Comments on Assessing Learning Outcomes

• Assessing Learning Outcomes
• Posted by Margaret Combs , Ms at American University of Kuwait on February 25, 2008 at 6:45am EST

• 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.

• Assessment and Spelling
• Posted by Dr. Clark Roush , Professor of Music at York College on September 21, 2006 at 9:50am EDT

• Isn't it humurous that someone with a B.A. is trying to tell colleges how to better function. It was obvious on her appointment that Spelling is far more of a "professional politician" than she is a trained educator. Anyone that had a part in drafting NCLB should be ashamed to put in on their resume. How does one go from advising the president on domestic issues to heading up the nation's education department? Certainly not by any academic training! Let's leave the assessment of colleges and universities up to people that know what they're talking about. We certainly don't need to even come close to a post-secondary version of NCLB.

• As if a professor of music would know anything...
• Posted by TM on September 21, 2006 at 11:20am EDT

• ..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.

• Interesting thread
• Posted by Dr. Roush on September 21, 2006 at 12:35pm EDT

• I doubt anyone would want someone who had just finished a B.A. in pre-med running the American Medical Association. Sometimes being frank about the lunacy of proposals is a viable way of making people stop and think. My remarks were not nearly as "snarky" as one of the message headings here. What in your past would make you believe someone in the arts would not know anything about academics?

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

• 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.

• Posted by AC on September 21, 2006 at 1:50pm EDT

• Yeah, Jane, but there's a reason why the farmer is on your board: ACCOUNTABILITY.

  Are we supposed to trust that you are doing your job of educating young people well?

• I Agree with Dr. Roush
• Posted by Michael B. Wood at Harding University on September 21, 2006 at 2:15pm EDT

• 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.

• Posted by Linda , student at Eastern Michigan University on September 21, 2006 at 4:05pm EDT

• But isn't it also true that in higher education the onus for actually learning lies with the student not the faculty member?

  To compare student success in higher education with NCLB is a poor analogy. Students in higher education are suppossed to shoulder the responsibility for getting a complete education and speaking up when they are perceiving they've been short changed.

  A better analogy may be to other professions that are based on human experimentation and development... After all we allow other professions - medicine for example - to report that the patient didn't respond to treatment.

• Assessing Learning Outcomes
• Posted by CE on September 21, 2006 at 4:10pm EDT

• 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.

• Spellings
• Posted by LA on September 21, 2006 at 4:10pm EDT

• Obviously, some of you don't like Spellings and the thought of being held accountable for your teaching through measurements angers you - but there are instructors out there that do not measure up (perhaps not you but they are out there) and Spellings is calling them on the carpet. It's about time! And let us not forget that even though she may only have a BA she is surrounded by people with a great deal of expertise in the field and recieves constant input from many scholars. She is NOT making decisions alone.

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

• 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?

• Posted by kk , Associate Professor School of Music at Ball State University on September 21, 2006 at 4:25pm EDT

• Ah, but the Farmer is not on the board for "accountability." The farmer is on the board because of political connections. Politics has become pervasive among upper administrators and college trustees/regents/governors, as political appointments (like the Secretary of Education) seek to implement divisive agendas that have little to do with success or accountability.

• Yep, my subject line was snarky....
• Posted by TM on September 21, 2006 at 4:50pm EDT

• 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....

• Accountability and responsibility
• Posted by Angela Lievano on September 21, 2006 at 4:50pm EDT

• I am a college professor with a passion for teaching and learning. I began my academic career 16 years ago in the CSU system in California. In my naivette, fresh from my dissertation's final meeting; I believed politics were secondary, if at all present in academia. Soon I learned that voicing my opinion on the importance of spelling out our department's learning goals for our students was a taboo topic. I simply asked, what do we want our students to learn, know, or do well when they are done with the program we offer them? These two simple questions put me in a black: She is one of hose that want "learning outcomes". Well, 15 years later I am not longer in that department, I consult for educational institutions that have to spell out their learning goals for students in their self-study for reaccreditation. Why you may ask... Accountability and responsibility for what we purport to do in our profession. I still wonder how is it so difficult for some college professors to present evidence of their work. A measure, a clear statement, a representation, a learning outcomes(whatever you what to call it) of what students learn while they are in our classrooms(exposed to our lectures, examples, content, anecdocts, exams, etc.), is only evidence we are accomplishing our intented purposes. As professionals we are being asked to provide evidence we are successful. What is the difficulty with that. Why is it hard for college professors to account for the effects of their doings in their clasrooms?
  This college professor prefers to look inside and try to answer the question with evidence that tells me more about my passion for teaching and learning. Many of my colleagues do, I hope more would join in.

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

• 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.

• More Big Government Socialist "Accountability"
• Posted by PJ on September 21, 2006 at 9:55pm EDT

• We have college accreditation, audits by the state, individual college/programs accreditation, learning assessment, continuous improvement, strategic plans,etc etc etc ALREADY! In my little business school we are basically dedicating the equivalent of a whole full-time faculty to the maintaining of accreditation and assessment records and program reports just for our own business accreditation. Then we have annual reviews, tenure and promotion reviews, post-tenure reviews, annual activity reports...

  But plain old academic reputation and student choice - that doesn't count at all. Because they don't create career paths and resume items for aspiring administrators. Or jobs for consultants.

  Now, the last time I checked 90% of my state college's budget came from the state budget or tuition payments.

  The federal government can monitor how its own money (actually our money) is used (and already does), but by what authority do they have an overarching mandate to hold a state government institution or a private institution 'accountable?' The true conservatives (NOT the Bush administration)objected to NCLB because it was an extension of centralized control over local government, using our tax money as a stick.
  I can just see it now - legions of newly hired federal "college accountability inspectors", "league tables", benchmarks, scores etc. A nice gig if you can get it - a career path. And of course more budget for the Department of Education.

  No wonder people like myself are ready to desert the Republican camp and vote for Democrats for the first time in our lives.

  Do not be taken it by the 'accountabilty' and 'who is qualified' debate.It is a red herring.

  But for everyone who insists on accountability as the benchmark, fine. Please let us know how you rate the success of the federal Department of Education and NCLB to date. Please give us "measures" of THEIR success over the last six years. How many notches did the US move up in international mathematics education? How much higher is the high school graduation rate nowadays? What benefit did we get from their use of our money vs. using that money in some other way?

• degree doesn't matter
• Posted by PS on September 21, 2006 at 9:55pm EDT

• 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.