CTLT and Friends

Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication

Principles of Genuine Evaluation When we set out to explore the notion of ‘Genuine Evaluation’, we identified 5 important aspects of it: VALUE-BASED -transparent and defensible values (criteria of merit and worth and standards of performance) EMPIRICAL – credible evidence about what has happened and what has caused this, USABLE – reported in such a way that it can be understood and used by those who can and should use it (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s used or used well, of course) SINCERE – a commitment by those commissioning evaluation to respond to information about both success and failure (those doing evaluation can influence this but not control it) HUMBLE – acknowledges its limitations From now until the end of the year, we’re looking at each of these principles and collecting some of the highlights and lowlights  from 2010 (and previously).

"If each of the five benchmarks does not measure a distinct dimension of engagement and includes substantial error among its items, it is difficult to inform intervention strategies to improve undergraduates' educational experiences,"

nly one benchmark, enriching educational experiences, had a significant effect on the seniors' cumulative GPA.

Other critics have asserted that the survey's mountains of data remain largely ignored.

"We're trying to document the role of processes that are different from standard student-outcome measures and standard ability measures,

We're interested in various types of studying, setting goals for oneself, monitoring one's progress as one goes through learning a particular topic."

Mr. Zimmerman has spent most of his career examining what can go wrong when people try to learn new facts and skills. His work centers on two common follies: First, students are often overconfident about their knowledge, assuming that they understand material just because they sat through a few lectures or read a few chapters. Second, students tend to attribute their failures to outside forces ("the teacher didn't like me," "the textbook wasn't clear enough") rather than taking a hard look at their own study habits.

What do Wikipedia, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Threadless Tees have in common? All were created outside the traditional product development model using a mass collaborative approach. In mass collaborative product development (MCPD), large groups of people compete and collaborate globally to develop new products and services.

the MCPD phenomenon is under way in the management and business communities. But few have examined it from an engineering design standpoint.

A more natural process

Teacher unions fighting accountability

Enough. It is time teachers embraced accountability. Time parents, students and government did, too

this is an argument about the future -- and whether this country will have one

What we want is for assessment to become a public, shared responsibility, so there should be departmental leadership.

Colleges and universities have plenty of tools, but they must learn to use them more effectively. That is how George D. Kuh describes the state of assessing what college students learn.