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Speaking With One Voice (and Asking the Right Questions)
by David C. Paris
This is a landmark month for the Alliance. On January 24, at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's (CHEA) annual conference, we announced the publication of Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education. These guidelines provide a checklist for colleges to take responsibility for assessing and improving student learning — to set clear goals for student achievement, regularly gather and use evidence that measures performance against those goals, report evidence of student learning, and continuously work to improve results. Committing to Quality has been endorsed by twenty-seven higher education organizations.
The publication of Committing to Quality is significant for several reasons. First, the document puts together in one place what is commonly understood, or should be understood, about what colleges and universities need to do to make evidence-based improvement of student learning their central focus. Certainly, most people in higher education would agree in general with the idea of setting ambitious goals, gathering evidence, etc., but the guidelines offer a way of spelling out what this commitment means. Similarly, the regional accrediting agencies have each set standards for assessing student learning and done a great deal to get institutions to do more gathering and using evidence. However, as indicated by the fact that the Council of Regional Accrediting Associations has endorsed Committing to Quality, this document captures and supports what they are trying to do.
Second, beyond the guidelines themselves the fact that twenty-seven national organizations have endorsed Committing to Quality is very significant. Higher education is a diffuse, decentralized profession, with institutional and professional diversity and autonomy being highly prized aspects of our work. However, these endorsements indicate that our cherished autonomy must be coupled with shared professional understandings about how we can best serve our clients, our students, and society more generally. Committing to Quality represents higher education speaking with one voice on the central issue of student learning and the role of gathering, reporting, and using evidence in improving it. We intend to continue to obtain endorsements of Committing to Quality, leaving no doubt that these are the shared understandings and norms for higher education.
Perhaps most important, Committing to Quality is significant because it can be used to ask the questions that need to be asked about higher education. Anyone in or interested in higher education can use these guidelines to determine whether an institution is focusing on the question of student learning. Anyone can take the guidelines and ask the questions in the document.
Is your institution setting ambitious goals?
Is your institution gathering evidence of student learning?
Is your institution using evidence to improve student learning?
Is your institution reporting evidence and results?
Each of these questions is followed by a checklist that allows an assessment of how well an institution is doing in committing to quality, in answering the question, “Are students learning?”
In 1940, the American Association of University Professors published a Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure. That document offered principles that it believed should govern the higher education profession, particularly concerning academic freedom and tenure. At the time of its publication two organizations endorsed it, and in the time since the number of endorsements has risen to more than 200. Most importantly these principles have been adopted, used, and modified appropriately over the years and have had a significant impact in defining higher education in the United States.
The Alliance intends Committing to Quality to have the same kind of impact in establishing evidence-based improvement of student learning as the central focus of higher education. We urge all those in college and university communities— presidents and chancellors, faculty members, academic and student affairs administrators— to share and discuss these principles and, ultimately, to put them into practice. As Committing to Quality concludes, “If colleges and universities focus on evidence-based improvement of student learning outcomes, they will be true to their societal responsibilities and serve the common good. Our students and our nation deserve nothing less.”
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PERSPECTIVES AND PRACTICE
Reflections on Issues, Efforts, and Experiences
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A Red-Hot Coal of Academic Rage
by W. Robert Connor
I find Christmas letters depressing. All our friends, it seems, have taken trips to exotic places, been honored in glorious and well-deserved ways, tell wonder-filled stories of their children’s exploits, and of the hyperbolic beauty of their grandchildren, with photos to prove it. Knowing we will be humbled by reading such letters, my wife and I nonetheless bravely push on, build a fire, open a bottle of wine, and dutifully read each letter.
Predictable, but sometimes there’s a surprise.
Was that sharp sound the popping of a red- hot coal from the fireplace? No, it was an outburst of red-hot academic rage in one of the letters from a faculty member:
“.. reviewing the syllabuses[was] quite challenging, because they have to be in forms handed down by [the regional accreditor], the group that put the ‘crazy’ in bureaucrazy… The syllabus has to begin with the department’s mission statement, followed by list of course learning objectives, course learning activities, assessment tools and grade tabulation, attendance policies, and the academic Integrity statement. By the time you get to the topics to be covered (which some cranks would call the content), your brain has entered a protective state of freeze in which all intellectual operations are suspended and you can only copy the chapter headings in a textbook. Bureaucrats are happy because there are objectives and tools and assessment, and students never read the syllabus anyway.”
I squirmed. Like many of us associated with the Alliance I have long argued that at every level higher education needs to be more explicit about its goals and more rigorous in its use of evidence in assessing students’ progress. But this letter reminded me how things look to many faculty members working hard each day to teach really well. The categories my correspondent encountered seemed alien, did not correspond to the task at hand. That’s unfortunate, because the well intentioned if over-detailed forms are a (too?) specific list of what my friend probably does anyway.
What’s the best way to respond? Surely it’s for faculty and academic leaders to get out ahead, that is for them to take ownership of student learning and its assessment, before others push things down their throats. Strong academic principles and widely respected guidelines can make all the difference. We should ask these questions and set standards before others do.
There’s another benefit to this approach. There’s a lot of evidence, not all of it anecdotal, that satisfaction increases when faculty members set clear, high expectations, and use appropriate evidence to assess student progress. I have seen that among faculty in a project on the systematic improvement of undergraduate education directed by Bob Thompson of Duke University. The Collegiate Learning Assessment’s Academies and “CLA in the Classroom” project report similar success, as do related projects run by the Council of Independent Colleges and others. These efforts begin with the individual faculty member but thereby develop more broadly applicable ideas and approaches. This is the opposite of the bureaucratic regulation that angered my friend. It’s working for a lot of faculty members. It’s worth a try, right now, before the next Christmas letters get written.
Bob Connor is senior adviser to the Teagle Foundation.
His writings can be found at www.wrobertconnor.com/
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PRESIDENTS’ ALLIANCE SPOTLIGHT
Denison University
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A founding member of the Presidents’ Alliance for Excellence in Student Learning and Accountability, Denison University in Granville, OH is one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges. Founded in 1831, Denison boasts generations of student who can attest to its effect on their ability to speak, write, listen, collaborate, innovate, take responsibility, solve, adapt, and lead. This residential campus community enrolls 2,160 undergraduates. Through an emphasis on active learning, Denison’s mission is to inspire and educate their students to become autonomous thinkers. To that end, Denison has charged its faculty with the principal responsibility of teaching informed by the best scholarship.
Similar to other members of the Presidents’ Alliance, the primary location for the assessment of student learning is at the departmental level. As Kim Coplin, Associate Provost wrote, “Each department has developed an assessment plan and submits a yearly assessment report to the college Assessment Committee. Department and academic programs appoint Assessment Coordinators to catalyze and manage the departmental assessment program, and to ensure that reporting to the university Assessment Committee is done on an annual basis.” She added, “The Assessment Committee provides annual written responses to departmental reports, with advice and recommendations on the plan, the measures, the analyses of the data gathered, and the feedback process for program improvement.”
Denison has plans to collaboratively engage faculty and administrators in assessment. The university reported that the Provost has appointed an ad hoc faculty committee to consider how best to assess the overall educational experience of students at Denison. This committee will collaborate with a Student Affairs Division working group on assessment appointed by the Vice President for Student Affairs to continue to improve the gathering of evidence about student learning outcomes.
Through participation in the Presidents’ Alliance, Denison asserts its commitment to actively participate in discussions about assessment by serving as a resource for other institutions who are also committed to student learning and accountability initiatives.
To learn more about student learning assessment at Denison University, visit its Presidents’ Alliance institutional profile.
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READING LIST
Current Industry Articles and Reports
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Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability for Higher Education, with 27 endorsements from higher education organizations, was released by the Alliance on January 24.
Measuring What College Students Actually Learn. From the Marketplace education desk at WYPR in Baltimore, Amy Scott reports.
NILOA has released its thirteenth Occasional Paper, From Denial to Acceptance:The Stages of Assessment by by Margaret Miller, which provides an overview of how the assessment discussion has evolved in the past 30 years.
Alliance Board of Directors member, W. Robert Connor, recently wrote a commentary titled Let's Improve Learning. OK, but How? for The Chonicle of Higher Education.
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NEW MEMBERS OF THE PRESIDENTS’ ALLIANCE
St. Petersburg College and Stevenson University
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The Presidents' Alliance for Excellence in Student Learning and Accountability welcomes St. Petersburg College and Stevenson University. Learn more about how these institutions are committed to improving student learning by viewing thier Action Plan on the Alliance's website.
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JOIN US ON THE ROAD
Will you be at any of these events?
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The Alliance will be presenting at the following events so be sure to join us!
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SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK
| As always, we welcome and appreciate feedback from our supporters.
If you would like to share your comments and/or suggestions, please e-mail us at office@newleadershipalliance.org.
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