, students, and support personnel to actively participate in system changes.

It assumes that the more closely stakeholders are involved in reflecting on evaluation findings, the more likely they are to take ownership of the results and to guide curricular decision making and reform.

By outsourcing evaluation of our doctoral programs to an external agency, we allow ourselves to play the double game of insulating ourselves from the criticisms they may raise by questioning their accuracy, while embracing the praise they bestow.

The solution to the problem is obvious: Universities should provide relevant information to potential students and faculty members themselves, instead of relying on an outside body to do it for them, years too late. How? By carrying out yearly audits of their doctoral programs.

The ubiquitous rise of social networking and open access to information via electronic media facilitate this approach to self-evaluation of academic departments. There is no need to depend on an obsolete system that irregularly publishes rankings when all of the necessary tools—e-mail, databases, Web sites—are available at all institutions of higher learning.

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."

The Association for Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, Inc. (AALHE) is an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning.

it is designed to be a resource by all who are interested in the improvement of learning,

I had a conversation a few days ago with a professor who helped me understand some of the otherwise-puzzling opposition faculty have shown to actually using the general education outcomes they themselves voted into place.

Yet getting those outcomes from ‘adopted’ to ‘used’ has proved a long, hard slog.

The delicate balance is in respecting the ambitions of the various disciplines, while still maintaining -- correctly, in my view -- that you can’t just assume that the whole of a degree is equal to the sum of its parts. Even if each course works on its own terms, if the mix of courses is wrong, the students will finish with meaningful gaps. Catching those gaps can help you determine what’s missing, which is where assessment is supposed to come in. But there’s some local history to overcome first.

He emphasized, however, that "rankings are only useful if the indicators they use don't just measure things that are easy to measure, but the things that need to be measured."

"In Malaysia we do not call it a ranking exercise," she said firmly, saying that the effort was instead a benchmarking exercise that attempts to rate institutions against an objective standard.

the organizer unveiled a project that would effectively rank the rankers.

As rankings proliferate around the world, they are increasingly having a direct impact on the decisions of students, academic staff, institutions, and policy makers, but each of those groups differs in its use of rankings and the sophistication it brings to evaluating them.

IREG's principles, which emphasize clarity and openness in the purposes and goals of rankings, the design and weighting of indicators, the collection and processing of data, and the presentation of results.

evidence of widespread cheating

business course on strategic management,

I don’t condone cheating. But I think it is equally pathetic that faculty are put in situations where they feel the only option for an examination is an easy to grade multiple choice or true/false test

Arne Duncan, said state and local governments should rethink their policies of giving pay raises to teachers who have master’s degrees because evidence suggests that the degree alone does not improve student achievement.

Measuring student engagement is important for WSU

The U.S. Education Department today released a report critical of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, saying the regional accrediting organization did not set minimum standards for its member institutions on program length or credit hours.

The accreditor responded that "the fundamental concern of higher education's constituencies is whether students graduate with appropriate knowledge, skills, and competencies, not how many hours they spend in a classroom."

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.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced the Department’s six appointments to the newly constituted National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI).

The Department’s six members, appointed for three-year terms, are: Earl Lewis, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.; Susan Phillips, provost and vice president for academic affairs, University of Albany, State University of New York; Jamienne Studley, president and CEO, Public Advocates Inc., San Francisco, Calif.; Aron Shimles, student, Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; Frank Wu, professor, Howard University Law School, Washington, D.C.; and , Frederico Zargoza, vice chancellor of economic and workforce development, Alamo Colleges, San Antonio, Tex.

The House and Senate are expected to complete their appointments soon and the newly-formed committee will then meet shortly thereafter.