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George Bradford

Q&A with authors of book arguing that learning is waning in higher ed | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...uing-learning-waning-higher-ed

authors inside higher ed policy_development higher-education learning book McCulloch

shared by George Bradford on 09 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • the agenda focused on the quality of learning
  • Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh, longtime scholars and administrators
  • complain that institutions have overemphasized rankings and enrollment growth and sports and research
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Instead, they make the case that too little of what happens in institutions of "higher education" deserves to be called "higher learning" -- "learning that prepares students to think creatively and critically, communicate effectively, and excel in responding to the challenges of life, work and citizenship."
  • most have focused on the rising price of college tuition and the declining productivity of the U.S. "system" of higher ed. Yours zeroes in on whether students are learning enough. Why is that the most important issue in your eyes?
  • A. There’s no question that high costs are a problem. But low value is a bigger problem. No matter what the cost is, higher education is overpriced if it fails to deliver on its most basic promise: learning.
  • We are facing a national crisis in higher learning, or, rather, in the lack thereof. Improving efficiency and lowering costs are just not enough; we need to improve value. And we can only improve value by increasing the quality and quantity of learning in college.
  • A: We know from both research and experience that the greater the amount of time, effort, and feedback, the greater the amount of higher learning. Logically, then, we want more students to stay in and complete college, and we would agree that promoting retention and completion are appropriate and needed public policy. But just being in college and getting through, accumulating enough credits to get a degree, are not sufficient. Access, retention, and completion are not -- or, at least, should not be -- considered ends in themselves. We should not uncouple them from the primary purpose of college, which is higher learning. So we suggest focusing on learning, because in fact the more success we have in promoting significant learning, the greater will be retention and completion.
  • Faculty were educated to be masters of a discipline and producers of new knowledge. Few were required in their graduate programs to learn about learning and teaching, or to practice and improve their teaching skills.
  • So faculty are behaving exactly as they have been educated, acculturated, and reinforced to do. The culture of higher education generally does not elevate teaching, and its intended purpose, learning, to high priority.
  • In our consulting work we regularly encounter dedicated faculty members who are interested in students, focused on learning, motivated to improve their teaching, and struggling to balance those commitments with the demands of promotion and tenure. On most campuses, faculty and institutional culture provide counter-incentives to faculty who want to hold students to higher standards, raise their expectations for student effort and work, and provide abundant and timely feedback. As we argue in our book, what is then needed is a fundamental cultural change on most campuses and in the field of higher education. Faculty must both lead and be at the center of such change.
  • Our concern is about how implementing a three-year undergraduate curriculum and degree would affect the quality and quantity of learning. Maintaining current curriculums, pedagogy, and levels of student effort, but compacting undergraduate education into three versus four years, might increase certain efficiencies, but will not improve educational value.
  • We know that achieving the key desired outcomes of higher learning is a cumulative, collective process that takes time and demands integration and synthesis from the learner.
  • Students come to college inadequately prepared for college-level work as it is; even four years may not be adequate for many to learn enough.
  • If reduction of time to degree is implemented, it will be essential to determine how it affects the efficacy of higher learning.
  • Q. The undergraduate program you outline for producing a true culture of "higher learning" includes a lot of elements -- across-the-board first-year seminars, comprehensive exams, capstone courses/experiences -- that can be costly to institute as broadly as you recommend. How big an impediment are institutional finances to your agenda, especially in an era of diminishing (or at least flattening) resources?
  • A. Budgets express institutional priorities. As it is, too many budgets reflect priorities that have little to do with learning -- high-priced varsity athletic coaches and programs, expensive and elaborate facilities, and, often, reduced teaching loads to allow professors to spend less time with undergraduates and more time on research.
  • what we are proposing should not be seen as additions to a currently dysfunctional system, but as reallocations of resources toward learning. More is not necessarily better; better is more.
  • Still missing, though, are two things: first, operational definitions of these outcomes adapted to the missions, contexts, and student bodies of individual institutions, and second, ways of knowing such learning when we see it. These needs speak to the imperative for appropriate assessment of learning -- not necessarily done by common exams across all colleges and universities (although doing so would allow for some useful peer-campus benchmarking) but certainly by diligent, rigorous assessment practices that document what learning is taking place on each campus.
  • We think it is reasonable to expect that each institution assess students’ learning of commonly agreed learning goals and make public how such assessment is taking place and what the results are. Over time, we would learn which learning and assessment methods are most effective. Without serious assessment, the establishment of core learning outcomes will be futile and unproductive.
  • George Bradford on 09 Feb 12
     
    With most critics of higher education focused on rising prices or on whether American colleges and universities are producing enough degree and certificate holders with sufficient skills to keep the U.S. economy vibrant and competitive -- the latter known in shorthand as the "completion agenda" -- a few analysts are homing in on the quality and rigor of what students are learning (or not) en route to those credentials. Last year's Academically Adrift set the tone, providing data suggesting that many colleges are imposing relatively minimal academic demands on their students and that, perhaps as a result, many students do not appear to gain in some measures of cognitive abilities as they move through college. The authors of We're Losing Our Minds (Palgrave MacMillan) add their own clamoring to the agenda focused on the quality of learning. Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh, longtime scholars and administrators, describe themselves as "friendly critics" of higher education, and unlike many of academe's naysayers, they don't spend a lot of time trashing the faculty as overpaid and underworked or bashing administrators as fat-cat corporatizers (though they do complain that institutions have overemphasized rankings and enrollment growth and sports and research -- take your pick depending on institution type).
George Bradford

Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States | The Sloan Consortium - 0 views

sloanconsortium.org/...changing_course_2012

policy_development higher-education education reference online education elearning

shared by George Bradford on 08 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • George Bradford on 08 Jan 13
     
    "The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.  Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States" can be downloaded here. Read the press release"
George Bradford

UTS: Assessment Futures - Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (IML) - 0 views

www.iml.uts.edu.au/assessment-futures

policy_development education reference learning assessment evaluation student futures institute

shared by George Bradford on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • George Bradford on 18 Jul 12
     
    Assessment Futures Many students currently graduate without appropriate skills in assessment. Assessment serves many purposes, including: * helping students improve their learning, and * certifying their learning. This website is about an important additional purpose for assessment. It is about equipping students for the learning and assessing they will need to do after completing their course and the challenges they will face after graduation.
George Bradford

Academic Support - 0 views

www.nusconnect.org.uk/...academicsupport

higher-education resources academic support student_engagement tools reference policy_development UK

shared by George Bradford on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • George Bradford on 21 Feb 12
     
    Academic support is a vital component of higher education. Not only does it ensure that students are able to succeed in completing their degree, but it provides them with the confidence to develop their skills and give them a sense of belonging within the institution.   Good quality academic support which is relevant and focused on the individual has been proven to aid retention and students feel inspired to achieve and thrive academically.   NUS has produced a charter based on what good practice in academic support could look like, and is drawn from research from the NSS, HEFCE and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and current good practice from around the sector.   We hope you will be able to use these principles to influence the academic support provision in your institution and ensure that your students feel well supported in their studies as well as in their personal development.   You can download the charter here.
George Bradford

College Stats | College Completion - 0 views

collegecompletion.chronicle.com/college-stats

policy_development education higher-education McCulloch reference college stats completion graduation rate united states

shared by George Bradford on 05 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • George Bradford on 05 Mar 12
     
    Graduation rates by state
George Bradford

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching - 0 views

jolt.merlot.org/...powell.htm

student_satisfaction online elearning comparative-analysis

shared by George Bradford on 29 Nov 08 - Cached
  • his paper examines the satisfaction levels of distance learning students with the education that they are receiving with this new technology. Specifically, the study compares the satisfaction of distance learning students who receive their primary instruction using this new platform with on-campus students in a traditional classroom setting. The findings, while preliminary, do provide a basis for drawing initial conclusions regarding the use of this new platform.
  • One of the most vexing problems in distance learning research is the lack of comparability between the courses offered in distance learning and traditional MPA programs. While many programs have distance learning MPA programs and compile satisfaction indicators for students enrolled in these programs, it is usually not possible to compare equivalent classes across the two student populations. The CSULB MPA-DL program’s curriculum is nearly identical to the curriculum offered to traditional on-campus students. Specifically, the core courses are identical and are often taught by the same instructors. This study explores the student satisfaction scores for four (4) core courses that are offered in both the distance learning and on-campus programs. These courses include: an introductory/foundations course; a course in public budgeting and finance; a course in research methods; and a policy analysis course.
  • Each of the courses was offered in the same semester by the same instructor. Data were collected from student evaluation of instruction surveys that were routinely distributed during the last two weeks of each class.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Once the equivalency of the courses was established, the distance learning sections of the course were compared to two on-campus sections of the same course.
  • It appears that satisfaction is more a function of the instructor in the course rather than the mode of delivery.
  • George Bradford on 29 Nov 08
     
    This research explores student perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness in a hybrid MPA distance learning program. The MPA distance learning program under analysis utilizes a synchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, an asynchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, and six hours of on-campus in-person instruction per course. Survey data from students who have completed eight (8) courses in this distance learning program (repeated samples n = 90) will be compared to the evaluations of students who have taken the same courses from the same instructors in the on-campus program (n=100). The purpose of the research is two-fold. First, the research will determine if there is a significant difference between the perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness between students in the distance learning program and students enrolled in the on-campus program. Second, the research will explore student satisfaction with the use of the synchronous and asynchronous computer delivery methods. It is anticipated that students will express satisfaction levels with course quality and instructor effectiveness equal to, or exceeding, the satisfaction levels expressed by students in the on-campus program.
George Bradford

Learning to Hate Learning Objectives - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49399

chronicle_of_higher_ed objectives counter_argument

shared by George Bradford on 14 Dec 09 - Cached
  • George Bradford on 14 Dec 09
     
    "Learning to Hate Learning Objectives By Mikita Brottman Like many of my colleagues, I assume, I'm growing deeply frustrated with the need for "learning objectives"-that list of superficial projections and assumptions that most syllabi these days are required to contain ("Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to … "). 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."
George Bradford

Publication: The Doctorate: stories of knowledge, power and becoming | ESCalate - 0 views

escalate.ac.uk/6550

doctorate stories education

shared by George Bradford on 05 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • George Bradford on 05 Aug 11
     
    Summary Personal stories about the experience of working for a doctorate Description A collection of stories from a diverse group of teachers in UK higher education who have all completed a PhD. They narrate their experience of doctoral research, the relationship with supervisors and the hurdles they overcame
George Bradford

Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...163099

policy_development higher-education Faculty Development online learning resources

shared by George Bradford on 20 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Designers of faculty development programs typically rely on commonly held assumptions about what faculty need to know—a constant guessing game regarding what topics to cover and what training formats to use. The resulting seminars, workshops, training materials, and other resources are typically hit-or-miss in terms of faculty participation and acceptance.
    • George Bradford
      George Bradford on 20 Feb 12
       
      This is a statement without warrants - Carol should know better.
  • Research Question 1: With which aspects of teaching online do faculty need assistance?
  • With regard to designing and developing online courses, faculty were most interested in the following topics: Choosing appropriate technologies to enhance their online course (55.9 percent). Converting course materials for online use (35.3 percent). Creating effective online assessment instruments (35.3 percent). Creating video clips (33.8 percent). Determining ways to assess student progress in an online course (33.8 percent). Course delivery topics that held the most interest included: Facilitating online discussion forums (47.1 percent). Building and enhancing professor-student relationships in the online classroom (39.7 percent). Facilitating web conferencing sessions (35.3 percent). Increasing interactions in an online course (35.3 percent). Managing online teaching workloads (33.8 percent). Providing meaningful feedback on assignments (32.4 percent).
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • High-quality interaction and being there for the students is the best way to combat the commonly held misconceptions that online education is impersonal and that online instructors are unplugged from their students.
  • Research Question 2: What format do online faculty prefer for professional development experiences?
  • The format most faculty preferred was informal or self-paced learning. Self-paced materials were requested most often (42.6 percent), followed by informal face-to-face events (41.2 percent) and informal online events (33.8 percent). Requests for formal face-to-face training programs (30.9 percent) and online programs (29.4 percent) lagged behind the other formats. In addition, faculty indicated that the most helpful aspects of professional development events related to teaching online included opportunities to share real-life experiences with their colleagues, to use various technologies including the university's course management system, and to access specific examples and strategies.
  • Research Question 3: Do online faculty prefer certain lengths of professional development experiences?
  • The optimal length of time faculty are willing to spend in professional development for online teaching ranges between a series of short (less than one day) workshops over several weeks (preferred by 20.6 percent) to a single one-day workshop (19.1 percent) and self-paced materials that can be used on an as-needed basis (16.2 percent). When faculty were asked when they would prefer to participate in a professional development experience, they gave a similar range of responses to interest in attendance during the summer semester (preferred by 38.2 percent), the fall semester (33.8 percent), and the spring semester (33.8 percent). The break before the summer semester was also a popular choice (30.9 percent), while the responses for all other breaks between or during semesters ranged between 11.8 percent and 16.2 percent.
  • Research Question 4: What barriers inhibit faculty from participating in professional development experiences related to teaching online?
  • The barrier to participation in faculty development for online teaching cited most often was limited time to participate (61.8 percent). Another barrier was a lack of recognition toward promotion and tenure (26.5 percent). Other barriers to participation included a lack of incentive or reward (20.4 percent), a lack of awareness about professional development opportunities related to teaching online (18.4 percent), and little or no access to these opportunities (12.2 percent).
  • Research Question 5: What incentives do faculty wish to receive in return for participating in professional development experiences related to teaching online?
  • no single incentive captured a majority's interest.
  • Faculty require flexibility to fit professional development into already busy schedules. Of faculty surveyed, 86 percent reported having limited time, which precludes them from participating in some professional development experiences. They are concerned about the time it takes to design, develop, and manage online courses. They are also guarded about the time required to develop their abilities to complete those tasks more effectively.
  • Faculty responses indicate a desire for informal learning opportunities, flexible scheduling, short sessions, and one-on-one support for anytime, anywhere professional development.
    • George Bradford
      George Bradford on 20 Feb 12
       
      Again, unsubstantiated statement (ie without warrants): no argument is made that supports how the responses "indicate" these development venues.
  • George Bradford on 20 Feb 12
     
    Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? © 2008 Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (July-September 2008) A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online By Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan The number of courses offered online grows every year, resulting in an increasing number of higher education faculty entering a virtual classroom for the first time.1 It has been well documented that faculty need training and assistance to make the transition from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to teaching online.2 Faculty professional development related to teaching online varies widely, from suggested readings to mandated training programs. Various combinations of technological and pedagogical skills are needed for faculty to become successful online educators, and lists of recommended competencies abound.
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