Outcomes
Assessment
Reports
a newsletter and Web log
by Frank Vozzo
 
Director of Student Learning Outcomes Assessment
 

 
March 27, 2006

In this report:

The October 2002 Report of The Greater Expectations National Panel of AAC&U is one of the most significant reports ever written on higher education reform.  It set the agenda for development of the “New Academy” (see the Vision section of the Sage Agenda for Excellence).  It is a lengthy report, which I urge everyone to read in its entirety.  Here are some excerpts that touch on themes I have been addressing this year (emphases added by me):

“Teaching and learning may be intimately connected, but, as any student knows, they are not the same.  Faculty members at all levels methodically identify what should be taught, but spend less time finding out what students have actually learned. With learning as the center, what students learn is of primary importance.  Knowledge of how learning occurs is a resource to make it happen better.”

“Ask college faculty members, and most will explain their hope for students to engage intellectually and seriously with what is taught. Deep learning, they believe, develops the ability to defend positions based on knowledge, rather than simply on opinions. Professors expect students to write well and think clearly, explore multiple fields and modes of inquiry, and gain substantive knowledge in a particular field. As they see it, college learning should result in rational and reflective minds, open to continuous learning throughout a lifetime. The higher education community as a whole expects its members, both professors and students, to support free discussion that respects a variety of viewpoints, and to embrace the active life of the mind.”

“By and large, colleges are unable to say with any certainty whether students have learned what the professors are teaching. This is particularly true of abilities like critical thinking that develop across the confines of individual courses. The absence of explicit descriptions of the outcomes desired hampers assessment. So, too, do the independent treatment of individual courses and faculty unfamiliarity with meaningful assessment methods. Without knowing how well students have learned, the faculty finds it difficult to improve education in any purposeful way. This lack of assessment data can frustrate the desire to lift performance expectations.”

“While complicating assessment, student mobility among institutions also heightens its importance. Multiple observations throughout a student's undergraduate career provide the best means of diagnosing weaknesses and taking corrective action.”

“Reaching ambitious goals for learning requires integrating elements of the curriculum traditionally treated as separate—general education, the major, and electives—into a coherent program. This does not mean that students will take a common set of courses. But it will require new forms of advising and alignment, both in high school and college, to help each student create a plan of study leading to the essential outcomes of a twenty-first century education.”

“Meeting these expectations for quality will focus new attention on the culminating year of college. Both institutions and departments should set standards for achievement of skills, knowledge, and responsibility, and require advanced work that demonstrates the expected outcomes. These culminating performances, which will vary with different fields of study, ought to provide evidence that students can integrate the many parts of their education. They can show how well students actually possess the intellectual, practical, and evaluative judgment and the sense of responsibility a college degree should represent.”

“Building a culture centered on learning is the job of presidents and their senior staffs. Their commitment to reinvigorated liberal education guides the choice of faculty, programs, and directions. This institutional purpose, mirroring the intentionality of students and the coherence of the curriculum, builds on operations and systems aligned with the institution's mission. Curricular and cocurricular programs mutually reinforce one another.”

“Faculty members on a learning-centered campus make a collective commitment to high quality education. The concept of "my work," so characteristic of the present educational culture, becomes "our work," with the entire faculty assuming responsibility for the entire curriculum. The "saying" and "doing" of the institution coincide, fostered by open conversation, joint action, and appropriate reward systems. In terms of its operations, the institution itself becomes a life-long learner, continuously evaluating and assessing itself at all levels, then feeding the results back into improvement loops for both student learning and campus processes.”

The review of the current General Education program at SCA is just about to begin, and President Neff has already given us suggestions for change.  The Sage Agenda for Excellence (CampusCruiser/Campus Life/Committees/TSC Faculty Staff and Administrators/Shared Files/Institutional Research and Planning/Planning Documents/AGENDA FOR EXCELLENCE 8-15-05.doc) includes the following statement on page 7, under the heading “Develop Sage College of Albany as an innovative educational model”:

Establish a “signature” general education requirement that complements the College’s focus on applied studies.  Indicators: ongoing assessment of effectiveness; NSSE scores above peer group.

Note that 2005 NSSE results for SCA were based on too small a sample size, and that the 2006 NSSE is currently underway. Another internal document (CampusCruiser/Campus Life/Committees/TSC Faculty Staff and Administrators/Shared Files/1Institutional Folder/University Messaging/MESSAGING.zip*) suggests on slide 15 of the presentation that the “signature” requirement could be a new interdisciplinary project course modeled after Stanford University’s “design thinking” program.  That’s an interesting idea. 

Since it is the only course shared by all SCA and SAW students, the LIFE Interdisciplinary Seminar is the current “signature” course by default.  In order to make good decisions for the future, we need to assess the effectiveness of the current LIFE/ITD requirement, its connection to institutional mission, goals and objectives, and the level of faculty understanding of it and support for it.  We also need the broadest possible participation from the entire Sage community in discussing the idea of a “signature” requirement at SCA (including what should be in it) to ensure that we are working together, efficiently, toward the same things.  Let there be lively, open discussion!

*To view the presentation, do not click the “unzip” option in the CampusCruiser folder view menu.  Instead, click on the MESSAGING.zip hyperlink, download the zip archive to your computer’s desktop, extract all of the files to a new folder, then launch the presentation by opening MESSAGING.html in the extraction folder.  The audio portion is important; be sure you have the computer’s sound turned on.

I require students in both my Physics and Earth Science courses to use Blackboard, where I have posted copies of lecture notes, links to Web sites that I use to supplement the textbook, and worked out homework sets, practice quizzes and tests.  I have used surveys to verify that the materials are important for student learning.  Occasionally, a student who has done poorly on a unit exam will come to me with this question: “I studied really hard for this test but I just don’t get it—how can I better prepare for the next test?”  A quick check on Blackboard sometimes reveals that the student has not used the resources there.  All I have to do is point out the truth the matter, and the student immediately changes her tune.

The trick to catching this is to initially set up the Blackboard materials such that hits to particular parts will trigger “statistics tracking.”  Look for the option (section 3 “options” choose “track number of views”) to activate statistics tracking when you upload materials to supplement your courses.

 

In next week's OARs: assessment in the various professional programs.

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