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Nils Peterson

News: Assessment Disconnect - Inside Higher Ed - 7 views

www.insidehighered.com/...aacu

formative feedback assessment

shared by Nils Peterson on 28 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 28 Jan 10
     
    Theron left an interesting comment to this, the whole piece is a timely read and connects to OAI's staff workshop 1/28/10
Lorena O'English

The New Digital Underclass - Forbes.com - 6 views

www.forbes.com/...mnists-trevor-butterworth.html

shared by Lorena O'English on 11 Mar 10 - No Cached
  • Lorena O'English on 11 Mar 10
     
    Appropos our MRG conversation today...
Gary Brown

Microsoft researcher converts his brain into 'e-memory' - CNN.com - 6 views

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

future ePortfolio

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Sep 09 - Cached
  • In sum, this mountain of data -- more than 350 gigabytes worth, not including the streaming audio and video -- is a replica of Bell's biological memory. It's actually better, he says, because, if you back up your data in enough places, this digitized "e-memory" never forgets. It's like having a multimedia transcript of your life.
  • Gary Brown on 29 Sep 09
     
    ePortfolio X-treme
Judy Rumph

High Response Rates Don't Ensure Survey Accuracy - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle... - 6 views

chronicle.com/...48642

shared by Judy Rumph on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Emerging research shows that despite all the hand-wringing about survey nonresponse, the actual effect of response rate on survey accuracy is generally small and inconsistent, and in any case it is less consequential than many other serious but often ignored sources of bias. Ironically, by drawing time and attention away from the prevention and correction of those other forms of bias, efforts to minimize nonresponse bias may actually decrease the accuracy of higher-education surveys
  • Gary Brown on 05 Oct 09
     
    Key link for much of our work as we prepare for another round of concern about response rates.
  • Judy Rumph on 05 Oct 09
     
    I like this summary of issues with surveys, you can't just throw some questions in a survey and expect meaningful results.
  • Peggy Collins on 11 Oct 09
     
    hi I cant see more than the first paragraph as this says this is locked content for subscribers. Is there a CTLT subscription?
Gary Brown

Op-Ed Contributor - Mind Over Mass Media - NYTimes.com - 5 views

www.nytimes.com/...11Pinker.html

learning media

shared by Gary Brown on 11 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 11 Jun 10
     
    Pinker sets the record straight, and we encounter these concerns regularly in our work. A good resource.
Gary Brown

How to analyze anything. - 5 views

analyticalconsulting.info/...how-to-analyze-anything

evaluation

shared by Gary Brown on 30 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 30 Jul 10
     
    shared before, sharing again as it struck me anew
Nils Peterson

How to make curriculum mapping useful to university academics « The Weblog of... - 5 views

davidtjones.wordpress.com/...useful-to-university-academics

curriculum map

shared by Nils Peterson on 15 May 10 - Cached
  • Nils Peterson on 15 May 10
     
    Thinking about curriculum map. Doing it from the course level in Moodle. Understands the need for faculty agency and SoTL kinds of value in the work.
Joshua Yeidel

The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 5 views

www.newsweek.com/...the-creativity-crisis.html

education learning

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 16 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 16 Jul 10
     
    A "Creativity Gap" can be addressed through problem-based learning
Gary Brown

Assess this! - 5 views

assessory.blogspot.com

assessment ;

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Assess this! is a gathering place for information and resources about new and better ways to promote learning in higher education, with a special focus on high-impact educational practices, student engagement, general or liberal education, and assessment of learning.
  • If you'd like to help make Assess this! more useful, there are some things you can do. You can comment on a post by clicking on the comments link following the post.
  • Of the various ways to assess student learning outcomes, many faculty members prefer what are called “authentic” approaches that document student performance during or at the end of a course or program of study. In this paper, assessment experts Trudy Banta, Merilee Griffin, Teresa Flateby, and Susan Kahn describe the development of several promising authentic assessment approaches.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Going PublicDouglas C. Bennett, President of Earlham College, suggests each institution having a public learning audit document and gives the example of what this means for Earlham College as a way for public accountability.
  • More TransparencyMartha Kanter, from the US Education Department, calls for more transparency in the way higher education does accreditation.
  • Despite the uptick in activity, "I still feel like there's no there there" when it comes to colleges' efforts to measure student learning, Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, said in a speech at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation meeting Tuesday.
  • Most of the assessment activity on campuses can be found in nooks and crannies of the institutions - by individual professors, or in one department - and it is often not tied to goals set broadly at the institutional level.
  • Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
  • Gary Brown on 16 Feb 10
     
    A very interesting useful site where we might help ourselves by getting involved.
Theron DesRosier

How Group Dynamics May Be Killing Innovation - Knowledge@Wharton - 5 views

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm

innovation groups

shared by Theron DesRosier on 12 May 10 - Cached
  • Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich argue that group dynamics are the enemy of businesses trying to develop one-of-a-kind new products, unique ways to save money or distinctive marketing strategies.
  • Terwiesch, Ulrich and co-author Karan Girotra, a professor of technology and operations management at INSEAD, found that a hybrid process -- in which people are given time to brainstorm on their own before discussing ideas with their peers -- resulted in more and better quality ideas than a purely team-oriented process.
    • Theron DesRosier
      Theron DesRosier on 13 May 10
       
      This happens naturally when collaboration is asynchronous.
    • Theron DesRosier
      Theron DesRosier on 13 May 10
       
      They use the term "team oriented process" but what they mean, I think, is a synchronous, face to face, brainstorming session.
  • Although several existing experimental studies criticize the team brainstorming process due to the interference of group dynamics, the Wharton researchers believe their work stands out due to a focus on the quality, in addition to the number, of ideas generated by the different processes -- in particular, the quality of the best idea.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • "The evaluation part is critical. No matter which process we used, whether it was the [team] or hybrid model, they all did significantly worse than we hoped [in the evaluation stage]," Terwiesch says. "It's no good generating a great idea if you don't recognize the idea as great. It's like me sitting here and saying I had the idea for Amazon. If I had the idea but didn't do anything about it, then it really doesn't matter that I had the idea."
  • He says an online system that creates a virtual "suggestion box" can accomplish the same goal as long as it is established to achieve a particular purpose.
  • Imposing structure doesn't replace or stifle the creativity of employees, Ulrich adds. In fact, the goal is to establish an idea generation process that helps to bring out the best in people. "We have found that, in the early phases of idea generation, providing very specific process guideposts for individuals [such as] 'Generate at least 10 ideas and submit them by Wednesday,' ensures that all members of a team contribute and that they devote sufficient creative energy to the problem."
  • The results of the experiment with the students showed that average quality of the ideas generated by the hybrid process were better than those that came from the team process by the equivalent of roughly 30 percentage points.
  • in about three times more ideas than the traditional method.
  • "We find huge differences in people's levels of creativity, and we just have to face it. We're not all good singers and we're not all good runners, so why should we expect that we all are good idea generators?
  • They found that ideas built around other ideas are not statistically better than any random suggestion.
  • "In innovation, variance is your friend. You want wacky stuff because you can afford to reject it if you don't like it. If you build on group norms, the group kills variance."
  • Gary Brown on 12 May 10
     
    Not as radical as it first seems, but pertains to much of our work and the work of others.
Gary Brown

Official Reuven Carlyle Blog - 5 views

reuvencarlyle36.com

higher education change

shared by Gary Brown on 15 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The institutional establishment has too much control over higher education. There is a profound disconnect, in my view, between those who benefit and need access to opportunity in higher education and those who run the show
  • Is a tenured professor or subject matter expert with credentials—as defined by some distant institutions or organization—really the very best person to teach? Perhaps but only if they have the soul of a teacher!
  • As a general rule the institutions of higher education hold firm, despite our rhetoric, to rigid models of teaching and learning. Radical, disruptive debate about systems change is great in theory, tough in reality when you have to live and die by the marketplace of ideas.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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.”
  • Instructors with the spirit of education inside of them drive our learning
  • What would your life be like if you went from high school into a customized, personalized, targeted program of learning—from the fancy UW programs to a welding shop anywhere—that was right for you as an individual?
  • I don’t know the answers anymore than anyone else. But I feel we have hit a tipping point where the pain and cost to our society and our future of not asking these questions has become too high
  • Gary Brown on 15 Oct 09
     
    I blog to watch--and to comment upon
  • S Spaeth on 19 Oct 09
     
    Thanks for your summary. From Nils' posts, I knew about the blog but your excerpts and recommendation lead me to see it in a new light.
S Spaeth

Dossiers technopédagogiques - 0 views

www.profetic.org/...spip.php

collaboration

shared by S Spaeth on 06 Mar 09 - Cached
  • S Spaeth on 06 Mar 09
     
    This article endeavours to denote and promote pedagogical experimentations concerning a Free/Open technology called a "Wiki". An intensely simple, accessible and collaborative hypertext tool Wiki software challenges and complexifies traditional notions of - as well as access to - authorship, editing, and publishing. Usurping official authorizing practices in the public domain poses fundamental - if not radical - questions for both academic theory and pedagogical practice. The particular pedagogical challenge is one of control: wikis work most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process. This involves not just adjusting the technical configuration and delivery; it involves challenging the social norms and practices of the course as well (Lamb, 2004). Enacting such horizontal knowledge assemblages in higher education practices could evoke a return towards and an instance upon the making of impossible public goods" (Ciffolilli, 2003).
  • Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 09
     
    Maybe going out on a limb but if I had to choose one thing that best embodied the Web 2.0 approach and spirit it would be the collaborative potential of wikis.
Gary Brown

Learning to Hate Learning Objectives - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 4 views

chronicle.com/...49399

assessment outcomes faculty development

shared by Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Brottman's essay is a dangerous display of educational malpractice. Those who argue that principles of good assessment intrude upon teaching and learning disclose the painful fact that many educators are not adequately prepared to teach.
  • Gary Brown on 16 Dec 09
     
    Read it and weep.
  • Ashley Ater Kranov on 30 Dec 09
     
    I think this reader comment captures it: Right--it's not about the students learning anything--it's about YOUR learning, and you let them come along for the ride. How could you fit that into learning objectives? Please. This is why people think all of us are navel-gazing, self-indulgent mopes.
  • Matthew Tedder on 13 Jan 10
     
    Doesn't it depend on the nature of the learning objectives? I mean, you could list a set of facts and skills levels students should have attained. You could specify a number of discrete facts and skills to be attained within certain areas of the course curriculum. Or, you could do something more creative such as measure the number of claims with evidence in student writing that is within the subject matter of the course to demonstrate a level of articulation.

    At CTLT, I never did become fully settled on certain subject types though, like mathematics and natural sciences. Depending on the subject matter, specific facts like natural laws and methods must be discretely learned and learned perfectly. And, indeed in some subjects, there is such a thing as perfect understanding where anything even slightly less is failure to learn. This is rigid, yes.. But I do not see the alternative in some subjects and teachers of those subjects certainly don't either. I do think that sometimes there can be more flexibility in the order of learning of discrete fundamentals. Learning out of order often convinced me of the importance of things skipped, causing me to go back and study more comprehensively on my own, in my own time, and according to my own interest.
Joshua Yeidel

So how could we use this forum? - 2 views

This is a god place to have discussions among Diigo members who are interested in our topics. If we want to center on Diigo as a locale for forming a community around us, we should be getting invi...

question

started by Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 09 1 follow-up, last by Joshua Yeidel on 16 Mar 09
Joshua Yeidel

Wired Campus: Randy Bass and Bret Eynon: We Need R&D for Teaching With Techno... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...index.php

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 09 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 09 Mar 09
     
    Bass and Eynon identify "four shifts in thnking and action" to address the problem that there are "no established practices [in teaching and learning] that enable us to turn the individual breakthrough into something more than idiosyncratic.'
  • Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 09
     
    Sums it up nicely Josh... Thanks
Gary Brown

Ethics? Let's Outsource Them! - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 4 views

chronicle.com/...22408

rubrics. outsource

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Many students are already buying their papers from term-paper factories located in India and other third world countries. Now we are sending those papers back there to be graded. I wonder how many people are both writing and grading student work, and whether, serendipitously, any of those people ever get the chance to grade their own writing.”
  • The great learning loop of outcomes assessment is neatly “closed,” with education now a perfect, completed circle of meaningless words.
  • With outsourced grading, it’s clearer than ever that the world of rubrics behaves like that wicked southern plant called kudzu, smothering everything it touches. Certainly teaching and learning are being covered over by rubrics, which are evolving into a sort of quasi-religious educational theory controlled by priests whose heads are so stuck in playing with statistics that they forget to try to look openly at what makes students turn into real, viable, educated adults and what makes great, or even good, teachers.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Writing an essay is an art, not a science. As such, people, not instruments, must take its measure, and judge it. Students have the right to know who is doing the measuring. Instead of going for outsourced grading, Ms. Whisenant should cause a ruckus over the size of her course with the administration at Houston. After all, if she can’t take an ethical stand, how can she dare to teach ethics?
  • "People need to get past thinking that grading must be done by the people who are teaching.” Sorry, Mr. Rajam, but what you should be saying is this: Teachers, including those who teach large classes and require teaching assistants and readers, need to get past thinking that they can get around grading.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Apr 10
     
    the outsourcing loop becomes a diatribe against rubrics...
  • Joshua Yeidel on 16 Apr 10
     
    It's hard to see how either outsourced assessment or harvested assessment can be accomplished convincingly without rubrics. How else can the standards of the teacher be enacted by the grader? From there we are driven to consider how, in the absence of a rubric, the standards of the teacher can be enacted by the student. Is it "ethical" to use the Potter Stewart standard: "I'll know it when I see it"?
  • Gary Brown on 16 Apr 10
     
    Yes, who is the "priest" in the preceding rendering--one who shares principles of quality (rubrics), or one who divines a grade a proclaims who is a "real, viable, educated adult"?
Gary Brown

Op-Ed: 'Higher Education' Is A Waste Of Money : NPR - 4 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

shared by Gary Brown on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Professor Andrew Hacker says that higher education in the U.S. is broken. He argues that too many undergraduate courses are taught by graduate assistants or professors who have no interest in teaching.
  • Gary Brown on 02 Aug 10
     
    Forwarded from a colleague.
Matthew Tedder

Richard Dawkins: Growing up in the universe | Video on TED.com - 4 views

www.ted.com/...rowing_up_in_the_universe.html

science

shared by Matthew Tedder on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 25 Jan 10
     
    How many teachers are this enthusiastic, well-prepared, or facilitated? What principles are responsible for the inspirational power of this presentation? Should inspiration be part of education?
  • Gary Brown on 26 Jan 10
     
    but it is still a lecture, and only a few of us, about 2%, learn well from even great lectures. The trick is to design activities that help learners discover this. But the fact that 2% do learn to mimic the lecture, as you note, with more or less success, is precisely why lecture is so difficult to supplant. That 2% represents the faculty and those who lead the institutions they work in......
Gary Brown

Educators Mull How to Motivate Professors to Improve Teaching - Curriculum - The Chroni... - 4 views

chronicle.com/...63718

assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
  • "Without an unrelenting focus on quality—on defining and measuring and ensuring the learning outcomes of students—any effort to increase college-completion rates would be a hollow effort indeed."
  • If colleges are going to provide high-quality educations to millions of additional students, they said, the institutions will need to develop measures of student learning than can assure parents, employers, and taxpayers that no one's time and money are being wasted.
  • "Effective assessment is critical to ensure that our colleges and universities are delivering the kinds of educational experiences that we believe we actually provide for students," said Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, during the opening plenary. "That data is also vital to addressing the skepticism that society has about the value of a liberal education."
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • But many speakers insisted that colleges should go ahead and take drastic steps to improve the quality of their instruction, without using rigid faculty-incentive structures or the fiscal crisis as excuses for inaction.
  • Handing out "teacher of the year" awards may not do much for a college
  • W.E. Deming argued, quality has to be designed into the entire system and supported by top management (that is, every decision made by CEOs and Presidents, and support systems as well as operations) rather than being made the responsibility solely of those delivering 'at the coal face'.
  • I see as a certain cluelessness among those who think one can create substantial change based on volunteerism
  • Current approaches to broaden the instructional repertoires of faculty members include faculty workshops, summer leave, and individual consultations, but these approaches work only for those relatively few faculty members who seek out opportunities to broaden their instructional methods.
  • The approach that makes sense to me is to engage faculty members at the departmental level in a discussion of the future and the implications of the future for their field, their college, their students, and themselves. You are invited to join an ongoing discussion of this issue at http://innovate-ideagora.ning.com/forum/topics/addressing-the-problem-of
  • Putting pressure on professors to improve teaching will not result in better education. The primary reason is that they do not know how to make real improvements. The problem is that in many fields of education there is either not enough research, or they do not have good ways of evaluationg the results of their teaching.
  • Then there needs to be a research based assessment that can be used by individual professors, NOT by the administration.
  • Humanities educatiors either have to learn enough statistics and cognitive science so they can make valid scientific comparisons of different strategies, or they have to work with cognitive scientists and statisticians
  • good teaching takes time
  • On the measurement side, about half of the assessments constructed by faculty fail to meet reasonable minimum standards for validity. (Interestingly, these failures leave the door open to a class action lawsuit. Physicians are successfully sued for failing to apply scientific findings correctly; commerce is replete with lawsuits based on measurement errors.)
  • The elephant in the corner of the room --still-- is that we refuse to measure learning outcomes and impact, especially proficiencies generalized to one's life outside the classroom.
  • until universities stop playing games to make themselves look better because they want to maintain their comfortable positions and actually look at what they can do to improve nothing is going to change.
  • Gary Brown on 25 Jan 10
     
    our work, our friends (Ken and Jim), and more context that shapes our strategy.
  • Matthew Tedder on 26 Jan 10
     
    How about using examples of highly motivational lecture and teaching techniques like the Richard Dawkins video I presented on this forum, recently. Even if teacher's do not consciously try to adopt good working techniques, there is at least a strong subconscious human tendency to mimic behaviors. I think that if teachers see more effective techniques, they will automatically begin to adopt adopt them.
S Spaeth

YouTube - Networked Student - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

iteams UNEOnline

shared by S Spaeth on 03 Dec 08 - Cached
  • S Spaeth on 03 Dec 08
     
    The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.
  • Theron DesRosier on 11 Mar 09
     
    This video should be required viewing for incoming faculty. Especially the end of the video; it gives a good description of the new roles faculty can take when they leave the lecture stand. Thanks Stephen
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