Assessing Learning Outcomes

As an educator, assessing learning outcomes benefit both the instructor and the student. Why should educators assess learning outcomes? According to the APQC Institute Education for Best Practices, there are four important reasons: 1. to know how effective you are as an educator; 2. to help improve instruction; 3. to be accountable to stakeholders (i.e. students, perspective employers); 4. to help attract future students. Since the mission of most institutes of higher learning is to teach shouldn’t the outcome be learning. The educational level of the instructor is not as relevant as the learning outcomes of the students in the course.

Margaret Combs, Ms at American University of Kuwait, at 6:45 am EST on February 25, 2008

As if a professor of music would know anything...

..about academics.

Geez...apparently one has to have a PHD in order to be knowledgable or to organize and manage a group.

Clearly you don’t like NCLB and you think Sec’y Spellings’ preparation is inadequate. Fine. Try being constructive and work to have your voice heard if you have any better ideas.

It is time to face the reality that policy-makers want evidence of student learning. It is going to happen whether you like it or not, and if you simply rail against it and make snarky comments, you will just look the fool and dragged along anyway.

TM, at 11:20 am EDT on September 21, 2006

I agree that it is time we got people who don’t know anything about education out of the classrooms and let teachers do what they are trained to do, have practice doing, and know how to do well. Government-imposed tests don’t measure much.

Can you imagine what would happen if I walked into a police station and began telling the lieutenant to re-organize his office and his staff? I feel the same way when the farmer on the Board of Trustees at my college comes in and tells me how to teach my classes.

Jane, at 1:40 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

I Agree with Dr. Roush

Educators must stand together! Enough is enough. NCLB was a political move that has done much more harm than good. Great educators are leaving the profession of teaching because of the pressures put on them by NCLB. Educators are asked every year to add more and more to their already full plate of responsibilities. There is even a push for longer school days and longer school years. Why not stop adding more to do? It is very difficult to even teach reading, math, science, english, history, etc. Then you add the curriculums of music, art, physical education, technology, ect. Enough is enough.

Michael B. Wood, Harding University, at 2:15 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

Assessing Learning Outcomes

Researchers have a tough enough time figuring out what educational statistics really mean, how will the public be able to do so? For example, if college A has a higher gradudation rate than college B, does this mean that 1-college A is doing a better job than college B 2-students are more prepared in college A, 3-students in college A have less family responsibilities, 4-a diploma in college A is more valuable in the local marketplace due to better economy making students more motivated to graduate, 5-any combination of the above and other possible reasons. What colleges need to do is make sure that their curriculms are of high quality and that students are placed appropriately into courses and graded according to reasonable standards. If a college can determine that is has high quality and well run programs, support services and adminsitration, desirable outcomes such as increased graduation rates may follow but probably not as much politicians or the public may hope for.

CE, at 4:10 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

To make colleges and universities being more transparent from the point of view of their teaching results is a move in a right direction. Directly or indirectly ALL Americans pay money to the faculties and staff (including myself). But, doing this without significant improvement of a high school education beforehand is the same as fighting illegal immigrants from Mexico without building a fence; i.e. possible, but extremely hard. The difference between prospective students of different institutions might be so big that any comparison would be just zero informative. Maybe the outcome from reforming the education would be more useful for the society, if the Department of Education would leave colleges and universities alone for awhile, and concentrate the work on the K-12 part of the system?

Valentin Voroshilov, Boston University, at 4:25 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

Yep, my subject line was snarky....

But last I checked, almost no doctoral students were taught how to teach, let alone how to assess student learning. Most faculty resist any efforts at systematic assessment of student learning, thus it is very difficult for me, or other policy-makers, to consider leaving it the “experts".

And Dr. Roush as far as your comparison to the a pre-med BA running the AMA, how would you know since they won’t make their staff listing public on their website? That type of lack of transparency and openness is at the heart of the concerns about higher ed accountability. Exactly the kind of issue to which your fellow academic Richard Vedder points. If institutions would make accreditation reports public, some of this might go away...for a while at least.

It’s not that I don’t thik someone in the arts wouldn’t know anything about academics, but I don’t think it is any less likely that someone with BA, some years of experience, and lots of contact with educators and education policy analysts, would know something about academics.

Only 9.8% of the US adult population has a graduate degree, only 17.2% a bachelor’s degree. The other 73% want to know where their tax dollars are going. Further, last I checked, most members of congress have college degrees...as do most state legislators. If their constituents were all telling them to leave higher ed alone they would likely listen...but they are not and so they don’t.

College costs keep rising. Students have complained about rising textbook costs until state legislatures and now congress have gotten involved...faculty have refused to listen.

Faculty and administrators by and large keep saying “trust us, we are the experts” but then people see what has happened with textbooks..."trust us” won’t cut it anymore.

The college lobbying groups promised Buck McKeon an alternative to the College Affordability Index...they never delivered. Trust us? Right.

My legislators keep hearing anecdotes from constituents that new grads from elite public institutions cannot write a coherent paragraph, and don’t seem to read for comprehension. They want an explanation...they want to know the value-added by four-year degree that cost the $20,000 and the taxpayers at least another $25,000.

But the only state employee group who has salary targets at the 60th percentile of peers and is all but guaranteed annual raises, keeps saying “trust us, we are experts and what we do is too difficult to measure.”

Gee, I wonder why accountability for student learning outcomes is of such interest these days....

TM, at 4:50 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

How unfair to blame faculty and administrators for the rise in the cost of textbooks! As if we choose only the most expensive books with no regard for either the books’ content or for our students’ budgets.

Laura Connolly, Econ Prof at University of Northern Colorado, at 7:45 pm EDT on September 21, 2006

degree doesn’t matter

I doesn’t matter if someone has a BA or PhD. There are plenty of bad teachers who have PhDs and plent of great teachers with BAs who are better are helping students learn than anyone with a PhD ever will be. In fact, someone with a PhD, a degree obtained by showing evidence through rigorous research (quantitative or qualititative), should have an *easier* time showing evidence of student learning. Sadly, as anyone who has gone through college knows, this is not the case. Learning is just not a priority for the average professor, at least not as much as issues like parking and office space. Fortunately, the time is near when the government will make it the average professor’s priority. Sorry, but the professors chose to ignore assessment and now it’s too late. I look forward to seeing syllabi written by government bureaucrats rather than professors; maybe then we will see true evidence — quantitative or qualitative — of learning.

PS, at 9:55 pm EDT on September 21, 2006