15 December 2009

Blog on Winter Break!

Blog will return 12 January 2010.

© 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.

10 December 2009

Tech Tip: Using Technology to Support Retention

A special issue (December) of Campus Technology includes an example-filled article on use of technology for enrollment management and retention. Pulling from diverse campuses as well as technology strategies, the article drives home a point made by one of the interviewees: no one can afford the human mentors it would take to retain students at the level that technology tools can do it.

Campus Technology is a free subscription magazine with choice of print or digital delivery. The Subscription link is easy to spot on virtually every web page and it's easy to fill out, too.

© 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.

09 December 2009

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State U: Web site for SACS reaffirmation

As use of web sites for accreditation documentation has become more popular, institutions' efforts have become more sophisticated. North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCAT) currently is displaying its compliance reports and myriad samples in preparation for its 2010 reaffirmation by SACS. The NCAT SACS Reaffirmation 2010 web site is extensive; it includes full explanation of the campus work (teams, timeline, etc.) leading up to the effort.

Like most SACS institutions that create web sites to document the process, this one includes a Document Library. Using PDF to full advantage, documents are accessible and can be printed easily, as well. Throughout the web site, "filters' are available in the fashion of search boxes. Many of the web pages also offer three option buttons of PDF, Print, and Email. Hyperlinks appear in most text to offer linking to pertinent documents or data.

© 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.

08 December 2009

Discussions at SACS 2009

The nice thing about assessment folks is that they are open-minded. Perhaps that's because the work of assessment on higher ed campuses is tough. So, the people who do it are always looking for new assists, new thinking. In our pre-conference workshop last weekend at the SACS Annual Meeting, two discussions proved this again.

First, we talked about the strong and candid statements of Laurie Fendrich. She has written short pieces for the Chronicle (in 2007 and 2009, if you care to google her) about outcomes assessment. No doubt, when she calls the process baloney, she reflects what many are thinking. The SACS room was interested in the comments, chuckled appropriately, and took seriously the fact that many faculty members may hold the same sentiment.

Second, we talked about embedded assessment. A participant commented that this technique appears to bring out the worst in faculty, not the best. In short, the "embeddedness" in courses makes at least some faculty members resistant to assessment in general. With attention at the course level, instructors feel scrutinized and criticized.

I still like outcomes assessment. And I still like embedded assessment as a technique. But I am glad to be in the room when these things are questioned. Moving to a culture of assessment means picking up every piece of it, turning it over and upside down, and continuing to question the best way to conduct assessment.

© 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.

03 December 2009

Tech Tip: Laptops, texting, and SNSs are very in

ECAR* Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology 2009

EDUCAUSE surveys mainly traditional students on their technology and preferences and then publishes the results once a year. The most recent release was October 2009:

Laptops are way up and desktop computers are down.
IM is out; social networking sites (SNSs) are in.
Cell phones are ubiquitous and texting is nearly so.
Students appreciate F2F classes but they also like technology in their classes.

Fastest read: open the PDF of the Roadmap (4 pages)
Next fastest: open the PDF of the Key Findings (7 pages)

*ECAR is the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. Many of their projects and publications reside behind a password but the UG Students & IT report is open to all. (Your institution may have an EDUCAUSE membership so you may have institutional access to many more resources.)

© 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.

02 December 2009

Mobile Learning: An Education Faculty's Accounting

A circulating URL leads to a collection of papers from Education researchers at the University of Wollongong, Australia. It's worth following to the ultimate book.

New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education. The 2009 text is online in PDF format. From the University's Research Online web site, click the Download button (transfer of 16.2 mb).

Most of the projects described in the text use smartphones or iPods. "Authentic learning" is a theme for the projects directed to teachers and their students as well as to the University's pre-service teachers. Admittedly, the book itself might be a challenge on a smartphone but the projects detailed in it are well suited to the mobile technologies that we're all adopting.

© 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.

01 December 2009

The Cost of Assessment: Creating a Simple Model

In preparing for a workshop at SACS, a colleague and I made a first-time addition for a conference presentation: we're going to talk dollars. The topic arose in a different venue as we discussed portfolio costs with a vendor. Afterward, we turned to our work of that day, which was to finalize the agenda for a 3-hour pre-conference workshop.

The discussion with the vendor brought us to that new idea of sharing the costs of supporting faculty in the work of outcomes assessment. Sharing workshops and materials is common in the assessment world. While vendors may not give away too much, even they invite trial uses of SaaS and products. Conference presenters from universities commonly offer their templates for widespread use and thus many institutions' instruments carry provisos such as "modified from...."

This year, we plan to add the crucial information of just how much it costs to produce those materials. We are not performing the cost analysis of salary, benefits, etc. We are using hourly and project wages that are independent of regular paychecks. So, we are outlining what it would cost an institution to hire a part-time worker to perform certain tasks. That's not necessarily what the work is worth. And it's not necessarily the reward that would satisfy faculty members who have been doing assessment "out of their hide." But it is a pragmatic measure that brings perspective to the work of assessment.

Example to support an ePortfolio in a Master's program:

A model for ePortfolio Coaches (assume two of them) to support students in a tracking ePortfolio: hourly wage of $20 for a Master's-prepared Coach with experience in using the portfolio software. Assume a ratio of 1:375, quarter-time employment, that works because the program is in its first year. The next step is to reduce the ratio to 1:250, which means bringing on a 3rd Coach. You may have already made the calculation: it's about $30,000/year (just for the support staff).

Example to facilitate a faculty group's creation of a plan:
Using a consultant model, assume $75/hr fees for assisting a faculty group in designing an assessment plan. The rest of the equation is how many hours does it take, of course. In the case of designing a plan? We have found 10 hours to be about right: 5 in facilitating meetings and 5 in creating materials. So, a program's plan may cost $750 to create.

What the examples offer:
Having a model to work from does not answer an institution's decision-making around whether to fund such a project! But it does bring into focus the real-world aspects of planning for assessment work.
Would the numbers differ from one institution to the next? Sure.

© 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.