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Theron DesRosier

Assessing Learning Outcomes at the University of Cincinnati: Comparing Rubric Assessmen... - 2 views

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

CLA assessment accountability

shared by Theron DesRosier on 15 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 15 Oct 10
     
    "When the CLA results arrived eight months later, the UC team compared the outcomes of the two assessments. "We found no statistically significant correlation between the CLA scores and the portfolio scores," Escoe says. "In some ways, it's a disappointing finding. If we'd found a correlation, we could tell faculty that the CLA, as an instrument, is measuring the same things that we value and that the CLA can be embedded in a course. But that didn't happen." 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": if a student referred to a specific piece of evidence in a critical-thinking question, he or she simply received one point. In addition, she says, 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. 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. "
  • Theron DesRosier on 15 Oct 10
     
    Another institution trying to make sense of the CLA. This study compared student's CLA scores with criteria-based scores of their eportfolios. The study used a modified version of the VALUE rubrics developed by the AACU. Our own Gary Brown was on the team that developed the critical thinking rubric for the VALUE project.
  • Joshua Yeidel on 19 Oct 10
     
    "The CLA can provide broad institutional data that satisfies VSA requirements, while rubric-based assessment provides better information to facilitate continuous program improvement. " This begs some questions: what meaning can we attach to these two non-correlated measures? What VSA requirements can rubric-based assessment NOT satisfy? Are those "requirements" really useful?
Theron DesRosier

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide | Video on TED.com - 2 views

www.ted.com/..._open_data_went_worldwide.html

berners web2.0 data open open data TED

shared by Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 10
     
    "At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" -- for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up."
Joshua Yeidel

Think Tank: The 'Veritas' About Harvard - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...48590

higher_education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 12 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 12 Oct 09
     
    Harvard University's priorities examined in the light of its use of its tremendous wealth. It's not hard to see a trickle-down effect in other universities closer to home.
Theron DesRosier

Disaggregate power not people - Part two: now with more manifesto @ Dave's Educational ... - 2 views

davecormier.com/...rt-two-now-with-more-manifesto

cormier Personal learning environments social networking

shared by Theron DesRosier on 12 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 12 Oct 10
     
    "Definition 2 - disaggregating power There is a very different power relationship between being given a space which 'enables contexts' and 'allows supports' for a user and a space that you build and support for yourself. It dodges those institutionally created problems of student mobility, of losing the connections formed in your learning and gives you a professional 'place' from which you can start to make long term knowledge network connections that form the higher end of the productive learning/knowing that is possible on the web. The power is disaggregated in the sense that while attending an institution of learning you are still under the dominance of the instructor or the regulations surrounding accreditation, but coming to your learning space is not about that dominance. The power held (and, i should probably add, that you've given to that institution in applying for accreditation/learning it's not (necessarily) a power of tyranny) by the institution only touches some of your work, and it need not impede any work you choose to do. Here's where I get to the part about the 'personal' that's been bothering me The danger in taking definition two as our definition for PLE is that we lose sight of the subtle, complex dance of person and ecology so eloquently described by Keith Hamon in his response to my post. Maybe more dangerously, we might get taken up as thinking that learning is something that happens to the person, and not as part of a complex rhizome of connections that form the basis of the human experience. Learning (and I don't mean definitions or background) and the making of connections of knowledge is something that is steeped in complexity. At each point we are structured in the work (written in a book, sung in a song, spoken in a web session) of others that constantly tests our own connections and further complexifies our understanding. This is the pattern of knowledge as i understand it. It is organic, and messy, and su
Joshua Yeidel

GOVT Week: David Bernstein on Top 10 Indicators of Performance Measurement Quality | AE... - 2 views

aea365.org/blog

Assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Oct 10
     
    Not surprisingly, the #1 indicator of performance measurement quality is "usefulness".
Gary Brown

Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College? - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Educ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...27634

future of education costs

shared by Gary Brown on 21 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants.  All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.
  • I have long been a proponent of Charles Murray’s thesis that an increasing number of persons attending college do not have the cognitive abilities or other attributes usually necessary for success at higher levels of learning. 
  • As more and more try to attend colleges, either college degrees will be watered down (something already happening I suspect) or drop-out rates will rise.  
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The relentless claims of the Obama administration and others that having more college graduates is necessary for continued economic leadership is incompatible with this view
  • Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher education apologists is causing more and more persons to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level –there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.Ds, other doctorates, or professional degrees.
  • “Estimating Marginal Returns in Education,”
  • In other words, even if on average, an investment in higher education yields a good, say 10 percent, rate of return, it does not follow that adding to existing investments will yield that return, partly for reasons outlined above.
  • should we be subsidizing increasingly problematic educational programs for students whose prior academic record would suggest little likelihood of academic much less vocational success?
  • I think the American people understand, albeit dimly, the logic above.
  • Higher education is on the brink of big change, like it or not.
  • Gary Brown on 21 Oct 10
     
    The tone is not the same as Berliner's, but the numbers suggest WSU's and others goals merit a second look.
Gary Brown

Book review: Taking Stock: Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Educat... - 2 views

www.tonybates.ca/...d-learning-in-higher-education

teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Christensen Hughes, J. and Mighty, J. (eds.) (2010) Taking Stock: Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Montreal QC and Kingston ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 350 pp, C$/US$39.95
  • ‘The impetus for this event was the recognition that researchers have discovered much about teaching and learning in higher education, but that dissemination and uptake of this information have been limited. As such, the impact of educational research on faculty-teaching practice and student-learning experience has been negligible.’
  • Julia Christensen Hughes
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Chapter 7: Faculty research and teaching approaches Michael Prosser
  • What faculty know about student learning Maryellen Weimer
  • ractices of Convenience: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
  • Chapter 8: Student engagement and learning: Jillian Kinzie
  • (p. 4)
  • ‘much of our current approach to teaching in higher education might best be described as practices of convenience, to the extent that traditional pedagogical approaches continue to predominate. Such practices are convenient insofar as large numbers of students can be efficiently processed through the system. As far as learning effectiveness is concerned, however, such practices are decidedly inconvenient, as they fall far short of what is needed in terms of fostering self-directed learning, transformative learning, or learning that lasts.’
  • p. 10:
  • …research suggests that there is an association between how faculty teach and how students learn, and how students learn and the learning outcomes achieved. Further, research suggests that many faculty members teach in ways that are not particularly helpful to deep learning. Much of this research has been known for decades, yet we continue to teach in ways that are contrary to these findings.’
  • ‘There is increasing empirical evidence from a variety of international settings that prevailing teaching practices in higher education do not encourage the sort of learning that contemporary society demands….Teaching remains largely didactic, assessment of student work is often trivial, and curricula are more likely to emphasize content coverage than acquisition of lifelong and life-wide skills.’
  • What other profession would go about its business in such an amateurish and unprofessional way as university teaching? Despite the excellent suggestions in this book from those ‘within the tent’, I don’t see change coming from within. We have government and self-imposed industry regulation to prevent financial advisers, medical practitioners, real estate agents, engineers, construction workers and many other professions from operating without proper training. How long are we prepared to put up with this unregulated situation in university and college teaching?
Gary Brown

Home | AALHE - 2 views

www.aalhe.org

assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 22 Oct 10 - Cached
  • The Association for Assessment of Learning in Higher Education, Inc. (AALHE) is an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning.
  • it is designed to be a resource by all who are interested in the improvement of learning,
  • Gary Brown on 22 Oct 10
     
    Our membership begins November 1
Matthew Tedder

Accountable Talk: (Un)intended Consequences - 2 views

www.accountabletalk.com/...uninteded-consequences.html

education

shared by Matthew Tedder on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 25 Oct 10
     
    Nutty method of teacher evaluation
Matthew Tedder

Small classes have long-term benefit for all students, research says - 2 views

www.physorg.com/news174300427.html

education

shared by Matthew Tedder on 10 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 10 Oct 09
     
    Don't we start higher education with generally larger classes and work toward smaller ones? I am not sure, how much starting with smaller classes applies to higher ed.. but it's something to think differently about.
  • Gary Brown on 10 Oct 09
     
    Lots of research in higher ed tends to debunk the belief that smaller classes without additional kinds of mediation will have little impact. Many have argued turning the curriculum in higher ed upside down. Small classes in first years, then when students have internalized new learning strategies they are more likely to get more out of the large lecture class and have the schema to contextualize and therefore learn more from the bombardment of facts that are most often lectures.
Gary Brown

Will a Culture of Entitlement Bankrupt Higher Education? - Commentary - The Chronicle o... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...48819

accountability economics.

shared by Gary Brown on 19 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The economy has suffered changes so deep and fundamental that institutions cannot just hunker down to weather the storm. The time has come for creative reconstruction. We must summon the courage and will to re-engineer education in ways founded on shared responsibility, demanding hard work and a willingness on the part of everyone involved to let go of "the way it's always been."
  • We need to break down expectations based on entitlement and focus on educational productivity and outcomes. Institutions should review redundancies, rethink staffing models, and streamline business practices. Productivity measures should be applied in all areas. In the same way that secondary schools are being challenged to consider longer school days and an extended academic year, we in higher education need to revisit basic assumptions about how we deliver higher education to students. We should not be tied to any one model or structure.
  • For example, we should re-evaluate the notion that large classes are inherently pedagogically unsound. What both students and faculty members tend to prefer—small classes—is not the only educationally effective approach. Although no one would advocate for large classes in every discipline or instance, we should review what we do in light of new financial contingencies, while keeping an eye on what students learn.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the growing demand for a better-prepared work force, we need to revisit undergraduate education as a whole. We should re-examine the teacher/scholar model, for instance. Is it appropriate for every institution? Does that model really produce what it is supposed to: thinkers and makers, learned and professionally skilled graduates?
  • We should separate legitimate aspirations and a drive toward excellence from the costly and often fruitless pursuit of higher status—which may feed egos but is beyond the reasonable prospects of many institutions.
Gary Brown

Graphic Display of Student Learning Objectives - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...27863

outcomes graphics

shared by Gary Brown on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Creating SLOs or goals for a course is simple to us, usually.  We want students to learn certain skills, we create assignments that will help students reach those goals, and we’ll judge how well they have learned those skills. 
  • This graphic displays the three learning objectives for the course, and it connects the course assignment to the learning objectives.  Students can see—at a glance—that work none of course assignments are random or arbitrary (an occasional student complaint), but that each assignment links directly to a course learning objective.
  • The syllabus graphic is quite simple and it’s one that students easily understand.  Additionally, I use an expanded graphic (below) when thinking about small goals within the larger learning objectives.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In fact, The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating Your Course (Linda Nilson) is an interesting way to organize graphically an entire course.
  • An example of a graphic syllabus can be found in Dr. W. Mark Smillie’s displays of his philosophy courses [.pdf file].
  • Some students won’t care.  Moreover, they rarely remember the connection between course content and assignments.  The course and the assignments can all seem random and arbitrary.  Nevertheless, some students will care, and some will appreciate the connections.
  • Gary Brown on 20 Oct 10
     
    Perhaps useful resource
Gary Brown

Might Companies, Not Colleges, Deserve the Blame for a Shortage of Engineers? - Faculty... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...48948

employers education

shared by Gary Brown on 28 Oct 09 - Cached
  • But in fact the number of talented college graduates in the sciences is "quite in excess of the demand," said Harold Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University. In a new paper, he and a colleague argue that the real problem is at the employment end of the pipeline.
  • It may not be so easy to convince companies, however, that they're the main problem. Susan L. Traiman, director of public policy at Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of the largest American companies, said the analysis by Mr. Salzman and Mr. Lowell has some potential shortcomings that may explain why its findings contradict the experience of many engineering companies.
  • The fundamental suggestion by Mr. Salzman and Mr. Lowell—that science and engineering companies perhaps should be doing more to grab science and engineering students—may even have trouble winning support on university campuses, where engineering deans increasingly take pride in graduating students with a diverse set of talents, who are able to take on a range of professional challenges, rather than simply follow traditional engineering paths.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And Ms. Traiman, despite questioning some of the specifics in the report, said she understands the need for American companies—including those in engineering—to compete harder on both salary and lifestyle issues to attract graduates like Ms. Anderegg.
  • Gary Brown on 28 Oct 09
     
    A new twist on what Dewey worried about: the forfeit of the shaping roleof higher ed.
Gary Brown

Texas A&M System Will Rate Professors Based on Their Bottom-Line Value - Faculty - The ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...124280

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article.
  • the public wanted accountability. "It's something that we're really not used to in higher education: for someone questioning whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning. That accountability is going to be with us from now on."
  • American Association of University Professors, blamed a conservative think tank with ties to Gov. Rick Perry for coming up with an idea that he said is simplistic and relies on "a silly measure" of accountability.
  • Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10
     
    Nothing more to say about this....
  • Joshua Yeidel on 03 Sep 10
     
    I would simply like to note the thoughtless slide from a desire to know "whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning" to revenue measures.
  • Gary Brown on 04 Sep 10
     
    Our colleagues in science disciplines, who had seen this, pointed out that unlike other institutions where this kind of system goes largely unspoken, at least at Texas AM there is some value included in the metric for those who teach undergraduates.
Joshua Yeidel

Faculty Development on Campuses - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...26232

faculty higher_education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 19 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 19 Aug 10
     
    Treading lightly, ProfHacker looks at Faculty Development offices (also called centers for teaching and learning).
Joshua Yeidel

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...07mind.html

education research learning

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 07 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
  • “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
  • psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong
  • Joshua Yeidel on 07 Sep 10
     
    "Evidence" that the "evidence" is not very effective to promote change.  Apparently the context is crucial to adoption.
Gary Brown

Public Higher Education Is 'Eroding From All Sides,' Warn Political Scientists - Facult... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...124292

future of educaiton

shared by Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10 - Cached
  • The ideal of American public higher education may have entered a death spiral, several scholars said here Thursday during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. That crisis might ultimately harm not only universities, but also democracy itself, they warned.
  • And families who are frozen out of the system see public universities as something for the affluent. They'd rather see the state spend money on health care."
  • Cultural values don't support the liberal arts. Debt-burdened families aren't demanding it. The capitalist state isn't interested in it. Universities aren't funding it."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Instead, all of public higher education will be essentially vocational in nature, oriented entirely around the market logic of job preparation. Instead of educating whole persons, Ms. Brown warned, universities will be expected to "build human capital," a narrower and more hollow mission.
  • His own campus, Mr. Nelson said, has recently seen several multimillion-dollar projects that were favorites of administrators but were not endorsed by the faculty.
  • Instead, he said that faculty activists should open up a more basic debate about the purposes of education. They should fight, he said, for a tuition-free public higher-education system wholly subsidized by the federal government.
  • Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10
     
    The issues are taking root in disciplinary discussions, so perhaps awareness and response will sprout.
Gary Brown

For-Profit Hearing: Legislation Might Include All Colleges & Greed is Good « ... - 2 views

wcetblog.wordpress.com/...forprofithearingoct2010

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 30 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Democrats were being unfair in singling out the for-profit institutions.  Senator Enzi, the ranking minority member on the Committee, followed up with a statement released on the HELP webpage.  Enzi said. “It is naïve to think that these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector.”
  • Finances in higher education is confusing and accreditation is confusing
  • Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) asked if “student loans should be extended to programs that are not accredited.”  Ms. Asher gave a polite lesson on the difference between accrediting institution and accrediting program.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Ms. Asher was also a champion of reviewing the financial incentives for colleges.  “We need to shift incentives for colleges to focus on outcomes for students.”
Joshua Yeidel

Google's new Social Search surprisingly useful - Ars Technica - 2 views

arstechnica.com/...search-surprisingly-useful.ars

google search socialnetworking

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 05 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 05 Nov 09
     
    "No, Social Search isn't yet another social network aggregator. It's a way for you to make your Google search results more relevant by adding a section dedicated to content written by your friends and acquaintances. Though limited, we think it's pretty useful thus far."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 05 Nov 09
     
    A piece of a Personal Learning Network -- searchability.
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