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Gary Brown

News: No Letup From Washington - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...hlc

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 13 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Virtually all of the national higher education leaders who spoke to the country's largest accrediting group sent a version of the same message: The federal government is dead serious about holding colleges and universities accountable for their performance, and can be counted on to impose undesirable requirements if higher education officials don't make meaningful changes themselves.
  • "This is meant to be a wakeup call," Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, said in Monday's keynote address
  • I believe it’s wise for us to assume they will have little reservation about regulating higher education now that they know it is too important to fail."
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Obama administration will be tough on colleges because its officials value higher education and believe it needs to perform much better, and successfully educate many more students, to drive the American economy.
  • In her own speech to the Higher Learning Commission’s members on Sunday, Sylvia Manning, the group’s president, cited several signs that the new administration seemed willing to delve into territory that not long ago would have been viewed as off-limits to federal intrusion. Among them: A recently published “draft” of a guide to accreditation that many accrediting officials believe is overly prescriptive. A just-completed round of negotiations over proposed rules that deal with the definition of a “credit hour” and other issues that touch on academic quality -- areas that have historically been the province of colleges and their faculties. And, of special relevance for the Higher Learning Commission, a trio of critical letters from the Education Department’s inspector general challenging the association’s policies and those of two other regional accreditors on key matters -- and in North Central’s case, questioning its continued viability. With that stroke, Manning noted, the department’s newfound activism “has come to the doorstep, or into the living room, of HLC.”
  • Pressure to measure student learning -- to find out which tactics and approaches are effective, which create efficiency without lowering results -- is increasingly coming from what Broad called the Obama administration's "kitchen cabinet," foundations like the Lumina Foundation for Education (which she singled out) to which the White House and Education Department are increasingly looking for education policy help.
  • She cited an October speech in which the foundation's president, Jamie P. Merisotis, said that student learning should be recognized as the "primary measure of quality in higher education," and heralded the European Union's Bologna process as a potential path for making that so
  • we cannot lay low and hope that the glare of the spotlight will eventually fall on others," Broad told the Higher Learning Commission audience.
  • While higher ed groups have been warned repeatedly that they must act before Congress next renews the Higher Education Act -- a process that will begin in earnest in two or three years -- the reality is that politicians in Washington no longer feel obliged to hold off on major changes to higher education policy until that main law is reviewed. Congress has passed "seven major pieces of legislation" related to higher education in recent years, and "I wish I could tell you that the window is open" until the next reauthorization, Broad said. "But we cannot presume that we have the luxury of years within which to get our collective house in order. We must act quickly."
  • But where will such large-scale change come from? The regional accreditors acting together to align their standards? Groups of colleges working together to agree on a common set of learning outcomes for general education, building on the work of the American Association of Colleges and Universities? No answers here, yet.
  • Gary Brown on 13 Apr 10
     
    Note the positions of the participants
Gary Brown

As Colleges Switch to Online Course Evaluations, Students Stop Filling Them Out - The T... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...22376

evaluating teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Colleges thought they were enhancing efficiency when they moved their course evaluations online, but an unintended consequence of the shift to evaluations not filled out in class is that students started skipping them altogether, The Boston Globe reported today.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10
     
    the letters are more interesting than the article--especially the Boston Globe link where Mazur weighs in.
  • Kimberly Green on 12 Apr 10
     
    The whole issue of online evals is a big one, esp relevant as part of prog eval. Perhaps a design circle topic? (...I couldn't find Mazur's comments)
Joshua Yeidel

Ravitch describes her change of heart - NewsTrust.net - 3 views

newstrust.net/...toolbar

education accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 12 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 12 Apr 10
     
    Ravitch, the prominent scholar, historian, and former George H.W. Bush administration official, greeted a standing-room-only crowd at NSBA's conference on Saturday, and she first proved that the one thing that has not changed is her bluntness. "I've written a lot of articles that were wrong-wrong about merit pay, charter schools, and accountability."
Gary Brown

Mini-Digest of Education Statistics, 2009 - 0 views

nces.ed.gov/...pubsinfo.asp

higher ed

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • This publication is a pocket-sized compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from kindergarten through graduate school. The statistical highlights are excerpts from the Digest of Education of Statistics, 2009.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10
     
    just released for 2009, great resource
Gary Brown

Double fees buy spot on college's fast track - The Boston Globe - 0 views

www.boston.com/...uy_spot_on_colleges_fast_track

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10
       
      like the airlines, as a model...
  • Richard Freeland, state commissioner of higher education, defends such partnerships, which have become a source of research funds for universities.
  • In California, another for-profit company, Kaplan University, has signed an agreement with the community college system to deliver general education courses online, said Peter Smith, Kaplan’s senior vice president for academic strategy and the former president of the Community College of Vermont.
Nils Peterson

World Air Traffic Over A 24-Hour Period (VIDEO) - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...r-traffic-over-a_n_529905.html

visualization traffic

shared by Nils Peterson on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 09 Apr 10
     
    another cool visualization, watch world air traffic -- no wonder we have a carbon problem
Nils Peterson

Walmart's Growth: An Awesome Visualization Of The Retailer's Rapid Expansion (INFOGRAPHIC) - 3 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...growth-an-awesom_n_529037.html

walmart visualization

shared by Nils Peterson on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Beginning with the first Walmart store, which opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, this incredible visualization -- put together by FlowingData, a data visualization website run by UCLA statistics doctoral student Nathan Yau -- traces the expansion of the seemingly omnipresent discount chain across America
  • Nils Peterson on 08 Apr 10
     
    an interesting visualization in its own right, perhaps another tool set we might use at "FlowingData"
Theron DesRosier

Virtual-TA - 2 views

www.virtual-ta.com/how-we-do-it.php

virtual ta outsource assessment

shared by Theron DesRosier on 07 Apr 10 - Cached
  • We also developed a technology platform that allows our TAs to electronically insert detailed, actionable feedback directly into student assignments
  • Your instructors give us the schedule of assignments, when student assignments are due, when we might expect to receive them electronically, when the scored assignments will be returned, the learning outcomes on which to score the assignments, the rubrics to be used and the weights to be applied to different learning outcomes. We can use your rubrics to score assignments or design rubrics for sign-off by your faculty members.
  • review and embed feedback using color-coded pushpins (each color corresponds to a specific learning outcome) directly onto the electronic assignments. Color-coded pushpins provide a powerful visual diagnostic.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • We do not have any contact with your students. Instructors retain full control of the process, from designing the assignments in the first place, to specifying learning outcomes and attaching weights to each outcome. Instructors also review the work of our TAs through a step called the Interim Check, which happens after 10% of the assignments have been completed. Faculty provide feedback, offer any further instructions and eventually sign-off on the work done, before our TAs continue with the remainder of the assignments
  • Finally, upon the request of the instructor, the weights he/she specified to the learning outcomes will be rubric-based scores which are used to generate a composite score for each student assignment
  • As an added bonus, our Virtual-TAs provide a detailed, summative report for the instructor on the overall class performance on the given assignment, which includes a look at how the class fared on each outcome, where the students did well, where they stumbled and what concepts, if any, need reinforcing in class the following week.
  • We can also, upon request, generate reports by Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This report can be used by the instructor to immediately address gaps in learning at the individual or classroom level.
  • Think of this as a micro-closing-of-the-loop that happens each week.  Contrast this with the broader, closing-the-loop that accompanies program-level assessment of learning, which might happen at the end of a whole academic year or later!
  • Theron DesRosier on 07 Apr 10
     
    I went to Virtual TA and Highlighted their language describing how it works.
Theron DesRosier

Key Social Learning Roles « Daretoshare - 0 views

daretoshare.wordpress.com/...key-social-learning-roles

learning social web2.0

shared by Theron DesRosier on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Premise:  Learning communities or networks thrive because its members possess certain skills and capabilities.  Community members should be able to perform one or more of the five roles described in the table that follows.
Gary Brown

Outsourced Grading, With Supporters and Critics, Comes to College - Teaching - The Chro... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...64954

grades

shared by Gary Brown on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000 words a semester, it became clear to her that what would really help them was consistent, detailed feedback.
  • She outsourced assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in Asia.
  • The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do their work online and communicate with professors via e-mail.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The company argues that professors freed from grading papers can spend more time teaching and doing research.
  • "This is what they do for a living," says Ms. Whisenant. "We're working with professionals." 
  • Assessors are trained in the use of rubrics, or systematic guidelines for evaluating student work, and before they are hired are given sample student assignments to see "how they perform on those," says Ravindra Singh Bangari, EduMetry's vice president of assessment services.
  • Professors give final grades to assignments, but the assessors score the papers based on the elements in the rubric and "help students understand where their strengths and weaknesses are," says Tara Sherman, vice president of client services at EduMetry. "Then the professors can give the students the help they need based on the feedback."
  • The assessors use technology that allows them to embed comments in each document; professors can review the results (and edit them if they choose) before passing assignments back to students.
  • But West Hills' investment, which it wouldn't disclose, has paid off in an unexpected way. The feedback from Virtual-TA seems to make the difference between a student's remaining in an online course and dropping out.
  • Because Virtual-TA provides detailed comments about grammar, organization, and other writing errors in the papers, students have a framework for improvement that some instructors may not be able to provide, she says.
  • "People need to get past thinking that grading must be done by the people who are teaching," says Mr. Rajam, who is director of assurance of learning at George Washington University's School of Business. "Sometimes people get so caught up in the mousetrap that they forget about the mouse."
Gary Brown

AFT Opens New Web Site as Forum on Accountability and Student Success - The Ticker - Th... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...22299

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The American Federation of Teachers is weighing in on the debate over accountability and student success with a new Web site. The site is billed as a "clearinghouse of accountability initiatives" and as a forum for educators to discuss the accountability systems that best help students succeed.
  • Gary Brown on 06 Apr 10
     
    one to be aware of....
Theron DesRosier

An Interview with Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs | techPresident - 1 views

techpresident.com/...anil-dash-director-expert-labs

learning web_2.0 interview

shared by Theron DesRosier on 05 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • Expert Labs is a new, independent non-profit effort that's trying at its most ambitious to improve the decisions policy makers make, by giving them the tools to tap into crowdsourcing in the same way that private companies do every day. We're part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the folks who publish the journal Science) and we're backed by the MacArthur Foundation.
Gary Brown

Can We Afford Our State Colleges? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...22268

accountability reform

shared by Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • xperts do not agree on the precise numbers, but over the past generation we have moved from an environment in which states paid for 70 percent of cost and students paid 30 percent, to a situation in which those numbers have exactly reversed. Increasingly, tuition accounts for the lion’s share of institutional budgets, with state appropriations playing a minority role.
  • The sense I got Friday was that higher-education professionals do not expect the ”good old days” to return
  • the apparent consensus that public education needs to be more productive, because there was no discussion of the definition of productivity. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • But even when instruction was (implicitly) assumed to be the measure of productivity, there was no discussion of measurable learning outcomes.
  • 5. It is true that public colleges do not measure learning outcomes. Neither does anyone else. U.S. universities resist this kind of accountability in every way they can think of. Since 1985, when the modern assessment movement gained traction, higher education can only be said to have been temporizing, getting ready to get ready through endless committees that go nowhere.
  • Most institutions continue to invoke apodictic notions of quality and refuse to define quality in modern terms (suitability to purpose; quality for whom and for what purpose) or to address the issue of value added, where career schools and community colleges will generally lead. At this time, there is virtually no institution-wide assessment system in place that would pass muster in a 501 measurement science course.
  • 6. Yes, public institutions need restructuring to make them more accountable and productive. Our independent colleges and universities need the same kind of restructuring and the agenda is rightfully one of public interest. The common perception that taxpayers do not support our private institutions is false.----------------------Robert W TuckerPresidentInterEd, Inc.www.InterEd.com
  • Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10
     
    Tucker's note in the comments again suggests the challenge and opportunity of the WSU model.
Nils Peterson

Wired.com Buyer's Guide: Choose the Right iPad | Gadget Lab | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...ipad-buyers-guide

ipad wired

shared by Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10
     
    the WiFi model with 32GB looks like a place to experiment
Nils Peterson

Larry Magid: Can an iPad replace a laptop? Hands-on Review - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ad-replace-a-lap_b_524318.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Despite my excellent experience with Pages and the Bluetooth keyboard, it's not quite ready to replace laptops for production.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10
       
      see vnc to run desktop for production
Nils Peterson

Mocha VNC for iPhone - iPod Touch. Free Lite Version. - 1 views

www.mochasoft.dk/wizard_wn1w.htm

ipad vnc mocha

shared by Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10
     
    im running this diigo from my iphone
  • Nils Peterson on 04 Apr 10
     
    im running this diigo from my iphone
Theron DesRosier

Is New Media Incompatable with Schooling?: Henry Jenkins Interviews Rich Halverson (Par... - 2 views

henryjenkins.org/...terview_with_rich_halvers.html

halverson jenkins education

shared by Theron DesRosier on 01 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 01 Apr 10
     
    Jenkins interviews Halverson about his new book "Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America." "The authors offer sage new proposals for how we might deal with the apparent tensions and incompatabilities between education as it has been conducted in this country and the new media landscape as it is lived beyond the schoolhouse gates."
Nils Peterson

AAC&U News | April 2010 | Feature - 1 views

www.aacu.org/...feature.cfm

shared by Nils Peterson on 01 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Comparing Rubric Assessments to Standardized Tests
  • First, the university, a public institution of about 40,000 students in Ohio, needed to comply with the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), which requires that state institutions provide data about graduation rates, tuition, student characteristics, and student learning outcomes, among other measures, in the consistent format developed by its two sponsoring organizations, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).
  • And finally, UC was accepted in 2008 as a member of the fifth cohort of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, a collaborative body with the goal of advancing knowledge about the effect of electronic portfolio use on student learning outcomes.  
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • outcomes required of all UC students—including critical thinking, knowledge integration, social responsibility, and effective communication
  • “The wonderful thing about this approach is that full-time faculty across the university  are gathering data about how their  students are doing, and since they’ll be teaching their courses in the future, they’re really invested in rubric assessment—they really care,” Escoe says. In one case, the capstone survey data revealed that students weren’t doing as well as expected in writing, and faculty from that program adjusted their pedagogy to include more writing assignments and writing assessments throughout the program, not just at the capstone level. As the university prepares to switch from a quarter system to semester system in two years, faculty members are using the capstone survey data to assist their course redesigns, Escoe says.
  • the university planned a “dual pilot” study examining the applicability of electronic portfolio assessment of writing and critical thinking alongside the Collegiate Learning Assessment,
  • The rubrics the UC team used were slightly modified versions of those developed by AAC&U’s Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project. 
  • In the critical thinking rubric assessment, for example, faculty evaluated student proposals for experiential honors projects that they could potentially complete in upcoming years.  The faculty assessors were trained and their rubric assessments “normed” to ensure that interrater reliability was suitably high.
  • “We found no statistically significant correlation between the CLA scores and the portfolio scores,”
  • There were many factors that may have contributed to the lack of correlation, she says, including the fact that the CLA is timed, while the rubric assignments are not; and that the rubric scores were diagnostic and included specific feedback, while the CLA awarded points “in a black box”:
  • faculty members may have had exceptionally high expectations of their honors students and assessed the e-portfolios with those high expectations in mind—leading to results that would not correlate to a computer-scored test. 
  • “The CLA provides scores at the institutional level. It doesn’t give me a picture of how I can affect those specific students’ learning. So that’s where rubric assessment comes in—you can use it to look at data that’s compiled over time.”
  • Their portfolios are now more like real learning portfolios, not just a few artifacts, and we want to look at them as they go into their third and fourth years to see what they can tell us about students’ whole program of study.”  Hall and Robles are also looking into the possibility of forming relationships with other schools from NCEPR to exchange student e-portfolios and do a larger study on the value of rubric assessment of student learning.
  • “We’re really trying to stress that assessment is pedagogy,”
  • “It’s not some nitpicky, onerous administrative add-on. It’s what we do as we teach our courses, and it really helps close that assessment loop.”
  • In the end, Escoe says, the two assessments are both useful, but for different things. The CLA can provide broad institutional data that satisfies VSA requirements, while rubric-based assessment provides better information to facilitate continuous program improvement.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 01 Apr 10
       
      CLA did not provide information for continuous program improvement -- we've heard this argument before
  • Gary Brown on 01 Apr 10
     
    The lack of correlation might be rephrased--there appears to be no corrlation between what is useful for faculty who teach and what is useful for the VSA. A corollary question: Of what use is the VSA?
Theron DesRosier

The scientist and blogging - 1 views

www.sylvienoel.ca/blog

scientist blogging learning network

shared by Theron DesRosier on 31 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 31 Mar 10
     
    Some suggestions fort Scientists about blogging. "So what should you put in your blog? (1) Talk about your research. What have you done in the past? What are you working on at the moment? There is some controversy as to how transparent you should be when talking about your research (OMG, someone is going to steal my idea if I write it down! No wait, if everyone knows I said it first, then they can't steal it!), so it's up to you to decide how comfortable you are about sharing your research ideas. I'm old-fashioned enough that I tend towards the side that thinks we should be discreet about the details of what we're working on, but I also understand the side that wants everything to be out there. (2) Talk about other people's research. Do you agree with their results? Do you think that they missed something important? You may feel unqualified to criticize somebody else's work, but science does not advance through groupthink. Remember, part of your job as a scientist will be to review other people's papers. Now is as good a time as any to start practicing. (3) Talk about issues related to your research. Are you working on smartphones? Talk about how they're being integrated into museum visits. Working on accessibility issues? Talk about some of the problems that the handicapped encounter during their daily routine. Just make sure you choose to talk about something that interests you so that you feel motivated to write to your blog. "
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