Education & Policy

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.

American Association for Higher Education ASSESSMENT FORUM 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve. Educational values should drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.

Assessment and feedback Our work on assessment and feedback supports the sector, as we advise on policy and strategy, develop resources, and coordinate a series of activities to identify and share effective practice. We work with institutions and their students to improve their approaches to assessment and feedback, including setting criteria and emphasising the importance of assessment for learning. Our Academic Integrity Service exists to raise awareness and enhance understanding of academic integrity issues in higher education, including student plagiarism We have a range of resources, both generic and subject-specific, on feedback and assessment, which you will find valuable.

The Assessing Learning Project The Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) was commissioned by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee to develop the resources on the Assessing Learning in Australian Universities website. The site is designed to support Australian universities and academic staff in maintaining high quality assessment practices, in particular in responding effectively to new issues in student assessment. The ideas and strategies are focused on the practical educational issues surrounding the purposes and design of student assessment and reporting, in particular the way in which assessment might be planned to optimise student approaches to study.

Early Career Teacher Resilience ARC Linkage Grant 2008-2012 (with Professor Bruce Johnson; Professor Barry Down; Dr Rosie Le Cornu; Dr Anna Sullivan; Dr Judy Peters; Dr Jane Pearce; Ms Janet Hunter). The first few years of teaching are difficult for many teachers. Yet research into the 'problems' of beginning teachers is nearly exhausted. Few new ideas about how to address these 'problems' are emerging. There is a need for a new generation of collaborative research that investigates how beginning teachers develop resilience and sustain their commitment to teaching. Therefore, this project aims to find out how early career teachers deal with threats to their wellbeing. It will identify what internal strengths and external strategies promote teacher resilience. It will provide the evidence base for interventions that will increase teacher commitment and reduce teacher attrition.

July 9, 2012 Early Computing's 'Deal With the Devil' Victoria StoddenGeorge Dyson, son of the physicist Freeman Dyson and author of Turing's Cathedral, grew up playing with discarded bits of early computers at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.Enlarge Image By Marc Parry In 1936, the British logician Alan Turing imagined a universal computing machine. In the wake of World War II, at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, a team of mathematicians and engineers built one. The machine stood roughly the size of four refrigerators. People called it Maniac, for Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer. At its heart was "a 32-by-32-by-40 bit matrix of high-speed, random-access memory-the nucleus of all things digital ever since," writes George Dyson in a new book, Turing's Cathedral (Pantheon Books). How that computer came to be, he says, is the story of "a deal with the devil." Mathematicians built a machine that helped create the hydrogen bomb. In exchange, they got a new breed of computer that enabled incredible scientific progress.

Bill Gates on Higher Education, Part 2 June 26, 2012, 6:31 pm By Jeffrey R. Young

June 25, 2012 A Conversation With Bill Gates About the Future of Higher Education By Jeffrey R. Young Bill Gates never finished college, but he is one of the single most powerful figures shaping higher education today. That influence comes through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, perhaps the world's richest philanthropy, which he co-chairs and which has made education one of its key missions.

June 25, 2012 Customization Is the Future of Teaching, Harvard Researcher Says Rick Friedman for The ChronicleChris Dede (shown here on screen), a professor of learning technologies at Harvard, says classrooms of the future will have "a more complicated model of teacher performance that, when they know how to do it, teachers are going to appreciate."Enlarge Image By Jeffrey R. Young Most college courses are one-size-fits-all-a lecturer delivers the same information to everyone in the room, regardless of whether some students already know the material or others are utterly lost. It doesn't have to be that way, says Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University. He outlines a vision of how technology can help personalize learning in a new book that he co-edited, called Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student. His research focuses on elementary- and high-school classrooms, but he says the approach has implications for colleges as well. The Chronicle talked with Mr. Dede about his strategy, and why he sees big changes on the horizon. An edited version of the conversation follows.

New York Times to Suspend Online-Education Program June 11, 2012, 6:37 pm By Angela Chen The New York Times is bowing out of the online-education business just as a growing number of colleges are putting their own courses on the Web. Knowledge Network, the distance-learning initiative started by the company in September 2007, will suspend operations on July 31, a company spokesperson said today.

Literacies Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois Bill Cope, University of Illinois Paperback ISBN:9781107402195 Publication date:May 2012 464pages Dimensions: 247 x 170 mm Weight: 0.84kg In stock £45.00 With the rise of new technologies and media, the way we communicate is rapidly changing. Literacies provides a comprehensive introduction to literacy pedagogy within today's new media environment. It focuses not only on reading and writing, but also on other modes of communication, including oral, visual, audio, gestural and spatial. This focus is designed to supplement, not replace, the enduringly important role of alphabetical literacy. Using real-world examples and illustrations, Literacies features the experiences of both teachers and students. It maps a range of methods that teachers can use to help their students develop their capacities to read, write and communicate. It also explores the wide range of literacies and the diversity of socio-cultural settings in today's workplace, public and community settings. With an emphasis on the 'how-to' practicalities of designing literacy learning experiences and assessing learner outcomes, this book is a contemporary and in-depth resource for literacy students.

About edX EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone. MIT's Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Anant Agarwal serves as the first president of edX, and Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith leads faculty in developing courses. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can facilitate teaching-both on-campus and online.

U21 Rankings of National Higher Education Systems A ranking of higher education systems based on resources, environment, connectivity and output. New research into national education systems gives the first ranking of countries and territories which are the 'best' at providing higher education. Universitas 21 has developed the ranking as a benchmark for governments, education institutions and individuals. It aims to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions to contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students and help institutions compete for overseas applicants.

Early Alert Program The Early Alert classroom assistance program at Sinclair Community College is an intervention program teaming faculty, counselors, and advisors together in order to promote the success of students facing challenges.   An Overview:    Early Alert is an intervention program that allows for faculty to notify advisors/counselors of issues that may affect the success of a student.  It is a simple way of assisting students in difficulty find the help they need while taking very little time. Web-based Early Alert notifications are easy ways to promote the retention efforts of the college and the success of students. Utilized currently in all DEV courses, English 111, select Math courses, and SCC 101 courses.  

AECT STANDARDS FOR INITIAL AND ADVANCED PROGRAMS IN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY (ECIT) The following text consists of excepts from the AECT document dealing with standards for instructional technology programs. Some minor editorial revisions have been made to the original text to allow concurrent discussion of the initial and advanced standards. Also, sections of the document that deal primarily with the institutional role, rather than the student role, have been omitted. These standards are concerned primarily with candidate competencies in the area of educational communications and instructional technologies (ECIT). Initial ECIT programs are defined as those which represent initial entry into the field. For example, a Baccalaureate or Master's program which prepares individuals for either initial school certification or entry level positions in business or industry may be considered an initial ECIT program. Advanced ECIT programs are defined as those which represent additional study in the field. A graduate program which advances knowledge and skills beyond the entry level for the profession constitutes an advanced ECIT program. It is expected that advanced candidates are able to demonstrate the competencies outlined in the initial program.

ISTE developed the NETS with input from the field and pioneered their use among educators. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are the standards for learning, teaching, and leading in the digital age and are widely recognized and adopted worldwide. The family of NETS-NETS for Students (NETS*S), NETS for Teachers (NETS*T), NETS for Administrators (NETS*A), NETS for Coaches (NETS*C), and NETS for Computer Science Teachers (NETS*CSE)-work together to transform education.

NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Ed Edition The NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE Program. This ninth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

The Quote 'May You Live in Interesting Times' Front Page What is h2g2? Who's Online Write an Entry Browse Announcements Feedback h2g2 Help RSS Feeds Contact Us   In a speech in Cape Town, South Africa, on 7 June, 1966, Robert F Kennedy said: There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times'. Like it or not, we live in interesting times... Journalists endorsed the phrase and it has become well known. While widely reported as being an ancient Chinese curse, the phrase is likely to be of recent and Western origin. When created it seems to be intended to sound Chinese in the 'Confucius he say' mould. Most Chinese scholars will not recognise the 'curse' as Chinese, because if it is of Chinese origin, it has somehow escaped mention in all of the ancient Chinese literature. It may, however, be a paraphrase of a liberal translation from a Chinese source, and therefore unrecognisable when translated back to Chinese. One possibility is a relation to the Chinese proverb, 'It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period.'

ELEARNSPACE LEARNING, NETWORKS, KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, COMMUNITY

March 29, 2012 No Financial Aid, No Problem. For-Profit University Sets $199-a-Month Tuition for Online Courses Matt McLoone Of his tuition pricing for New Charter University, the educational entrepreneur Gene Wade says: "This is not buying a house. This is like, do I want to get cable?"Enlarge Image By Marc Parry It's a higher-education puzzle: Students are flocking to Western Governors University, driving growth of 30 to 40 percent each year. You might expect that competitors would be clamoring to copy the nonprofit online institution's model, which focuses on whether students can show "competencies" rather than on counting how much time they've spent in class. So why haven't they? Two reasons, says the education entrepreneur Gene Wade. One, financial-aid regulatory problems that arise with self-paced models that aren't based on seat time. And two, opposition to how Western Governors changes the role of professor, chopping it into "course mentors" who help students master material, and graders who evaluate homework but do no teaching.