Assessment in the Disciplines

Assessment in the Disciplines refers to a set of publications from AIR (Association for Institutional Research). Cost is about $32 per book, which includes shipping.

Assessment of Student Learning in Business Schools:
Best Practices Each Step of the Way
Edited by Kathryn Martell and Thomas Calderon
[2 volumes]
Collaborative project between AIR and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)

Assessment of Student Learning in College Mathematics:
Towards Improved Programs and Courses
Edited by Bernard L. Madison
Includes 10 case studies

Assessment in Engineering Programs:
Evolving Best Practices
Edited by William E. Kelly
Collaborative project between AIR and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Ranks for Copyright Infringement

BayTSP is a company that tracks things for clients. A major part of tracking is of clients' works that are used without permission—in short, BayTSP is the copyright police for their clients. Copyright infringement is nowhere tracked "universally," which makes BayTSP's annual report on client experience an interesting insight into the topic, and a rare accounting. It also provides a different type of ranking for higher ed institutions.

The company's 2008 Report on Online Trends and Insight identifies leading sources of copyright infringement (again, of BayTSP's clients' works). Page 10 reports on Digital Piracy Statistics for Top Universities. Two lists are available: U.S. schools, and international schools. The Report also reports on the "top countries" and "top ISPs" for piracy of client content. Short commentaries explain what's stable (among universities since 2006, for example) and what's changing (lower rank for the U.S. among the countries from 2007 to 2008).

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Poll Everywhere as Clicker Alternative

As a fan of classroom response systems (AKA clickers), I am reluctant but resolute to recommend the next version of instant polling that (a) makes the expense of the hand-held systems indefensible, and (b) extends the power of the learning activity to distance learners who may be in synchronous or asynchronous communication with the class.

Poll Everywhere is not perfect—it is limited to surveys of one question at a time. A teacher must think ahead to plan how best to capture student responses. But the flexibility of student response is what makes the system so attractive.

1. Text a code via cell phone to submit an answer choice.
2. Twitter. Haven't tried that method.
3. Log into a generic web site and enter a code for your answer choice.
4. Follow an emailed URL to a page displaying the answer choices for you.

A teacher can even pre-fab a set of polls and publish them in the syllabus for continued or repeating polls across the semester. Settings permit once-only or multiple voting, anonymous or tracked identity, ongoing or closed dates. For in-class lecture settings, the polls can run from PowerPoint. Results are displayed with expected graphics and the web site offers options to customize type and color.

Free subscriptions allow running surveys for 30 responses (general public) or 32 responses (higher ed faculty). Paid plans start at $15/month. Google "poll4.com" to get a sense of just how many folks are using the service.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Indiana State University: Basic Questions for Planning Assessment

Indiana State University's Assessment Handbook offers an online handbook to assessment processes on the campus. While some pages can only show example (such as chart forms specific to the institution's own assessment planning and reporting), one of the pieces is particularly valuable for use in starting the assessment conversation on a campus.

The recommended page is Basic Questions for Planning, which opens as a PDF file. By putting the questions to a group of stakeholders, you may generate the energy needed to review the Principles (from the same web site) or to create your own set of principles. Despite the usual inclination to establish purpose and state aims at the start, that type of beginning may not be engaging enough for all stakeholders. The question document can kick-start assessment planning work.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

ePortfolios on Twitter

ePortfolio use in accreditation may not seem a likely candidate for a tweet, but Kathleen Willbank's dedication to the topic has produced a following on twitter. The name of the feed is KW_ePortfolios. Kathleen is at the CSU Center for Distributed Learning.

For more traditional receipt of Kathleen's tweet, go to her twitter web page and sign up for the RSS feed. That's how I receive Kathleen's updates; they are delivered to my Google Reader (tied to my gmail account.)

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

TLT: The Power of Rubrics

The TLT Group, operating on a subscription basis but also offering a substantial free web site, runs workshops that satisfy both online novices and professionals. Starting July 14, 2009, three Tuesdays will bring focus to The Power of Rubrics.

The full title is Power of Rubrics: Assessment as a Guide to Learning. Participants will be invited to apply workshop principles from week to week in creating their own rubrics. Full details are available on a workshop web page. Cost starts at $150 (member rate) and allows display to a group for additional cost of $50. Becoming a TLT member is made affordable with a combo deal.

The TLT web site has more resources at hand. TLT = Teaching, Learning, and Technology. The non-profit organization's strength is in creating resources for immediate application.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Comprehensive IE Planning: DTCC

Delaware Technical & Community College's (DTCC) award-winning approach to institutional effectiveness (IE) begins with a plan that acknowledges 3 key pieces: college mission, student learning, and educational support. The award recognizing the institution's work is the 2009 CHEA Award for Institutional Progress in Student Learning Outcomes.

DTCC charted the structure of the plan and published it on the institution's IE & Planning web site. Click on Institutional Effectiveness Structure under College Assessment (near top of page).

The key elements of the structure are:

College Mission Outcomes Assessment

SLOA - Student Learning Outcomes Assessment - by instructional program faculty

ESOA - Educational Support Outcomes Assessment - by service unit staff

Plans and Achievement Reports are linked from the web page section, College Planning (near bottom of page).

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Oldest and Largest on Outcomes

Planning for late October: the 2009 IUPUI Assessment Institute has not yet opened registration but started notifying presenters of acceptances by mid-May. So, the web site will be updating soon with conference details. Hotel information is already on the web, along with a starter list of speakers: Thomas A. Angelo, Trudy W. Banta, Peter T. Ewell, George D. Kuh, Jeffrey A. Seybert.

October 25-27, 2009
The Westin Indianapolis
50 South Capitol Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana
Pre-Institute Workshops: October 25, 2009
Institute Dates: October 26-27, 2009

This conference is the oldest and largest event of its kind. Specifically, that means devoted to outcomes assessment in higher education. IUPUI = Indiana University Purdue University Indiannapolis.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Twittering past Pareto

Pushing past Pareto's Law (80/20), twitter authorship appears to be about 90%-written by 10% of the platform's users. That analysis, from Harvard Business Publishing's blog, concludes that twitter is a one-way and one-to-many venue. It also leads some people to conclude that those who twitter are self-absorbed.

An older source (from 2008) puts twitter in perspective for teaching in higher ed: academHacK's Twitter for Academia. That article itemizes 12 uses of twitter for academic and teaching purposes. The academHacK recommends use of the tool to build community for learners as well as specific assignments, such as rule based writing. While admittedly longer than a tweet, academHacK's article is concise and wastes no words.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Tech Note: Vortex by Disposable Thumbs

The last time this blog highlighted an online game it was a gem style "traditional" one that introduces a QEP web site (of UTD, a SACS institution).

This week I came across a different style of game through contact with a client. It's educational, based on physics principles. And available as an iPhone app. And the product of three high school students.

Vortex costs $1.99. The authors work under a business name, Disposable Thumbs, and have demonstrated perseverance in just getting into the App store, let alone programming a game.

This screen shot is from the within-app tutorial for learning how to play. Some institutions are adopting smartphones (like the iPhone) for campus-wide use by students. With the growing number of low-cost and free apps, it will be possible for professors to assign a series of educational apps. Educational mobile computing will include games.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Evolution of an Ecosystem for Higher Ed

Not all colleges can support (or tolerate) a social community that revolves around the question of what higher ed's online environment could or should look like. For Bates College in Maine, that enterprise takes place through an unofficial gathering of students, faculty, alumni called Bates Online Media Group (OMG).

An inventive project by some of the principals is the Evolution of the online ecosystem, displaying web versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 across the years 2000 to 2014. The conceptualization is challenging and interpretations will surely vary according to viewers' experience with technology. What may not be clear is how the years were selected.

Warning: the Evolution conceptualization can take a while to absorb (click on it to open an enlarged view). And then if you move around the OMG web site you will find more good things and more time commitment.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

IHEP: New Focus on College Rankings

IHEP: Institute for Higher Education Policy covers a lot of territory, with current emphasis on a new research report on the impact of college rankings in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan. The usual impact studied is enrollment; this study looked at the impact on institutional decision making. (Go to the web site's Publications page to download reports in PDF, no charge.)

Background information on rankings and their effects is efficiently summarized on the site's Ranking Systems Resources by Topic page.

The approach most of us take is national rankings, looking at within-country rankings or ratings. In the U.S., that's through multiple ranking systems with the best known presented by commercial publishers. The UK has similar scope in what are commonly called "league tables." IHEP's National Ranking Systems page is genuinely global, linking to 34 countries' data. (Each of those country pages carries one to a dozen links, making this web page one the best-maintained hyperlinking systems to worldwide educational resources.)

International rankings, crossing borders, are the newer approach and, interestingly, have developed along discipline lines. As IHEP points out, business schools are a focus, worldwide. The International Ranking Systems page in turn links to many resources on international education.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.