"But knowledge is not a result merely of filtering or algorithms. It results from a far more complex process that is social, goal-driven, contextual, and culturally-bound. We get to knowledge - especially "actionable" knowledge - by having desires and curiosity, through plotting and play, by being wrong more often than right, by talking with others and forming social bonds, by applying methods and then backing away from them, by calculation and serendipity, by rationality and intuition, by institutional processes and social roles."

An interresting take on assumptions about knowledge.

"Those who are involved with assessment are unfortunately not immune to unethical practices. Abuses in preparing students to take tests as well as in the use and interpretation of test results have been widely publicized. Misuses of test data in high-stakes decisions, such as scholarship awards, retention/promotion decisions, and accountability decisions, have been reported all too frequently. Even claims made in advertisements about the success rates of test coaching courses have raised questions about truth in advertising. Given these and other occurrences of unethical behavior associated with assessment, the purpose of this digest is to examine the available standards of ethical practice in assessment and the issues associated with implementation of these standards. "

Framework for Program Evaluation by the CDC This is a good resource for program evaluation. Click through "Steps and Standards" for information on collecting credible evidence and engaging stakeholders.

Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From his post: "There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'" "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas." "Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement" "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."

"What we want is for assessment to become a public, shared responsibility, so there should be departmental leadership." George Kuh director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.

Kuh also says, "So we're going to spend some time looking at the impact of the Voluntary System of Accountability. It's one thing for schools to sign up, it's another to post the information and to show that they're actually doing something with it. It's not about posting a score on a Web site-it's about doing something with the data." He doesn't take the next step and ask if it is even possible for schools to actually do anything with the data collected from the CLA or ask who has access to the criteria: Students? Faculty? Anyone?

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... hmmm... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

Examples of course portfolios from Indiana University Bloomington. All of these link to the Pew Course Portfolio Peer Review of Teaching Project http://www.courseportfolio.org/peer/pages/index.jsp

Home page: "The Peer Review of Teaching Project (PRTP) provides faculty with a structured and practical model that combines inquiry into the intellectual work of a course, careful investigation of student understanding and performance, and faculty reflection on teaching effectiveness. Begun in 1994, the PRTP has engaged hundreds of faculty members from numerous universities. In 2005, the project was awarded a TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award Certificate of Excellence in recognition of it being an exceptional faculty development program designed to enhance undergraduate student achievement. "

The Evolution of a Digital Repository and Social Networking Tool for Inorganic Chemistry From Post: "It is said that teaching is a lonely profession. In higher education, a sense of isolation can permeate both teaching and research, especially for academics at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). In these times of doing more with less, new digital communication tools may greatly attenuate this problem--for free. Our group of inorganic chemists from PUIs, together with technologist partners, have built the Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource Web site (VIPEr, http://www.ionicviper.org) to share teaching materials and ideas and build a sense of community among inorganic chemistry educators. As members of the leadership council of VIPEr, we develop and administer the Web site and reach out to potential users. "

Perhaps there is a need to adopt the approach of Western Governors University and certify or grant credit to individuals based on skills that they have obtained. Or perhaps there is a need for facilitators or guides to walk one through this free and open content when and where needed. Peer-to-Peer University and the University of the People have sprung up in 2009 to apparently address this very issue. The world community will be curious to see the results.

From the interview: "Perhaps there is a need to adopt the approach of Western Governors University and certify or grant credit to individuals based on skills that they have obtained. Or perhaps there is a need for facilitators or guides to walk one through this free and open content when and where needed. Peer-to-Peer University and the University of the People have sprung up in 2009 to apparently address this very issue. The world community will be curious to see the results."

Think of the many publicly funded institutions of higher education, then think of the way those colleges and universities only reward their scholars if they are willing to conceal their expertise from the broader public that funded the institutions they work at. It's as unethical as it is unnecessary, but it will continue until institutions learn to be more publicly responsible with their intellectual resources, or until scholars reject the restrictive identity they are held to through the traditional reward system.

From the article: "Think of the many publicly funded institutions of higher education, then think of the way those colleges and universities only reward their scholars if they are willing to conceal their expertise from the broader public that funded the institutions they work at. It's as unethical as it is unnecessary, but it will continue until institutions learn to be more publicly responsible with their intellectual resources, or until scholars reject the restrictive identity they are held to through the traditional reward system."

An article in the Atlantic today by Clayton Christensen discusses "Revolution in the Classroom" In a paragraph on data collection he says the following: Creating effective methods for measuring student progress is crucial to ensuring that material is actually being learned. And implementing such assessments using an online system could be incredibly potent: rather than simply testing students all at once at the end of an instructional module, this would allow continuous verification of subject mastery as instruction was still underway. Teachers would be able to receive constant feedback about progress or the lack thereof and then make informed decisions about the best learning path for each student. Thus, individual students could spend more or less time, as needed, on certain modules. And as long as the end result - mastery - was the same for all, the process and time allotted for achieving it need not be uniform." The "module" focus is a little disturbing but the rest is helpful.

"The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and weare building pathways to formal credit as well."

"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.

"One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN's Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn't afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student's country of origin, and never exceed $100. "

Blogpost (BYU ?) mentions the HGB.

Penn State Learning Design Hub Link to the Harvesting Gradebook.

blogpost and link to test drive of HGB

This Powerpoint from the Keynote at Canada Moodlemoot 2009 has two references to the Harvesting Gradebook and interest in the comments below the presentation.