Originally published as On the Horizon Volume 15, Issue 2, 2007.
ISBN: 978-1-84663-512-0
Edited by: David Shupe, Elumen Collaborative, Minnesota, USA
For nearly 20 years, colleges and universities have sought ways to generate data on actual student learning outcomes while maintaining an institutional information context that is itself indifferent to outcomes.
As a result, outcomes assessment has been problematic, since the institutions themselves lack the capability to focus on student learning. This Special Issue examines a bold alternative, changing the context itself, through the lens of seven different articles.
Contents:
Significantly Better: the Benefits for an Academic Institution Focussed on Student Learning Outcomes
Shupe
A college or university can develop the organizational capacity to focus on student learning outcomes. This article shows how the consistent application of this capacity would provide not only a response to external expectations but also unexpected benefits that, when taken together, would create a significantly better academic institution.
The Views Across: Patterns of Success in Accessing and Improving Student Learning
Priddy
Describes how academic institutions that focus improvement of student learning do much better than those that focus on compliance and assessment. It draws on the insights of those who work at the Higher Learning Commission, who share the unusual perspective of having experience of dealing with hundreds of academic institutions.
Integrating Learning Outcomes and Assessment into the Curriculum: A Case Study
Ferguson
Identifes approaches that have worked well into gaining faculty support and administration support for institutional attention to assessment and learning outcomes Reflection on ten years of sustained attention to assessment and outcomes at Buena Vista University provides insight into what has made a positive difference.
Rethinking general Education as the Development of Expert Learners
Tagg
Investigates how the visibility of learning outcomes within an academic institution permits the re-imagining of general education as the conscious development in students of expertise that is more general than and perhaps more important than the specific outcomes of any major.
Engaging our Fears: Student Learning at the Center of our Practice
Guerrero
Makes the case that attention to student learning outcomes provides a pedagogical bridge between the expectations of community college faculty and the performance of under prepared students. This is a view from the front lines, where educational theory intersects with the realities at Los Angeles City College.
The Transformation to a Learner-Centered Community as a Result of University-Wide Assessment
Kieke, Moroz, and Gort
Describes the way(s) in which the introduction of systematic outcomes assessment throughout a university has begun to transform its academic culture. Concordia University (Saint Paul) is one of the first colleges to methodically introduce this system-supported approach across the institution.
But can they do it? High Tech Real Time Performance Evaluation
Edwards
Describes how Kirkwood Community College uses a learning outcomes information system (eLumen Achievement) in any wireless or even non-wireless setting to directly improve student learning by evaluating student performance and providing feedback in real time.
About On the Horizon
On the Horizon is an international quarterly publication providing analysis and comment on the future of post-secondary education. On the Horizon provides a 'radar' service to key decision makers concerned with post secondary education in its many and emerging forms, from traditional institutions to corporate universities, from private/for-profits to non-profits around the world.
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