The Collegiate Learning Assessment


Book Description

"This report describes the application of a technique for setting standards on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a measure of critical thinking value-added at higher education institutions. The goal of the report is to illustrate how institutions can set their own standards on the CLA using a method that is appropriate for the unique characteristics of the CLA." -- provided by publisher.




Academically Adrift


Book Description

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.




Measuring College Learning Responsibly


Book Description

This book examines current practices in assessment of learning and accountability at a time when accrediting boards, the federal government and state legislatures are requiring higher education to account for such outcomes as student retention, graduation, and learning.




Effective Grading


Book Description

The second edition of Effective Grading—the book that has become a classic in the field—provides a proven hands-on guide for evaluating student work and offers an in-depth examination of the link between teaching and grading. Authors Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson explain that grades are not isolated artifacts but part of a process that, when integrated with course objectives, provides rich information about student learning, as well as being a tool for learning itself. The authors show how the grading process can be used for broader assessment objectives, such as curriculum and institutional assessment. This thoroughly revised and updated edition includes a wealth of new material including: Expanded integration of the use of technology and online teaching A sample syllabus with goals, outcomes, and criteria for student work New developments in assessment for grant-funded projects Additional information on grading group work, portfolios, and service-learning experiences New strategies for aligning tests and assignments with learning goals Current thought on assessment in departments and general education, using classroom work for program assessments, and using assessment data systematically to "close the loop" Material on using the best of classroom assessment to foster institutional assessment New case examples from colleges and universities, including community colleges "When the first edition of Effective Grading came out, it quickly became the go-to book on evaluating student learning. This second edition, especially with its extension into evaluating the learning goals of departments and general education programs, will make it even more valuable for everyone working to improve teaching and learning in higher education." —L. Dee Fink, author, Creating Significant Learning Experiences "Informed by encounters with hundreds of faculty in their workshops, these two accomplished teachers, assessors, and faculty developers have created another essential text. Current faculty, as well as graduate students who aspire to teach in college, will carry this edition in a briefcase for quick reference to scores of examples of classroom teaching and assessment techniques and ways to use students' classroom work in demonstrating departmental and institutional effectiveness." —Trudy W. Banta, author, Designing Effective Assessment




Building the Intentional University


Book Description

How to rebuild higher education from the ground up for the twenty-first century. Higher education is in crisis. It is too expensive, ineffective, and impractical for many of the world's students. But how would you reinvent it for the twenty-first century—how would you build it from the ground up? Many have speculated about changing higher education, but Minerva has actually created a new kind of university program. Its founders raised the funding, assembled the team, devised the curriculum and pedagogy, recruited the students, hired the faculty, and implemented a bold vision of a new and improved higher education. This book explains that vision and how it is being realized. The Minerva curriculum focuses on “practical knowledge” (knowledge students can use to adapt to a changing world); its pedagogy is based on scientific research on learning; it uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world. Minerva equips students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation, building the core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, and effective interaction. The book offers readers both the story of this grand and sweeping idea and a blueprint for transforming higher education.







College Learning for the New Global Century


Book Description

"College Learning for the New Global Century, published through the LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) initiative, spells out the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a 21st century college education. It reports on the promises American society needs to make - and keep - to all who seek a college education and to the society that will depend on graduates' future leadership and capabilities." -- Foreword (p. vii).




High-impact Educational Practices


Book Description

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.




Designing Effective Assessment


Book Description

Fifteen years ago Trudy Banta and her colleagues surveyed the national landscape for the campus examples that were published in the classic work Assessment in Practice. Since then, significant advances have occurred, including the use of technology to organize and manage the assessment process and increased reliance on assessment findings to make key decisions aimed at enhancing student learning. Trudy Banta, Elizabeth Jones, and Karen Black offer 49 detailed current examples of good practice in planning, implementing, and sustaining assessment that are practical and ready to apply in new settings. This important resource can help educators put in place an effective process for determining what works and which improvements will have the most impact in improving curriculum, methods of instruction, and student services on college and university campuses.




Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive overview of current, innovative approaches to assessing generic and domain-specific learning outcomes in higher education at both national and international levels. It discusses the most significant initiatives over the past decade to develop objective, valid, and reliable assessment tools and presents state-of-the-art procedures to adapt and validate them for use in other countries. The authors highlight key conceptual and methodological challenges connected with intra-national and cross-national assessment of learning outcomes in higher education; introduce novel approaches to improving assessment, evaluation, testing, and measurement practices; and offer exemplary implementation frameworks. Further, they examine the results of and lessons learned from various recent, world-renowned research programs and feasibility studies, and present results from their own studies to provide new insights into how to draw valid conclusions about learning outcomes achieved in various contexts.