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U.S. GAO - Program Evaluation: A Variety of Rigorous Methods Can Help Identify Effectiv... - 1 views

www.gao.gov/GAO-10-30 rcts alternative methodology
shared by Gary Brown on 01 Dec 09 - Cached
  • In the absence of detailed guidance, the panel defined sizable and sustained effects through case discussion
  • The Top Tier initiative's choice of broad topics (such as early childhood interventions), emphasis on long-term effects, and use of narrow evidence criteria combine to provide limited information on what is effective in achieving specific outcomes.
  • Several rigorous alternatives to randomized experiments are considered appropriate for other situations: quasi-experimental comparison group studies, statistical analyses of observational data, and--in some circumstances--in-depth case studies. The credibility of their estimates of program effects relies on how well the studies' designs rule out competing causal explanations.
  • Gary Brown on 01 Dec 09
     
    a critical resource
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The Ticker - Education Dept. Criticizes Accreditor Over Credit-Hour Standards - The Chr... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...8993 seat time accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 29 Nov 09 - Cached
  • The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools cannot consistently ensure the quality of academic programs it reviews without clearly defining what constitutes a credit hour, according to a report issued on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general. The accrediting organization, which assesses colleges in 11 states, responded that the variety of experiential, online, and distance courses that institutions now offer makes it impossible to define a single, common standard for credit hours. "The traditionally accepted definitions of semester credit hours and quarter credit hours based almost exclusively on seat time can no longer be applied to half of the credits now being awarded by our higher-education institutions," the association wrote in answer to the report.
  • Gary Brown on 29 Nov 09
     
    Outcomes are mentioned as an alternative in the comments, but in a disconcerting way. As is the alternative approach to study time....
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Teaching Experiment Decodes a Discipline - Teaching - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49140 teaching concepts history
shared by Ashley Ater Kranov on 25 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Several years ago, a small group of faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington decided to do something about the problem. The key, they concluded, was to construct every history course around two core skills of their discipline: assembling evidence and interpreting it.
  • The historians at Indiana have tried to help students through several specific bottlenecks by dividing large concepts into smaller, evidence-related steps. (See the box below.)
  • "Students come into our classrooms believing that history is about stories full of names and dates," says Arlene J. Díaz, an associate professor of history at Indiana who is one of four directors of the department's History Learning Project, as the redesign effort is known. But in courses, "they discover that history is actually about interpretation, evidence, and argument."
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At Colleges, Assessment Satisfies Only Accreditors - Letters to the Editor - The Chroni... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...49236 accreditation assessment faculty development
shared by Gary Brown on 24 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Some of that is due to the influence of the traditional academic freedom that faculty members have enjoyed. Some of it is ego. And some of it is lack of understanding of how it can work. There is also a huge disconnect between satisfying outside parties, like accreditors and the government, and using assessment as a quality-improvement system.
  • We are driven by regional accreditation and program-level accreditation, not by quality improvement. At our institution, we talk about assessment a lot, and do just enough to satisfy the requirements of our outside reviewers.
  • Standardized direct measures, like the Major Field Test for M.B.A. graduates?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The problem with the test is that it does not directly align with our program's learning outcomes and it does not yield useful information for closing the loop. So why do we use it? Because it is accepted by accreditors as a direct measure and it is less expensive and time-consuming than more useful tools.
  • Without exception, the most useful information for improving the program and student learning comes from the anecdotal and indirect information.
  • We don't have the time and the resources to do what we really want to do to continuously improve the quality of our programs and instruction. We don't have a culture of continuous improvement. We don't make changes on a regular basis, because we are trapped by the catalog publishing cycle, accreditation visits, and the entrenched misunderstanding of the purposes of assessment.
  • The institutions that use it are ones that have adequate resources to do so. The time necessary for training, whole-system involvement, and developing the programs for improvement is daunting. And it is only being used by one regional accrediting body, as far as I know.
  • Until higher education as a whole is willing to look at changing its approach to assessment, I don't think it will happen
  • Gary Brown on 24 Nov 09
     
    The challenge and another piece of evidence that the nuances of assessment as it related to teaching and learning remain elusive.
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Office of the President: Perspectives Home - 1 views

president.wsu.edu/perspectives
shared by Nils Peterson on 22 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Clearly, a world-class research university cannot long stand on such a shaky IT foundation. In fact, in the  generally glowing accreditation report filed by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities about our university this summer, one recommendation read: “The Committee recommends that Washington State University provide contemporary information management systems that will address the needs of the future for its student, academic and management support requirements.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 22 Nov 09
       
      Perhaps the President recalls the Spring preliminary accreditation report more clearly than the final report sent to him in the summer and linked at accreditation.wsu.edu which does not have the "glowing" comments but does say "...the Commission finds that Recommendations 1,2, and 3 of the Spring 2009 Comprehensive Evaluation Report are areas where Washington State University is substantially in compliance with Commission criteria for accreditation, but in need of improvement. The two additional Recommendations follow below. Recommendation 2 states that the implementation of the educational assessment plan remains inconsistent across the University despite promising starts and a number of exemplary successes in selected programs. The Commission therefore recommends that the Universìty continue to enhance and strengthen its assessment process. This process needs to be extended to all of the University's educational programs, including graduate programs, and programs offered at the branch campuses (Standard 2.8).
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News: Defining Accountability - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...aei accountability accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09 - Cached
  • they should do so in ways that reinforce the behaviors they want to see -- and avoid the kinds of perverse incentives that are so evident in many policies today.
  • This is especially true, several speakers argued, on the thorniest of higher education accountability questions -- those related to improving student outcomes.
  • Oh, and one or two people actually talked about how nice it would be if policy makers still envisioned college as a place where people learn about citizenship or just become educated for education's sake.)
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • only if the information they seek to collect is intelligently framed, which the most widely used current measure -- graduation rates -- is not
  • "work force ready"
  • Accountability is not quite as straightforward as we think," said Rhoades, who described himself as "not a 'just say no' guy" about accountability. "It's not a question of whether [colleges and faculty should be held accountable], but how, and by whom," he said. "It's about who's developing the measures, and what behaviors do they encourage?"
  • federal government needs to be the objective protector of taxpayers' dollars,"
  • Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said that government regulation would be a major mistake, but said that accreditors needed to come to agreement on "community-driven, outcomes-based standards" to which colleges should be held.
  • But while they complain when policy makers seek to develop measures that compare one institution against another, colleges "keep lists of peers with which they compare themselves" on many fronts, Miller said.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09
     
    High level debates again
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WSU Today Online - Current Article List - 1 views

www.wsutoday.wsu.edu/...Publications.asp accreditation NCATE
shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09 - Cached
  • National and state agencies have renewed accreditation for WSU's College of Education, which earned praise as “a standout institution.” The ratings came after voluntary reviews by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and Washington State’s Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB). Both accreditation teams, which work cooperatively, visited WSU last spring.
  • accredited institutions must: * Carefully assess this knowledge and skill to determine that candidates may graduate. * Have partnerships with schools that enable candidates to develop the skills necessary to help students learn. * Prepare candidates to understand and work with diverse student populations. * Have faculty who model effective teaching practices. * Have the resources, including information technology resources, necessary to prepare candidates to meet new standards.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09
     
    Note the criteria as it pertains to NWCC&U
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Institutional - Community learning spectrum.pdf - 3 views

mail.google.com/mail innovation collaboration iteams PD
shared by S Spaeth on 14 Nov 09 - No Cached
  • Intellectual property is shared
  • S Spaeth on 14 Nov 09
     
    Communities identify authentic problems that are inter-disciplinary and reach beyond the definition of the course.
  • Theron DesRosier on 19 Nov 09
     
    Hey Stephen, I am having trouble opening this link. Can you send another?
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Accountability Issues Persist Under New Administration - Government - The Chronicle of ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...49190 accountability accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09
     
    The daily dose of calls for accountability--useful for those who are inclined to see OAI as the agent of their distress.
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THEN: Journal - 0 views

thenjournal.org/248
shared by Nils Peterson on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Fourth, an observation: Schools tend to pose problems to students in the form of puzzles far more than in the form of games. This can result in students being taught to think that there is an answer to every question, a solution to every problem. There is an endless array of secrets that others know and you don’t. When students leave school they frequently find that problems in the “real world” tend not to have “once and for all” solutions. Many problems seem to have no solution at all. People create problems themselves and solve problems created by others. They begin to think in terms of strategies for coping with their problems, strategies that serve their ends but can be expected to conflict with other people’s goals. Therefore a puzzle-based education might not prepare people for life after school as well as a game-based education might.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Nov 09
       
      posted as a response to the HASTAC conversation, it is an interesting exploration of a dichotomy -- puzzles (closed-ended problems) vs games (open-ended problems) and the impact on learning on using one vs the other
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Wikis in the workplace: a practical introduction - Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...welcome-to-the-wiki-party.ars wiki
shared by Joshua Yeidel on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 18 Nov 09
     
    "The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples."
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Read methods online for free - Methodspace - home of the Research Methods community - 1 views

www.methodspace.com/...read-methods-online-for-free evaluation methods
shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Read methods online
  • Book of the month What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and Evaluation Practice?
  • Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    This site may be valuable for professional development. We have reason to explore what the evaluation community holds as "credible" evidence, which is the chapter the group is reading this month.
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Student-Survey Results: Too Useful to Keep Private - Commentary - The Chronicle of High... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49128 accountability NSSE
shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • "There are … disturbing signs that many students who do earn degrees have not actually mastered the reading, writing, and thinking skills we expect of college graduates. Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined."
  • But a major contributing factor is that the customers of higher education—students, parents, and employers—have few true measures of quality on which to rely. Is a Harvard education really better than that from a typical flagship state university, or does Harvard just benefit from being able to enroll better students? Without measures of value added in higher education, that's difficult, if not impossible, to determine.
  • Yet what is remarkable about the survey is that participating institutions generally do not release the results so that parents and students can compare their performance with those of other colleges.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Requiring all colleges to make such information public would pressure them to improve their undergraduate teaching
  • It would empower prospective students and their parents with solid information about colleges' educational quality and help them make better choices. To make that happen, the federal government should simply require that any institution receiving federal support—Pell Grants, student loans, National Science Foundation grants, and so on—make its results public on the Web site of the National Survey of Student Engagement in an open, interactive way.
  • Indeed, a growing number of organizations in our economy now have to live with customer-performance measures. It's time higher education did the same.
  • Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    The whites of the eyes--the perceptions and assumptions behind the push for accountability. I note in particular the notion that higher education will understand comparisons of the NSSE as an incentive to improve.
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News: Fans and Fears of 'Lecture Capture' - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...capture lecture faculty development
shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • “Well-attended lectures were well-watched; poorly attended lectures were not watched,” Stringer said, pointing to research she had conducted at Stanford. "If you’re bad, you’re bad. If you’re bad online, you’re bad in lectures, students don’t come.”
  • Our students at Berkeley tell us that this is supplemental material, and it doesn’t affect their decision to attend class,” said Mara Hancock, director for educational technologies at the University of California at Berkeley
  • The faculty’s general unwillingness to work with lecture capture technology prompted Purdue to enlist the educational technology firm Echo360 to formulate a work-around solution that would require minimal cooperation from professors.
  • Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    I have nothing to add to this.
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Students Unimpressed with Faculty Use of Ed Tech -- Campus Technology - 0 views

campustechnology.com/...th-faculty-use-of-ed-tech.aspx students technology
shared by Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • 8 percent of students indicated that their instructors "understand technology and fully integrate it into their classes."
  • 74 percent of higher education instructors polled indicated that they "incorporate technology into every class or nearly every class," and 67 percent said they were "satisfied with their technology professional development."
  • The report also found that students now more than ever are using technology regularly in preparation for class: 81 percent of them this year said they use technology every day before class to prepare compared with 63 percent last year.
  • Gary Brown on 17 Nov 09
     
    The lack of mental models is revealed here in numbers. What faculty perceive as substantial technology integration is perceived somewhat differently by students according to this study.
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5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases - 2 views

mashable.com/...google-wave-use-cases media
shared by Matthew Tedder on 16 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 16 Nov 09
     
    5 use cases for wave..
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From SMCEDU: 5 Steps to Make the Social Web Work for Higher Ed - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...bring_the_web_to_higher_ed.php
shared by Nils Peterson on 12 Nov 09 - Cached
  • At a kickoff event tonight in Richmond, Virginia, I got to participate in a panel discussion and hear questions from an audience of college students and professors. One of the questions posed was how those in academia can best put the social web to work for themselves. Far beyond Facebook and LinkedIn, how can this community harness the Internet to be smarter, more efficient, and more productive? Read on for our top five ideas.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 12 Nov 09
       
      The 5 steps 1. Find your network, they say Twitter is a good way to do this 2. Keep up, they say RSS of the blogs of key players you found 3. Create your identity, get beyound the one you have with Facebook and consider yourname.com 4. Contribute content to the conversation, start a blog or website 5. Continue to explore and adopt new tools
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A Real-Life Lesson in Why Accountability Matters - Administration - The Chronicle of Hi... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49067 accountability accreditation students
shared by Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09 - Cached
  • "Change is in the wind,"
  • "All we have is this campus," says Raven Curling, a biology and pre-dental student who is also president of the student government. "It feels like we're a university without university standards." Policy wonks and education reformers talk often about the importance of accountability and about the responsibilities of trustees to set and enforce standards. All that jargon moves from abstraction to reality when you see the price students pay for inattention.
  • Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09
     
    more focus on provostial numbers, but the import is still the same--"accountability is in the wind."
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Audio: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick - Community Colleges - The Chronicle... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49087 accountability community colleges
shared by Gary Brown on 11 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Joe D. May: Community Colleges Create a Measuring Stick
  • Gary Brown on 11 Nov 09
     
    nothing new here beyond the headline, but another to save for our collection. "Transparency comes with risk," says Joe.
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Google Wave Use Cases: Education - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...e_wave_use_cases_education.php higher_education wave
shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09
     
    "After searching some public 'waves,' we came across an educational wave. Entitled 'Wave in Class,' the wave was started to explore concepts like "Collaborative Note Taking" and "Wave as a Debate Host." "
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Nov 09
     
    So it begins... the usual range of reactrions when a new technology is introduced, and educators begin to spin salvation or doom on top of it. Interestingly, there are already a couple of comments on this blog that use Wave concepts to challenge the context (the "class").
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