Marketing Positive Results of Outcome Assessment
I’ve blogged before about the external accountability and internal continuous improvement goals representing two competing perspectives on outcomes assessment in higher ed. In an article posted to Inside Higher Ed on February 22, 2010, Dead Dad articulates yet another thing to consider in this complex dynamic. That is whether or not colleges and universities should tout their achievements in improving the student learning experience as a result of completing a particular degree program.
At first glance it may sound like a great idea for institutions to promote their success in advancing the student learning experience on their campuses, however, as with most things the issue gets more questionable when you look deeper. Dean Dad explains that academics would be motivated to critically dissect underperforming outcomes to figure out where the gaps are when viewing this dilemma from the internal continuous improvement perspective. Conversely, the external accountability perspective wants to make an institution look as good as possible and marketing these results would have a tendency for academic leaders to hide the bad in order to accentuate the positive. Dad explains that “…too much transparency in the early stages of improvement-driven assessment can kill it, leading to CYA behavior rather than candor (Dad 2010).”
Ultimately, I believe that publishing and promoting success will motivate students and parents to look twice at institutions who can prove their students are learning which will pressure the lagging colleges and universities to step up their efforts. What I have seen in my work with colleges and universities is that campus assessment plans typically start with deans and faculty first with the goal of increasing transparency to other stakeholders once the key internal stakeholders have developed a sense of comfort and trust with the process. In the end, everyone agrees that it is in the best interest of all stakeholders to include students, parents, and the broader community in the outcome management and reporting process but it’s a challenge to be the first to take this transparency to the next level.
Could it be that outcome performance statistics is what will eventually start to chip away at the idea that a degree from an Ivy League school is better than that of an online for profit? That may be decades down the road but it will be exciting to watch this issue work itself out.
Dad, D. (2010, February 22). Assessment as Marketing. Retrieved February 22, 2010 from Inside Higher Ed, Web site: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/assessment_as_marketing
Brian McKay Epp
Higher Education Assessment Consultant
Is it still cheating if I don’t get caught?
I recently came across an interesting book called Is it still cheating if I don’t get caught?, by Bruce Weinstein (“the Ethics Guy”). Weinstein describes five Life Principles that help people make ethical choices, which are: #1 do no harm, #2 make things better, #3 respect others, #4 be fair, and #5 be loving. The book covers a wide range of ethical dilemmas for teens, including dealing with relationships, work, friendships, etc., and Weinstein uses these principles to help teens navigate through scenarios they may find themselves in. For the purposes of this blog, I’m most interested in two scenarios he presented on a student’s responsibility if they witness another student cheating, and whether or not it’s wrong to purchase an essay online.
Imagine a scenario where student A sees student B cheating, and student B says they are going through a tough time at home (their parents are getting divorced) and will never do it again. However, there is an honor code at school and student A wonders about the right thing to do. This violates Life Principle #4 (be fair), since cheating is not fair to those who do the work honestly. Additionally, Weinstein discusses that students often continue to cheat because they are never held accountable for their actions, and “the school has to be willing to punish her and make it clear that further misconduct will not be tolerated” (p. 102). As for the student’s reluctance to “be a rat,” Weinstein wonders what repercussions could happen to student A for knowing about the violation to the honor code and yet doing nothing. Interestingly, when considering how the school should respond to student B, while they must follow Life Principle #4 and punish the student, they should also remember Life Principle #5 (be loving), and consider the support services that the student may need given their home situation.
In another scenario, a student is assigned a report on a novel that looks long and boring, and given that they still need good grades despite their busy debate tournament schedule, they wonder about buying an online essay on the topic. Weinstein’s discussion shows that this student will not gain the skills they are supposed to get from the assignment, and so buying an essay online violates Life Principle #1 (do no harm), by harming the student’s educational experience. Additionally, this violates Life Principle #4 (be fair) by not being fair to other students who have done the work honestly, and by not being fair to themselves by pretending to be someone they are not (the author of the essay). Finally, this also violates Life Principle #3, since lying to someone is not treating them with respect.
So for those of us who work with teens, or have teens I the house, this book seems like a great way to start some interesting conversations about the “right” thing to do in different situations. You can also check out his website for more information.
– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Director of Academic Training & Consulting
Weinstein, B. 2009. Is it still cheating if I don’t get caught? Roaring Book Press, New York.
State of the Student Learning Outcome in the Academy
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Over the past month I’ve consulted with both K-12 and higher education leaders in the U.S., Mexico, and the Middle East. Tracking student achievement and the value add provided by an academic program is high on nearly everyone’s priority list. In fact, in a time of shrinking resources this is one area that is still receiving budgetary support.
In his October 26 article Assessment vs. Action on the Inside Higher Ed website, Scott Jaschik summarizes the results of a survey sent to senior academic leaders at 2,809 regionally accredited institutions in the U.S. The survey was commissioned by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) which is a joint project between the University of Illinois and Indiana University.
Academic leaders and assessment experts should read the Jaschik article and also bookmark the NILOA website which is an excellent collection of resources and current thought surrounding learning outcome management. Conclusions from the NILOA survey were just released in a report titled “More Than You Think, Less Than We Need: Learning Outcomes Assessment in American Higher Education”.
Essentially, the survey found that nearly all U.S. institutions are actively measuring student learning outcomes driven primarily by accrediting body requirements. The gap that remains, however, is to actually use this data to improve student achievement.
Forward thinkers are actively developing a culture of assessment on campus. They’re using assessment data to drive decisions about everything from curriculum and instruction to admission standards and to inform the strategic planning process (Kuh and Ikenberry, Jaschik, 2009).
Over the past year I’ve been fortunate to work with progressive thinkers who are leveraging technology to enhance the outcome management process and to maximize the time that faculty spend providing meaningful feedback and support to students. I look forward to continuing this work and to identifying and publishing best practices in outcome management.
References
Jaschik, S. (2009, October 26). 'Assessment vs. Action. Retrieved November 2, 2009 from Inside Higher Ed, Web site: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/26/assess
National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (October 2009). More Than You Think, Less Than We Need: Learning Outcomes Assessment in American Higher Education. Retrieved November 2, 2009 from Web site: http://www.learningoutcomeassessment.org/NILOAsurveyresults09.htm
Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant
“Vaccinating” against academic dishonesty
Flu season is right around the corner and many are contemplating flu vaccines. However, as I’m dealing with yet another situation of academic dishonesty (which unfortunately seems to happen about once a semester… so hopefully this is it for a while!), I’m reminded of a great article from our Educator’s Voice newsletter on “Vaccinating against the plagiarism plague” by Charlotte Redden. I like the idea of a vaccination as something we do to in an attempt to prevent an uncomfortable situation we’d rather avoid. So rather than being reactive to situations of academic dishonesty, why not be proactive and try to create a preventative regimen to prevent it in the first place? The main preventative strategies proposed by Redden include educating students about your expectations, warning them that you do monitor for academic dishonesty and also to create less plagiarism-prone assignments in the first place by giving specific directions and scaffolding stages of the assignment.
Whether or not cheating is more common in online courses is a matter of debate (and see some comments here about a recent study suggesting that students are less likely to cheat online than in a traditional classroom). However, whether we teach online or in a traditional classroom, we should all consider our “vaccination” and take a look at our teaching materials. Are there any of Redden’s suggestions that we can implement?
– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Senior Academic Trainer & Consultant
Redden, CA. May 11, 2005. Vaccinating against the plagiarism plague: design and techniques. Educator’s voice Volume 6, Issue 5. Accessed online at: http://www.ecollege.com/Newsletter/EducatorsVoice/EducatorsVoice-Vol6Iss5.learn
Tapestry is coming!
09/08/09: I’m on a plane on my way to perform my first Project Tapestry training. After in many ways suffering through the curriculum meetings and organized “meet and greet your child’s new teacher(s)” sessions that accompany the beginning of the school year in my own children’s schools, I finally get to say all of the things to teachers in another state that I wish I could say to my own children’s teachers here in my own (Denver Public Schools) district. Things like, “Yes, you can see test results immediately after administering the test (or even just a test question), and here’s how to do it.” Or, “differentiation just got a whole lot easier—here’s how to find and distribute online remediation and enrichment to members of the same class, and then to easily monitor and document their progress so that you have more time for teaching them.” Or “this is how you can leverage those eager parents who want both insight and engagement in their child’s day to day learning-- in less time, and with more parental satisfaction.” This is a tool I wish our school district had.
As a teacher, I’d love the integrated approach. I’ve not had long exposure to the inner workings of a K-12 school district, but in the past few months on Project Tapestry, I’ve heard about more tools that don’t “talk” to each other than I ever knew existed. I’ve heard about the woes of Scantrons, the difficulty of reaching out to struggling and high-achieving students, and the plague of paper. I’ve also heard about the crazy things parents do to teachers in order to try to understand what their kids are learning and not learning and how they can help. (OK, I have had long exposure to this last one…I can totally be THAT parent….)
Project Tapestry facilitates the daily reporting of attendance and lunch count and the use of the ever present but now electronic Gradebook with which we are all familiar. It adds to the up and coming technologies of online and Smartboard/clicker-based instruction and assessment (this is much easier when conducted through one interface), and it allows sharing of assessment materials between schools in the district (like benchmark tests that can be authored by lead teachers throughout the district, then released and administered across all schools). Teachers can see the results of these tests immediately, so that curriculum adjustments that used to wait weeks on collective test results reporting can be made the next day. And, standards based assessment results can be looked at over time through a data analytics tool—if Johnny is struggling with reading, when did that start to happen? What step was missed or where do we need to backtrack and pick up again to get him on course? Having an easy interface in which to get this sort of historical information on a student or a class is the first step in the teacher identifying Johnny and getting him remedial content that will bring him back up to grade level.
What if Johnny not only reads, but exceeds? Rather than allowing his exceptional learning abilities to languish, Tapestry’s enrichment materials repositories can aid in giving Johnny the extra challenge that keeps him in his seat at school. We can reach into materials that allow Johnny to push ahead while not taking a lot of instructional time from his classmates.
At the end of the day, all of this prescription and progress lives in the same place, under the same happy URL. The Assessment Manager talks to the Gradebook and to the online classroom, feeds the Data Analytics tool so that it can help the teacher move in the appropriate direction for each child without rewriting the whole lesson plan. Student work is held in a secure, electronic environment that is secure from dogs and the things that can happen to it on the way to school, as well as on the way home where parents can see the grade. Soon, parents will be able to check in "at will" in a way that a mere portal doesn’t allow. All of this without an email snowstorm for the teachers, without a phone, and on an ongoing basis that takes the “SURPRISE” out of report card day.
Anyway, I know I’m excited. Not just for the parents, the teachers, the school districts, but for the students. I know of so many students who don’t know where their grades come from, who have no idea that their efforts are measured against standards and not just some idea a teacher has of what is “good.” Being able to use and share this tool with our students will help our kids to understand that they have control over their learning, that the measurement of learning has a logical face to it, and that they can get help or move ahead as their learning dictates. They will be able to work from home, from the library, and from school on material that appeals to where they are at in a given subject, and they’ll be able to know when they’ve succeeded and quickly go on, or recognize where and how they are challenged and go back. I can look at my own kids-- one who struggles and one who speeds ahead of the others-- and I see how this can work.
09/09/09: First training completed, and there are now some excited teachers and admins in this district! Yep, this is going to be good.
No Internet Allowed
Like every just about every week for the past 7 years, I was at a college talking to faculty about how to effectively use education just a few days ago. I’ve become quite the e-vangelist in my time and I enjoy it immensely. It’s especially satisfying when I get to speak to instructors who have very little experience with the Internet and who don’t seem to see the tidal wave of technology coming. Showing them things they have literally never dreamed about is fun. I truly get to blow their minds!
But as enjoyable as my time was with these teachers, I came face to face with what I’m starting to consider my own personal Newman. (Sorry if the Seinfeld reference isn’t obvious…) While setting up for a 3 hour stint showing teachers how to make interaction a legitimate component of their online courses, I ran across the local I.T. guy. You know, the teacher / technology “support” specialist. The conversation went something like this:
ME: “Hi, I need to switch out your desktop for my laptop. I’ll be projecting it to the participants in the lab today.”
IT Guy: “Uh, no you won’t.”
ME: “Excuse me? I don’t think I heard you right.”
IT Guy: “Yeah, we don’t let people do that here. You’ll have to use our machine.”
ME: “But I have software on my machine that I need to show your instructors. Stuff that will let them create audio files, screen recordings, movies, and mind maps. I looked at your machine and it has none of that.”
IT Guy: “Sorry, you’ll just need to make due.”
ME: “What about wireless?”
IT Guy: “Yeah, you won’t get that in here.”
ME: “In the computer lab? I won’t get wireless in the computer lab?”
IT Guy: “Right.”
ME: (Frustration mounting) “OK, can I at least download that stuff to your machine so I can show it?”
IT Guy: “No way – not sure what kind of viruses might be associated. Besides, you can’t download anything unless you’re a system admin.”
ME: “Ok, so can’t you do it?”
IT Guy: “Nope.”
And with that he walked away. I stood there dumbfounded as I tried to scramble my presentation in my head.
It was about that time a teacher approached me. She explained that the lab was actually her typical classroom and that she could show me how to get around the system. We could pull a few wires from various machines and get me onto their network with her password, then I could do what I needed to do.
We were 30 seconds into our clandestine operation when he returned to the room. Caught red handed, the teacher simply said, “We’ve done this before…” The techie was obviously put out. He walked straight to my computer and asked to see my virus detection software. He pulled it up and found that I’d had 3 virus attempts in the past year. He looked at me like I was carrying ebola and gave a little smirk. “See…”
Wow. Here’s the worst part. This story is consistent campus after campus. You’d think I was trying to get onto the Pentagon’s network with my laptop based on how I’m treated by some IT groups.
Now you may be asking what the big deal is. Perhaps you’ve drunk the Kool-aid here and believe your IT department's who treat your campus network like a magical black box. You know, the kind of system that raises far more questions than creates solutions. The kind of system that only an elite few can access, only after lengthy assessments of software, hardware, dna, and possibly a urinalysis. The kind of system that enlightened IT Directors realize is silly...
But here’s the rub. I speak all over the world. I’ve spoken to our government – in a government building – in DC. I’ve spoken in hotels, businesses, high schools, universities, and even a court building. And in every case, I connected to their Internet.
Forget about me for a minute. Let’s focus on the real crime here. How do students connect? I was at a prestigious California university a few months back and I had some time to kill before I was to meet my contact. I sat down in a commons area and fired up my laptop. There were 2 students sitting there with me.
Me: “I’m trying to get on the Internet, is there a guest login for the campus?”
Student 1: “Are you kidding? They don’t give access to students, let alone guests.”
Student 2: “I’m taking 3 online classes this semester and I have to go to Barnes & Noble to do my stuff every day because I don’t have Internet at home.”
Yep. Barnes & Noble. Of course, if they wanted to, students could go to Starbucks or several McDonalds these days. They can find Internet access almost anywhere but their own school. These students can find Internet at airports during Spring Break, at Kinko’s for X cents per minute, or by going to the public library, but they can’t access the world wide web, including their online classes from school. Ugh.
So it is with all sincerity and seriousness that I say, “It’s time to figure it out.” It’s time to get with the program and offer Internet access on our campuses and to our students. How is it that the digital divide actually exists on our campuses? That’s crazy. And while we’re at it, let’s make it a quality experience. I was at an airport the other day with Wireless G – for free – which actually came into my wireless card at 300 mbps! Blazing fast!
Oh, and while we’re at it, knock it off with the super safe guards – you’re preventing students from learning. It’s one thing in a K-12 environment, but these are adults we’re talking about. I was recently at a school where I recommended a YouTube video by an amazing educator (Ken Robinson) and the faculty told me they couldn’t watch that from campus – YouTube was blocked. GOOD GRIEF!
It’s time for our schools to figure out what everyone else seems to have figured out already. “Safe” web access is a smokescreen. If you can’t figure out how to protect your campus while at the same time giving appropriate access to all of your students, teachers, and even to guests, then it’s time to find an IT director who is capable of that. I’ve talked to some of those executives at BIG institutions. The kind of institutions where they have million dollar budgets and a staff of 100 people and they get it. Like they get how important it is to outsource their LMS needs, they understand that access and permission is just as important. It’s not about building an empire and it’s not about holding the campus hostage with technology – it’s about giving an amazing educational experience to their students…their customers…who need it.
To those of you who really get it, I salute you. To those who do their best to help technology and education blend seamlessly, I applaud your efforts. You are more important than you realize in the educational culture. However, to those who use technology to control, manipulate, and scare…well, let’s say I don’t salute you. You are impeding progress and education at a school. Much like impeding reading at a library or stopping the sale of gas at a fuel station.
By the way, the harder it is to get onto your site…the more enticing it seems to be for hackers to try. So Google transparency, accessibility, and academic technology, and step aside. Education is trying to happen.
Jeff D. Borden
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning
Data
I just got off the phone with a colleague who has lost 35 pounds in 2 months. How did he do it? Data. Well, data mixed with exercise and technology to be more precise. He tried the Nike / iPod experiment and he’s a believer.
This professor of communications and lover of cheese steaks bought a new pair of running shoes a few months back. Then, he bought the Nike sensor system – a small sensor you put in your shoe somehow. This sensor sends information to your iPod during a run. That data tells you (in real time) how you’re doing, but it also allows you to see any trends in your running after you upload the data to the Nike+ website. Apparently he’s run about 340 miles and his average speed has increased by 1 mile per hour. He can tell you how many calories he’s burned and he’s delighted to tell you how many pounds he has lost.
See, data is changing how we live. And data aggregation, data mining, and data analysis are making our lives better as technology gives us more and more ways to use it quickly and easily. For example, my wife was called a few months back about her credit card. Visa thought she might have lost her card. Why? Because she purchased a dress that was 2 sizes too big! Guess what? Her card had been stolen. (No, she had not gained any weight…that would have been awkward!) The credit card company looks for patterns and found something odd in the behavior of the card. So they checked.
Data is everywhere we look today. New cars will tell you how many miles you have driven on a tank of gas and how many more you are likely to get out of that same tank. There is a website where you can upload a sickness in your family. Then, you can look around your city, state, or the entire country to see where other people are sick too. Data might help you avoid the plague!!!
Data is useful and becoming easier and easier to digest. My phone tells me when my flight is late – a handy little feature when you fly 100,000 miles a year. My refrigerator tells me when the filter is no longer doing any good. Heck, even my daughter’s baby monitor tells us when the battery is low. From weather patterns to traffic patterns, data can make our lives tremendously easier.
So why is it so hard to find data for schools? This is especially true with online schools. Shouldn’t you know where your students spend their time in classes? Don’t you think knowing how often you’re B students post vs your D students post to a discussion would be a good piece of information? Does the first day a student checks into class help determine their probability of dropping? If you don’t know the answers to these questions...it’s time to.
One of my favorite tools I’ve ever gotten to work with is a business intelligence tool, created by IBM, that we overlay classes with in our system. This tool allows me and my team to try and predict success, correlate at-risk behaviors to drops, and find benchmarks to hold students accountable to. Did you know that in most online courses a larger class size (30-35) tends to have a better completion rate than classes with less than 30? It’s been proven time and time again through data. (Mind you – data can also beg lots of questions!)
Data mining is becoming easier and easier as technology evolves. Data analysis is becoming more and more automated. It’s time for your school’s programs to join the party! Trends and operational reports are crucial to making accurate predictions and drawing quality conclusions today. Accreditors are soon going to see this power and demand evidence of data-driven decisions for their schools. But before the ‘stick’ of accreditation swats at you, shouldn’t you look to the carrot of quality? Granted, this power can be abused. (My boss loves to look at my completion rates and give me grief as my public speaking class isn’t the highest completed class on campus…it’s public speaking!) But the data is there whether you mine it or not. The information to help you increase retention is sitting there whether or not it’s analyzed.
We study, analyze, and mine data for everything else today. It’s time to get education up to speed, don’t you think? Now if you’ll pardon me…I need to get to a store to buy a sensor. My pants don’t quite fit like they did last year…
Jeff D Borden, M.A.
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning
Momentum Building for Competency Based Learning
Most of us have heard of the European Union along with the establishment of the Euro as a common currency across the continent. Fewer have heard of the Bologna Process which began in June, 1999 with the goal of creating a more standardized higher education system in EU member nations. One initiative has been a tuning project where academics work to define a common set of learning outcomes by discipline and degree level.
The dialogue continues worldwide today about whether a focus on competencies versus assignment grading leads to an improved student learning experience but most would agree there is a difference. Many students are able to memorize processes or to cram for an exam but the ability to apply knowledge, skills, and concepts to new situations requires a deeper level of learning which is better suited for competency based assessment.
A June 4, 2009 blog post on The Chronicle for Higher Education website summarized a recent report commissioned by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute calling for institutions to focus on competencies instead of courses as a way to improve curriculum for pre-med and medical schools. The report convened a group of educators, practitioners, and researchers to define a set of competencies both for entrance into and graduation from medical school. NCATE has already defined similar competencies for educators and other accreditation bodies are coming on board as well with efforts to agree on a core set of competencies by discipline.
The Lumina Foundation for Education also recently announced a three state Tuning USA project that seeks to define “the subject-specific knowledge and transferable skills that students in six fields must demonstrate upon completion of a degree program”. This is a bottom up effort involving faculty, students, and employers. Representatives from Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah will each define student learning outcomes for two disciplines while striving to preserve the ability for individual institutions and faculty to retain their academic freedom to teach to a common set of outcomes in the manner of their own choosing.
Pearson eCollege will continue to monitor this trend and seeks input from our partner institutions for best practices in outcome management and competency based learning.
References
Benelux Bologna Secretariat (n.d.). About the Bologna Process. Retrieved June 12, 2009 from Web site: http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/about/
Lumina Foundation for Education (2009, April 8). News Release. Retrieved June 12, 2009 from , Web site: http://www.luminafoundation.org/newsroom/news_releases/2009-04-08.html
Mangan, K. (2009, June 4). 'Competencies,' Not Courses, Should Be Focus of Medical-School Curricula, Report Says. Retrieved June12, 2009 from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Web site: http://chronicle.com/news/article/6588/competencies-not-courses-should-be-focus-of-medical-school-curricula-report-says
Strategies to integrate technology into campus outcome management
Most well designed technology enhanced solutions require a substantial investment from academic leaders and faculty on campus in order to yield more turn-key reporting and analytics going forward. The level of effort depends on the maturity of the campus learning statement hierarchy and the comprehensiveness of course outcome to program goal to institutional mission statement mapping and articulation. If these components are well-established then populating a system should be a matter of formatting the data for import into the software.
A good implementation plan begins with a discovery and needs assessment phase to determine the current climate on campus and to obtain both short and long-term goals from academic leadership. Implementation specialists should then tailor the software to integrate with the situation at the institution while also challenging project participants to incorporate best practice assessment strategies when current practice is following a less than optimal process.
Faculty resistance to any technological solution is often ameliorated if the presentation of the solution is couched in terms of improved student learning and/or improved instructional effectiveness. In this case, a technology solution for learning outcomes management does that, and faculty developers can leverage that attribute by emphasizing that a focus on learning outcomes improvement in higher education preceded accreditation calls for outcomes-based assessment. In that regard, managing and improving student achievement of outcomes is merely an aspect of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the technology solution becomes a tool to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of helping students succeed instead of yet another time consuming addition to faculty workload.
Inevitably, institutions find gaps in their outcome assessment strategy when they decide to embark on a technology enhanced solution. This is completely natural and part of the process of continuous improvement. A major point of advice for those in charge of implementing an outcome management solution is to start small so pain points can be identified and process improvements can be made before it becomes a huge task to update the process for an institution-wide adoption. Assessment experts from accreditation agencies also advise institutions to capture only the amount of data they can digest and to feel empowered to take a break from the data collection process if they need time to process information before gathering more data. The worse situation is a case where an institution is consumed by assessment without actually learning anything.
Time to start a technology enhanced outcome management program
Campus leaders are struggling to create learning outcome management programs that contribute to substantive improvements in student achievement. Departments often spend countless hours on manual processes that may meet the letter but not the spirit of accreditation requirements and leave limited time to actually assess curriculum strengths and weaknesses.
In previous blog posts, I’ve discussed the increasing call for student learning accountability at U.S. universities. Applications such as Pearson eCollege’s Learning Outcome Manager work in concert with Learning Management Systems to support data driven solutions that enable thorough analysis and improvement of underperforming outcomes. Any outcome management program must also look at methods for inspiring faculty to develop learning outcomes in their courses as they make the shift from a teaching to a learning paradigm (Barr and Tagg 1995).
In their book “Disrupting Class”, Christensen, Horn, and Johnson (2008) assert that innovation occurs when an organization discovers a new model for delivering goods or services to non-consumers which creates a market on a new plane from the predominant existing market. The rise of the online, for-profit university served as such a disruptive change to the higher education community. A key contribution of the online medium has been its sharp focus on learning outcomes along with its ability to document everything that takes place in the virtual classroom. This, in turn, has pressured traditional universities to play catch-up as faculty are challenged, oftentimes for the first time, to document student learning outcomes.
Essentially, it becomes vital that there be no disconnect between the outcomes creator(s), the professors, the students, and the tasks. Using a curriculum design tool such as Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2006) can help groups deal with the needs of the specific student, while still creating a framework of learning for the collective. This process calls for curriculum integration, problem-based learning, essential knowledge, enduring understanding, and authentic assessment. And in the end, deeper learning outcomes connected to better curriculum design leads to richer data and diagnostic capability.
Technology-based outcome management tools provide institutions with scalable solutions to improve teaching and learning. Well designed programs engage technology to automate what has been an arduous, manual process and provide an opportunity to dramatically increase student cognitive engagement.
References
Barr, R. B. & Tagg, J. (1995, November/December). From teaching to learning--a new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change Magazine, 27 (6): 12-25.
Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Wiggins, G., McTighe, J., & Tomlinson, C.A. (2006). Understanding by design and differentiated instruction: Partners in classroom success . San Francisco, CA: ASCD Publishing
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