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Colleges May Be Missing a Chance for Change - International - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124417 employers accountability future of education
shared by Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10 - No Cached
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10
       
      And what are people for, after all?
  • Peter P. Smith, senior vice president for academic strategies and development at Kaplan Higher Education, said that if traditional universities did not adjust, new institutions would evolve to meet student needs. Those new institutions, said Mr. Smith, whose company is a for-profit education provider, would be more student-centric, would deliver instruction with greater flexibility, and would offer educational services at a lower cost.
  • both education and research must become more relevant and responsive to society.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The gathering drew about 500 government officials, institutional leaders, and researchers
  • Speakers at an international conference here delivered a scathing assessment of higher education: Universities, they said, are slow to change, uncomfortable in dealing with real-world problems, and culturally resistant to substantive internationalization.
  • many faculty members may be "uncomfortable" with having deeper links to industry because they don't understand that world. Students, however, are highly practical, Mr. Fadel said, and are specifically seeking education that will get them a job or give them an advantage in the workplace.
  • "I'm sorry, as a student, you do not go to university to learn. You go to get a credential," he said.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10
       
      And if you graduate more appreciative of the credential than what and how you have learned, then the education.
  • That does not mean colleges simply ought to turn out more graduates for in-demand professions like science and engineering, Mr. Fadel added. Colleges need to infuse other disciplines with science and engineering skills.
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GAO - Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards - 1 views

www.eval.org/aea10.GAO.Yellow.Book.asp accountability
shared by Gary Brown on 15 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Our evaluator colleagues who work at GAO, and many others working in agencies and organizations that are responsible for oversight of, and focus on accountability for, government programs, often refer to the Yellow Book Standards. These agencies or organizations emphasize the importance of their independence from program officials and enjoy significant protections for their independence through statutory provisions, organizational location apart from program offices, direct reporting channels to the highest level official in their agency and governing legislative bodies, heightened tenure protections, and traditions emphasizing their independence.
  • Gary Brown on 15 Sep 10
     
    Good to have on the radar as DOE challenges the efficacy of accreditation, and not incidentally underpinning a principle of good evaluation.
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#3m10p - 1 views

www.jjtok.io/3m10p peerreview p2pu open_research
shared by Theron DesRosier on 30 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 30 Sep 10
     
    3M10P is a university project in which 10 students work for 3 months with the (*) goal of writing 10 academic journal papers. The project started on 2010-09-01 and will run until 2010-12-01. On the way, we will need to upset the academic publishing applecart quite a bit: attracting peer commentary on the drafts as they get written, pushing the limits of text re-use between papers and questioning the status of author. This is play, but this is very serious play."
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A Critic Sees Deep Problems in the Doctoral Rankings - Faculty - The Chronicle of Highe... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124725 ranking colleges
shared by Gary Brown on 01 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • This week he posted a public critique of the NRC study on his university's Web site.
  • "Little credence should be given" to the NRC's ranges of rankings.
  • There's not very much real information about quality in the simple measures they've got."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The NRC project's directors say that those small samples are not a problem, because the reputational scores were not converted directly into program assessments. Instead, the scores were used to develop a profile of the kinds of traits that faculty members value in doctoral programs in their field.
  • For one thing, Mr. Stigler says, the relationships between programs' reputations and the various program traits are probably not simple and linear.
  • if these correlations between reputation and citations were plotted on a graph, the most accurate representation would be a curved line, not a straight line. (The curve would occur at the tipping point where high citation levels make reputations go sky-high.)
  • Mr. Stigler says that it was a mistake for the NRC to so thoroughly abandon the reputational measures it used in its previous doctoral studies, in 1982 and 1995. Reputational surveys are widely criticized, he says, but they do provide a check on certain kinds of qualitative measures.
  • Gary Brown on 01 Oct 10
     
    What is not challenged is the validity and utility of the construct itself--reputation rankings.
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The Why and When of College Choice - Head Count - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...27344 admissions ranking colleges
shared by Gary Brown on 01 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • data on how high-school students’ awareness and opinions of colleges change over time
  • A major finding was that big-name colleges lose “market share” as students progress through high school. During that time, students become more aware of lesser-known institutions—and find them more desirable.
  • he data. “It reveals the fluidity of decision making among students,” he said. “Some places have more ability to influence student choices later in the process.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Student behaviors have changed,” Mr. Kabbaz said. “The question becomes: Have we institutionally changed our habits of engaging these students?”
  • Gary Brown on 01 Oct 10
     
    It is not clear here that reputation is a salient factor in student choice.
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Nonacademic Members Push Changes in Anthropology Group - Faculty - The Chronicle of Hig... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...125440
shared by Nils Peterson on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Cathleen Crain, an anthropologist who runs a consulting firm near Washington: "There is a growing vision of a unified anthropology, where academics informs practice and practice informs academics."
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 19 Nov 10
       
      Anthropology is having a conversation about stakeholders and this is impacting the national anthro organization. I wonder if its producing metrics that might inform student learning outcomes work.
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Duncan: Rewarding Teachers for Master's Degrees Is Waste of Money - The Ticker - The Ch... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...28478 Assessment
shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Nov 10
     
    distinguishes between outcome and impact and/ or illustrates the problems of grades/degrees as credible outcome.
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Teaching for America - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...21friedman.html teaching education
shared by Joshua Yeidel on 22 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 22 Nov 10
     
    Tom Friedman reports (approvingly) on Arne Duncan's plans to upgrade the teaching profession.  Any gueses how this might apply to "higher" education?
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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.
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Cross-Disciplinary Grading Techniques - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...28804 rubrics
shared by Gary Brown on 23 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • So far, the most useful tool to me, in physics, has been the rubric, which is used widely in grading open-ended assessments in the humanities.
  • This method has revolutionized the way I grade. No longer do I have to keep track of how many points are deducted from which type of misstep on what problem for how many students. In the past, I often would get through several tests before I realized that I wasn’t being consistent with the deduction of points, and then I’d have to go through and re-grade all the previous tests. Additionally, the rubric method encourages students to refer to a solution, which I post after the test is administered, and they are motivated to meet with me in person to discuss why they got a 2 versus a 3 on a given problem, for example.
  • his opens up the opportunity to talk with them personally about their problem-solving skills and how they can better them. The emphasis is moved away from point-by-point deductions and is redirected to a more holistic view of problem solving.
  • Gary Brown on 23 Nov 10
     
    In the heart of the home of the concept inventory--Physics
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Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added [pdf] - 1 views

www.brookings.edu/...1117_evaluating_teachers.pdf education assessment value-added
shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Dec 10
     
    "We conclude that value-added data has an important role to play in teacher evaluation systems, but that there is much to be learned about how best to use value-added information in human resource decisions." No mention of the role of assessment in improvement.
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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."
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SoTL Resources - 1 views

cft.vanderbilt.edu/...sotl sotl
shared by Peggy Collins on 04 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 04 Jan 11
     
    Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching-- descriptions of what SOTL is and links to many samples and resources.
1More

FERPA and social media - 1 views

www.facultyfocus.com/...ferpa-and-social-media higher_education web2.0
shared by Peggy Collins on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 07 Feb 11
     
    FERPA is one of the most misunderstood regulations in education. It is commonly assumed that FERPA requires all student coursework to be kept private at all times, and thus prevents the use of social media in the classroom, but this is wrong. FERPA does not prevent instructors from assigning students to create public content as part of their course requirements. If it did, then video documentaries produced in a communications class and shown on TV or the Web, or public art shows of student work from an art class, would be illegal. As one higher education lawyer put it
1More

Home - Journal of Assessment and Accountability Systems in Educator Preparation - 1 views

www.uni.edu/...current.html Assessment accountability
shared by Gary Brown on 16 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Gary Brown on 16 Nov 10
     
    a new journal to note
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Views: Asking Too Much (and Too Little) of Accreditors - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...neal accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 12 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Senators want to know why accreditors haven’t protected the public interest.
  • Congress shouldn’t blame accreditors: it should blame itself. The existing accreditation system has neither ensured quality nor ferreted out fraud. Why? Because Congress didn’t want it to. If Congress truly wants to protect the public interest, it needs to create a system that ensures real accountability.
  • But turning accreditors into gatekeepers changed the picture. In effect, accreditors now held a gun to the heads of colleges and universities since federal financial aid wouldn’t flow unless the institution received “accredited” status.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Congress listened to higher education lobbyists and designated accreditors -- teams made up largely of administrators and faculty -- to be “reliable authorities” on educational quality. Intending to protect institutional autonomy, Congress appropriated the existing voluntary system by which institutions differentiated themselves.
  • A gatekeeping system using peer review is like a penal system that uses inmates to evaluate eligibility for parole. The conflicts of interest are everywhere -- and, surprise, virtually everyone is eligible!
  • accreditation is “premised upon collegiality and assistance; rather than requirements that institutions meet certain standards (with public announcements when they don’t."
  • Meanwhile, there is ample evidence that many accredited colleges are adding little educational value. The 2006 National Assessment of Adult Literacy revealed that nearly a third of college graduates were unable to compare two newspaper editorials or compute the cost of office items, prompting the Spellings Commission and others to raise concerns about accreditors’ attention to productivity and quality.
  • But Congress wouldn’t let them. Rather than welcoming accreditors’ efforts to enhance their public oversight role, Congress told accreditors to back off and let nonprofit colleges and universities set their own standards for educational quality.
  • ccreditation is nothing more than an outdated industrial-era monopoly whose regulations prevent colleges from cultivating the skills, flexibility, and innovation that they need to ensure quality and accountability.
  • there is a much cheaper and better way: a self-certifying regimen of financial accountability, coupled with transparency about graduation rates and student success. (See some alternatives here and here.)
  • Such a system would prioritize student and parent assessment over the judgment of institutional peers or the educational bureaucracy. And it would protect students, parents, and taxpayers from fraud or mismanagement by permitting immediate complaints and investigations, with a notarized certification from the institution to serve as Exhibit A
  • The only way to protect the public interest is to end the current system of peer review patronage, and demand that colleges and universities put their reputation -- and their performance -- on the line.
  • Anne D. Neal is president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The views stated herein do not represent the views of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, of which she is a member.
  • Gary Brown on 12 Nov 10
     
    The ascending view of accreditation.
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Reviewers Unhappy with Portfolio 'Stuff' Demand Evidence -- Campus Technology - 1 views

campustechnology.com/...lio-Stuff-Demand-Evidence.aspx accreditation evidence
shared by Gary Brown on 07 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • An e-mail comment from one reviewer: “In reviewing about 100-some-odd accreditation reports in the last few months, it has been useful in our work here at Washington State University to distinguish ‘stuff’ from evidence. We have adopted an understanding that evidence is material or data that has been analyzed and that can be used, as dictionary definitions state, as ‘proof.’ A student gathers ‘stuff’ in the ePortfolio, selects, reflects, etc., and presents evidence that makes a case (or not)… The use of this distinction has been indispensable here. An embarrassing amount of academic assessment work culminates in the presentation of ‘stuff’ that has not been analyzed--student evaluations, grades, pass rates, retention, etc. After reading these ‘self studies,’ we ask the stumping question--fine, but what have you learned? Much of the ‘evidence’ we review has been presented without thought or with the general assumption that it is somehow self-evident… But too often that kind of evidence has not focused on an issue or problem or question. It is evidence that provides proof of nothing.
  • Gary Brown on 07 Oct 10
     
    a bit of a context shift, but....
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International Group Announces Audit of University Rankings - International - The Chroni... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124882 ranking colleges
shared by Gary Brown on 11 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Whether the audit will actually work remains to be seen. Many of the people who attended the meeting expressed deep skepticism and unease about how effectively a rigorous and independent audit procedure could be applied.
  • rankings have become an intensely competitive business, and that any audit procedures would need to be clear and open enough to ensure that competitors were not pronouncing on one another's work.
  • Gary Brown on 11 Oct 10
     
    Sheesh
1More

the creative internet (106 things) - 1 views

docs.google.com/...view
shared by Theron DesRosier on 12 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 12 Oct 10
     
    The world is full of interesting things. Use google chrome for this if possible. It will take a little time to download but it has a lot of creative material worth viewing.
3More

Online Colleges and States Are at Odds Over Quality Standards - Wired Campus - The Chro... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...27586 quality accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 13 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • the group called for a more uniform accreditation standard across state lines as well as a formal framework for getting a conversation on regulation started.
  • College officials claim that what states really mean when they discuss quality in online education is the credibility of online education in general. John F. Ebersole, president of Excelsior College, said “there is a bit of a double standard” when it comes to regulating online institutions; states, he feels, apply stricter standards to the online world.
  • Gary Brown on 13 Oct 10
     
    I note the underlying issue of "credibility" as the core of accreditation. It raises the question, again:  Why would standardized tests be presumed, as Excelsior does, to be a better indicator than a model of stakeholder endorsement?
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