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Gary Brown

Learning to Hate Learning Objectives - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49399

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Perhaps learning objectives make sense for most courses outside the humanities, but for me—as, no doubt, for many others—they bear absolutely no connection to anything that happens in the classroom.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      The homeopathic fallacy, debunked by volumes of research...
  • The problem is, this kind of teaching does not correlate with the assumption of my local accreditation body, which sees teaching—as perhaps it is, in many disciplines—as passing on a body of knowledge and skills to a particular audience.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      A profoundly dangerous misperception of accreditation and its role.
  • We talked about the ways in which the study of literature can help to develop and nurture observation, analysis, empathy, and self-reflection, all of which are essential for the practice of psychotherapy,
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      Reasonable outcomes, with a bit of educational imagination and an understanding of assessment obviously underdeveloped.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • They will not achieve any "goals or outcomes." Indeed, they will not have "achieved" anything, except, perhaps, to doubt the value of terms like "achievement" when applied to reading literature.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      good outcome
  • To describe this as a learning objective is demeaning and reductive to all concerned.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
       
      Only in the sense Ralph Tyler criticized, and he is the one who coined the term and developed the concept.
  • except to observe certain habits of mind, nuances of thinking, an appreciation for subtleties and ambiguities of argument, and an appreciation of the capacity for empathy, as well as the need, on certain occasions, to resist this capacity. There is no reason for anyone to take the course except a need to understand more about the consciousness of others, including nonhuman animals.
Peggy Collins

Northwestern U Creates Integration Utility To Link Blackboard and Google Apps -- Campus... - 1 views

campustechnology.com/...lackboard-and-google-apps.aspx

shared by Peggy Collins on 04 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 04 Nov 09
     
    Users at Northwestern University will be able to log into both Blackboard Learn and Google Apps with a single signon thanks to the efforts of the institution's IT development team. The code created by the team as a Blackboard Building Block and named Bboogle has also been released as open source to let other institutions use or build on the technology at no cost.
Gary Brown

Why Liberal Arts Need Career Services - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...48973

careers

shared by Gary Brown on 04 Nov 09 - Cached
  • I have consulted with deans who say they really want to improve their career-services programs—but no, they can't offer career courses for credit, their professors aren't interested in supervising internships, and they must tread lightly around anything that might be seen by the faculty as encroaching vocationalism.
  • I've also heard from numerous professors, "Our good students go to graduate school. We don't need to focus on those who are looking for jobs."
  • I have also been told, "The professors are too busy teaching to worry about how the students will use their knowledge. It's not their job." And I've had more than one faculty member confess to me that they really aren't sure how what they teach applies in the nonacademic world.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • There's no way to predict which moments of a liberal-arts education will be directly relevant in the workplace, but it's imperative that students know such moments occur frequently, and that the skills and knowledge they're learning are far from obscure and irrelevant.
  • We use visual-thinking techniques to help students connect the dots between their academic experience and the workplace.
  • But the opportunity to teach a career course that directly draws from a liberal-arts curriculum is not offered at many institutions. Instead, if courses are offered at all, they typically focus on basic job-finding skills like résumé writing and networking, serving to reinforce professors' worst beliefs about career advising: that it distracts and detracts from the educational process.
  • Professors, academic deans, and career-center staff members must work together. Learn what is happening in each other's shops. And don't have just a superficial conversation about services—instead, engage in a conversation about what is truly distinct about the curriculum, what students are learning, and how to make employers care.
  • Career-center personnel should find out what employers are seeking and what they say about your students.
  • If more liberal-arts faculties and career experts get together, watch out—the results could be amazing.
  • Gary Brown on 04 Nov 09
     
    As we work with CLA, perhaps inviting Careers Services to join as independent reviewers will help the effort
  • Joshua Yeidel on 05 Nov 09
     
    What seems to be missing here is inclusion of employers directly into the learning community. If professors "aren't sure how what they teach applies in the nonacademic world", get somebody directly involved who is, as one voice in the conversation, anyway. Of course this will be challenging to the professoriate, but it could also be revitalizing.
Gary Brown

The Quality Question - Special Reports - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124185

shared by Gary Brown on 30 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Few reliable, comparable measures of student learning across colleges exist. Standardized assessments like the Collegiate Learning Assessment are not widely used—and many experts say those tests need refinement in any case.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 30 Aug 10
       
      I am hoping the assumptions underlying this sentence do not frame the discussion. The extent to which it has in the past parallels the lack of progress. Standardized comparisons evince nothing but the wrong questions.
  • "We are the most moribund field that I know of," Mr. Zemsky said in an interview. "We're even more moribund than county government."
  • Robert Zemsky
Matthew Tedder

Learning to read? Try talking to a dog - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by Matthew Tedder on 22 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 22 Oct 09
     
    Somehow, I can relate to this. My wife is often upset at me because I read interesting things and tell her all about it. Sometimes, just to be nice--she pretends to listen. Or, I read or talk to her while she sleeps. This all helps me articulate. I find my most creative works of writing when I am writing email to someone... Some people I write to a lot--pages and pages and I highly doubt they read it. But this really helps me to articulate.
Joshua Yeidel

Eric Legault My Eggo : The Secret Outlook Feature You Didn't Know You Needed - 1 views

blogs.officezealot.com/...21596.aspx

outlook

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 13 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 13 Oct 09
     
    A power tip for power users of Outlook -- Query Builder!
Gary Brown

Higher Education: Assessment & Process Improvement Group News | LinkedIn - 1 views

www.linkedin.com/news

standardized tests value-added class size evaluating teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 17 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Gary Brown on 17 Oct 09
     
    lots about program effectiveness implied here, notably having good teachers in succession.
Theron DesRosier

#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."
Joshua Yeidel

Op-Ed Contributor - Why Charter Schools Fail the Test - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...05murray.html

assessment education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 10
     
    Charles Murray of the Amertican Enterprise Institute waves a conservative flag for _abandoning_ standardized tests in education-- from a consumer's (parent's) standpoint
Gary Brown

Online Evaluations Show Same Results, Lower Response Rate - Wired Campus - The Chronicl... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...23772

student evaluations online learning

shared by Gary Brown on 06 May 10 - Cached
  • Students give the same responses on paper as on online course evaluations but are less likely to respond to online surveys, according to a recent study.
  • The only meaningful difference between student ratings completed online and on paper was that students who took online surveys gave their professors higher ratings for using educational technology to promote learning.
  • Seventy-eight percent of students enrolled in classes with paper surveys responded to them, but  only 53 percent of students enrolled in classes with online surveys responded.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "If you have lower response rates, you're less inclined to make summative decisions about a faculty member's performance,"
  • While the majority of instructors still administer paper surveys, the number using online surveys increased from 1.08 percent in 2002 to 23.23 percent in 2008.
  • Gary Brown on 06 May 10
     
    replication of our own studies
Gary Brown

Accreditation Council Sets Stricter Standards for Recognizing Accreditors - Government ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124638

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 28 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • As Congress and the Education Department turn up the heat on accrediting agencies to be more stringent in monitoring colleges and universities,. a nongovernmental group is also raising its requirements for recognizing accreditors.
  • requiring accreditors to disclose the specific reasons for denying or withdrawing their approval of a college.
  • Gary Brown on 28 Sep 10
     
    I guess just saying because we say so no longer suffices.
Joshua Yeidel

Ning: We Have a $4 Billion Market Opportunity - 1 views

mashable.com/...ning-pro-market-opportunity

ning collaboration

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 07 May 10 - Cached
  • Educational institutions are the exception: They will get Ning for free due to the support of an unannounced sponsor.
Gary Brown

Texas Law Requires Professors to Post Details of Their Teaching Online - Faculty - The ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65450

student evaluations accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 07 May 10 - Cached
  • Faculty members and administrators in Texas are speaking out about a recent state law that requires them to post specific, detailed information about their classroom assignments, curricula vitae, department budgets, and the results of student evaluations.
  • Beginning this fall, universities will have to post online a syllabus for every undergraduate course, including major assignments and examinations, reading lists, and course descriptions.
  • All of the information must be no more than three clicks away from the college's home page.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "the worst example of government meddling at a huge cost to the public and for zero public good that I have ever seen."
  • "You get the feeling that the government sees us as slackers," she says. By requiring professors to list every assignment, she says the law interferes with her ability to respond to students' interests and current events and shift to different topics during the semester.
  • Gary Brown on 07 May 10
     
    another to watch--the politization of the, well, everything
Gary Brown

Professors Who Focus on Honing Their Teaching Are a Distinct Breed - Research - The Chr... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65262

teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 27 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Professors who are heavily focused on learning how to improve their teaching stand apart as a very distinct subset of college faculties, according to a new study examining how members of the professoriate spend their time.
  • those who are focused on tackling societal problems stand apart as their own breed. Other faculty members, it suggests, are pretty much mutts, according to its classification scheme.
  • 1,000 full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities gathered as part of the Faculty Professional Performance Survey administered by Mr. Braxton and two Vanderbilt doctoral students in 1999. That survey had asked the faculty members how often they engaged in each of nearly 70 distinct scholarly activities, such as experimenting with a new teaching method, publishing a critical book review in a journal, or being interviewed on a local television station. All of the faculty members examined in the new analysis were either tenured or tenure-track and fell into one of four academic disciplines: biology, chemistry, history, or sociology.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • cluster analysis,
  • nearly two-thirds of those surveyed were involved in the full range of scholarly activity they examined
  • Just over a third, however, stood out as focused almost solely on one of two types of scholarship: on teaching practices, or on using knowledge from their discipline to identify or solve societal problems.
  • pedagogy-focused scholars were found mainly at liberal-arts colleges and, compared with the general population surveyed, tended to be younger, heavily represented in history departments, and more likely to be female and untenured
  • Those focused on problem-solving were located mainly at research and doctoral institutions, and were evenly dispersed across disciplines and more likely than others surveyed to be male and tenured.
  • how faculty members rate those priorities are fairly consistent across academic disciplines,
  • The study was conducted by B. Jan Middendorf, acting director of Kansas State University's office of educational innovation and evaluation; Russell J. Webster, a doctoral student in psychology at Kansas State; and Steve Benton, a senior research officer at the IDEA Center
  • Gary Brown on 27 Apr 10
     
    Another study that documents the challenge and suggests confirmation of the 50% figure of faculty who are not focused on either research or teaching.
Nils Peterson

Views: The Limitations of Portfolios - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...shavelson

shared by Nils Peterson on 20 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Gathering valid data about student performance levels and performance improvement requires making comparisons relative to fixed benchmarks and that can only be done when the assessments are standardized. Consequently, we urge the higher education community to embrace authentic, standardized performance-assessment approaches so as to gather valid data that can be used to improve teaching and learning as well as meet its obligations to external audiences to account for its actions and outcomes regarding student learning.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Oct 09
       
      Diigoed because this is the counter-argument to our work.
Nils Peterson

The Social Media Bubble - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review - 1 views

blogs.hbr.org/...the_social_media_bubble.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 10 May 10 - Cached
  • Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency inflation debases money, so social inflation debases relationships.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 10 May 10
       
      is this the case for dropping some of my social site accounts, eg FB, LinkedIn, etc?
  • On the demand side, relationship inflation creates beauty contest effects, where, just as every judge votes for the contestant they think the others will like the best, people transmit what they think others want. On the supply side, relationship inflation creates popularity contest effects, where people (and artists) strive for immediate, visceral attention-grabs — instead of making awesome stuff.
  • The social isn't about beauty contests and popularity contests. They're a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It's about trust, connection, and community. That's what there's too little of in today's mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn't merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state — through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That's where the future of media lies.
Nils Peterson

Will a Culture of Entitlement Bankrupt Higher Education? - Commentary - The Chronicle o... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...48819

shared by Nils Peterson on 20 Oct 09 - Cached
  • No other country has so many fully accredited colleges or has provided such widespread access to student financial aid.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Oct 09
       
      But other countries have better rates of attaining higher education (% population with a degree) than US. See Lumina Foundation goals to increase US rate from 40 to 60%
  • The reality is that higher education is expensive, and students and their families will be asked to pay an ever-larger share of the costs. Although annual increases in tuition have diminished recently, tuition is still rising faster than inflation.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 20 Oct 09
       
      Why is this the reality? There is reason to believe that it is not -- especially if one is able to remove what he calls the "entitlements."
Gary Brown

Why Don't Students Study Anymore? - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...23631

students

shared by Gary Brown on 30 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Here's what they found: In 1961, the average full-time college student spent 40 hours per week on academic work (that's time in class and studying). In 2003, it was 27 hours. The authors figure that 21st-century students spend an average of 10 hours fewer every week studying than their 1961 counterparts. Over the course of a four-year college career, that would add up to something like 1,500 fewer hours spent hitting the books.
  • the difference isn't caused by more people stretching out their college experience. Also, according to the authors, the difference can't be explained by the fact that more students have jobs or by the fact that the makeup of the student body has changed since the sixties. From the paper: "The large decline in academic time investment is an important pattern its own right, and one that motivates future research into underlying causes."In other words, we don't know why. 
  • Here's the abstract for the working paper, which was written by Philip S. Babcock and Mindy Marks
  • Gary Brown on 30 Apr 10
     
    the reasons may be in the readers comments, or maybe not.
Nils Peterson

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly - 1 views

www.washingtonmonthly.com/...college_for_99_a_month.php

shared by Nils Peterson on 17 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Which means the day is coming—sooner than many people think—when a great deal of money is going to abruptly melt out of the higher education system, just as it has in scores of other industries that traffic in information that is now far cheaper and more easily accessible than it has ever been before. Much of that money will end up in the pockets of students in the form of lower prices, a boon and a necessity in a time when higher education is the key to prosperity. Colleges will specialize where they have comparative advantage, rather than trying to be all things to all people. A lot of silly, too-expensive things—vainglorious building projects, money-sucking sports programs, tenured professors who contribute little in the way of teaching or research—will fade from memory, and won’t be missed.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 17 Oct 09
       
      Wash State Rep Reuven Carlyle quoted this in his blog http://reuvencarlyle36.com/
Gary Brown

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
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