2NEA HIGHER EDCONFERENCE

The annual meetingwill be March 25-27

in Boston.

3PROFESSOR QUALITY

MATTERSSeasoned instructorsproduce academic

success.

4UNITED FACULTY OF

FLORIDATwo victories attwo institutions

for UFF.

11PRIVATE-SECTOR

INFLUENCEDo corporate gifts

degrade teaching andlearning?

Vol. 28, No. 2 December 2010National Education Association

… ABOUT TECHNOLOGY CATCHINGcheaters in a state of the art testingcenter at the University of CentralFlorida business school. The center—which has hidden overhead cam-eras, proctors, and monitoredcomputers—is meant to intimidatestudents who want to cheat, andapparently the scare tactic hasworked. Cheating at the nation’sthird most populous campus hasdropped significantly, down to 14suspected incidents out of the64,000 exams administered lastsemester. Plus, cheaters are easierto punish now that photos candocument the crime. But the high-tech center hasn’t prevented every-one from cheating. One studentfound a low-tech way to get aroundthe security: He wrote notes on hisheavily tattooed arm and blendedthem into his body art.

… ABOUT COLLEGES INCREASINGspending on recreation more thanthey are increasing faculty pay,according to a recently releasedstudy on college costs. The study—which tracked the spending trendsfrom 1998 through 2008—showedthat American institutions of higherlearning are spending a decliningshare of their budgets on instructionand an increasing share on nonaca-demic areas, such as sports facili-ties, public relations, and studentservices. This trend persisted nomatter how the statisticiansadjusted for a school’s size, pub-lic/private status, or endowment.Nevertheless, this trend will likelychange, study authors say, becausethe economy has made currentspending patterns unsustainable,even at elite private universities.

VISIT THE NEA HIGHER ED WEB SITE AT www.nea.org/he

N E A H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N

AdvocateThey’reTalking onCampus…

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Eureka!The common wisdom today within faculty departmentsis that you can’t get through a meeting without someoneventing about assessment. This issue’s Thriving in Academeacknowledges the repulsion that usually accompanies

anything to do withassessment, whilequestioning whymost faculty do notuse assessment totransform courses,programs, and theinstitution itself.

See page 5

2 NEA Higher Education ADVOCATE

FOCUS ON NEA

Summit on Community CollegesHigher Ed Council President Visits White House

A C T I O N L I N E N E A

IN LATE SEPTEMBER, I TRAVELED TOSouth Dakota State University(SDSU)—home of the Jackrabbits—todo organizing with leaders of SouthDakota Education Association’sCouncil of Higher Education (COHE).The council represents some 1,300full- and part-time faculty at all six ofSouth Dakota’s public universities,plus teachers at state schools for thevisually and hearing impaired. COHEhigher ed faculty are covered under astatewide contract, and the union isgetting ready for its next round ofbargaining.

Together with SDSU politicalscience professor and COHEstatewide president Gary Aguiar,SDEA UniServ Director Loren Paul,and one of my Midwest RegionalOffice colleagues, Sara Gjerdrum, weheld two evening sessions withleaders to practice doing office visitswith their colleagues about the union.We reviewed lists of nonmembersand each leader developed a walklist of colleagues to visit. The objectwas not only to get information fromfaculty about their concerns andpriorities for bargaining, but also toask nonmembers to join and build astronger union.

The day after each training ses-sion, my colleagues and I paired upwith leaders to make these officevisits. Our conversations surfacedconcerns about academic freedom,the tenure and promotion process,workload, student attitudes, the roleof the board of regents, and percep-tions of faculty by the greater SouthDakota community. More faculty arebecoming COHE members becausetheir union colleagues are visitingthem and asking them to join. COHESDSU leaders have not let up; theyare continuing to organize and recruitnew members.

—Valerie Wilk coordinates NEA’shigher education activities

Leona HiraokaPUBLISHERDoug WalkerPUBLICATIONS MANAGER

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The Advocate (ISSN: 1522-3183) is published six times a year, in October, December, February, April,June, and August by the National Education Association, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC. The Advocate is mailed to NEA Higher Educationmembers as a benefit of membership. For members, subscriptions represent $6.58 of annual dues.POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Advocate, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.Copyright © 2010 by the National Education Association.

Jim Rice, president of NEA’s National Councilfor Higher Education, represented NEA at therecent White House Summit on Community Colleges.Participants heard from PresidentBarack Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, Secretaryof Labor Hilda Solis, and others. Riceparticipated in the “CommunityColleges in the 21st Century” session,facilitated by Secretary of HomelandSecurity Janet Napolitano, DomesticPolicy Council director Melody Barnes,and philanthropist Melinda Gates. Thegroup discussed challenges andsolutions, including the role of technology inpromoting student learning. Rice focused on theinequities faced by contingent faculty, workloadissues, and the need for community colleges to fullyvet public-private partnership opportunities. Hehighlighted the opportunities for alumni andfoundation development and the need forimprovement of advising protocols. “Communitycollege faculty and staff are by and large innovativeand excited about their work and adaptable tochallenges,” Rice said. For more information, seewww.whitehouse.gov/CommunityCollege.

Join us in Boston for NEA’s 29th Annual HigherEducation Conference, March 25-27, 2011,at the Park Plaza Hotel. The conference theme is“Radical Transformations in Higher Education.”Registration and hotel reservations are available atwww.nea.org/he; early bird registration expiresFebruary 1. Plenary, workshop, and professionaldevelopment sessions will look not only at whatchanges are occurring in higher education, but also at

what NEA and our union members can and are doingto redefine the academy. Workshop offerings will betargeted to all sectors of our higher ed membership,

and will include sessions abouteffective teaching methods, onlinelearning, collective bargaining issuesfor education support professionalsand academic professional staff,state funding, organizing, salary andretirement benefit trends, andinternational higher education,among others. Leadership Day

(24th) will feature workshops onresearch tools, collective bargaining, and organizing.Pre-conference activities also include the NationalCouncil for Higher Education membership meeting(24th-25th).

NEA’s Office of Minority Community Outreachrecently partnered with the American Federationof Teachers’ (AFT) Human Rights and CommunityRelations Department and the U.S. HispanicLeadership Institute to host the “2010 State ofLatinos in Education Summit.” The summit was heldfor the U.S. Council on Latino Affairs (USCLA),which is comprised of state directors of LatinoAffairs Councils and Commissions. Mary AnnPacheco, longtime faculty and CaliforniaCommunity College Association leader from RioHondo College, was a panelist with Dr. EduardoOchoa, Assistant Secretary for PostsecondaryEducation, U.S. Department of Education; SaritaBrown, President and Founder, Excelencia inEducation; and Craig Smith, Deputy Director,Higher Education Department, AFT.

On the RoadWITH VALERIE WILK

Secretary Solis with Jim Rice

December 2010 3

THE NEW 112TH CONGRESSWILL HAVEMANY NEWLY-ELECTED MEMBERSWHOevidently believe they have a publicmandate to cut government. TheHouse will have the largest Republi-can majority in several decades, whilethe Senate remains barely Democra-tic. The incoming Chair of the HouseEducation and Labor Committee,John Kline (R-MN), has said jobs andeducation reform will be his toppriorities.

That could mean early considera-tion of the Workforce Investment Act,and the reauthorization of the Ele-mentary and Secondary EducationAct. The last two Congresses havedealt extensively with the HigherEducation Act, and further majorchanges to the statute are unlikely.Chairman Kline has said he willrevisit the college cost conversation,expressing concern about trans-parency and strain on families duringtough economic times.

In the Senate, HELP CommitteeChairman Tom Harkin will continuehis investigation into the for-profitsector, and in partnership withSenator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Harkin islikely to introduce legislation thatwould curb certain practices at for-profits schools that have beenexposed in a recent GAO investiga-tion. Republicans are less supportiveof such legislation, and gettingsomething into law will be difficult.

Education committees will bewatching closely as the ObamaAdministration proceeds with pend-ing gainful employment regulations.The largest and most serious concernfor higher education will be thestrong desire of the new Congress toreduce the federal deficit and federalspending. There will be scrutiny of alldomestic discretionary spending andperhaps deep cuts for all federalagencies—including the Departmentof Education.

According to Carrell and West, the results of their study suggest that less experienced instructors have atendency to “teach to the test,” while more experienced teachers produce “deep learning” of the subjectmatter that helps students with future coursework. The study (discussed above) found that:

• Students’ achievement in advanced Calculus coursework was strongly influenced by their Calculus Iinstructor.

• Students who had a seasoned Calculus I professor with a Ph.D. tended to do better in subsequentcoursework than students who had less experienced and less credentialed Calculus I instructors.

• Students of veteran instructors did well despite the fact that students of seasoned professors tended tohave lower grades in Calculus I.

I N T H E K N O W

Professor Quality Matters

Highly credentialed and experiencedprofessors are better at preparingstudents for long-term academic suc-

cess than their less-experienced counterparts,but that factor is not necessarily reflected inteaching evaluations produced by students,according to research by two economists pub-lished in the Journal of Political Economy.

Scott Carrell of the University of California,Davis, and James West of the U.S. Air ForceAcademy, raise questions about the value ofstudent evaluations as measures of instructorquality. In their study, “Does Professor QualityMatter? Evidence from Random Assignmentof Students to Professors,” Carrell and Westlooked at how well instructors in introductorycourses prepare students for more advancedcourses in related subjects.

The results of their research come fromCalculus I and follow-on classes at the U.S. AirForce Academy, since all academy students arerequired to take Calculus I, Calculus II, andnine math-based technical courses regardlessof their majors. Professors in all sections ofclasses use an identical syllabus and give iden-tical exams. That gave Carrell and West theopportunity to compare instructors evenly.

The findings did not show that newer pro-fessors were “easy-graders,” because the

Calculus I course was designed to remove asmuch instructor discretion as possible fromtheir student’s grades. Midterm and finalexams are group-graded, where one instruc-tor grades a single question for the entirecourse to ensure uniformity of partial credit.

The deep learning produced by more expe-rienced instructors was not reflected in theirstudents’ teaching evaluations, the studyfound. While the students of less experiencedinstructors tended to do better in the short-term but worse in the long run, the instructorsreceived higher ratings on student evaluations.Student evaluations are widely used by collegesin faculty promotion and tenure decisions.

In all, the findings imply that student eval-uations give instructors, especially those with-out tenure, incentive to teach in ways that“have great value for raising current scores,but may have little value for lasting knowl-edge,” the authors conclude.

“We find that less experienced and lessqualified professors produce students whoperform significantly better in the contempo-raneous course being taught, whereas moreexperienced and highly qualified professorsproduce students who perform better in thefollow-on related curriculum,” say Carrell andWest.

Seasoned instructors produce greater academic success forstudents than less-experienced instructors, though this is

not reflected in student evaluations, a study finds.

FLASH POINTS

From Capitolto Campus

PERSPECTIVE AND Analysis

Faculty Win in FSU Layoff Case—Twenty-three professors at Florida StateUniversity (FSU) won back their jobs afteran arbitrator rescinded layoffs of tenuredfaculty in a recent ruling which came inresponse to legal actions filed by UnitedFaculty of Florida (UFF). While the layoffsclearly violated the union contract, FSUadministrators argued that the layoffs werenecessary as responses to budget cuts. Butthe arbitrator found that the administrationexceeded its authority to make changeswhen it eliminated and recombinedprograms in “arbitrary and unreasonable”ways that showed “blatant manipulation ofthe layoff units.” UFF represents faculty atFlorida’s 11 public universities, 10 publiccolleges, one private college and thegraduate assistants at four publicuniversities.

“Because tenure is so important forprotecting academic freedom and sharedgovernance, this is a win for all faculty,”said Jack Fiorito, faculty union president atFSU. “If faculty members feel like even thetenured people dare not speak up, then thenon-tenured faculty members certainly arenot going to speak up.”

Tom Auxter, statewide UFF president,said, “in this economy, with budget cutslooming and without laws effectivelyprotecting tenure and academic freedom,the contract is all we have left to defendfaculty against abuses of power andviolations of rights.”

In other UFF news, University of SouthFlorida trustees ratified a new contract forthe faculty chapter and a reopener for thegraduate employee chapter of UFF. Thefaculty contract includes expandedsabbaticals, a domestic partner healthinsurance stipend program, an earlyretirement incentive program, andguaranteed merit raises for 2010 and2011.

The graduate employee contract settledwith an increase in health care insurancepremium payments to 100 percentcoverage for 0.50 full-time employeegraduate assistants and approximately 65percent for 0.25 employees.

4 NEA Higher Education ADVOCATE

NEA AFFILIATES IN Action

Higher Ed Supporters Take to theStreets to Protest Budget Cuts

Faculty members, staff, students, and alumni organized by the Public Higher Education Network ofMassachusetts (PHENOM) spent six days on the road and made several stops at organized events along theway as protest against cuts in state funding. They walked from Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield to theMassachusetts Statehouse in Boston to send the message to legislators that they must reverse the state’s dis-investment in its public colleges, state universities and UMass. Marching with the group is Max Page (in whiteT-shirt, beard), a Massachusetts Teachers Association Executive Committee member and UMass professor.

Members of the Massachusetts Commu-nityCollege Council (MCCC) recently participatedin the Massachusetts Teachers Association’sEmerging Leaders program, which focused onthe importance of organizing members. For thepast three years, MTA has been transitioningfrom a service model, where members pay theirdues and union officials work on their behalf, toone that is more member-driven. As reported inthe September issue of MCCC News, the MTAStrategic Action Plan has six recommendationsfor mobilizing members, measuring progress byindividual locals, and increasing influence overpublic policy. MTA President Paul Toner attendedthe conference and the Higher EducationLeadership Council meeting at Williamstownwhere he spoke about the importance oforganizing and mobilizing members.

Meanwhile, in early October, the full-timefaculty, librarians, and counselors on the fourcampuses of Seminole State College in centralFlorida voted to unionize with United Faculty ofFlorida/FEA/NEA/AFT. With a 92 percent turn-out, the vote was 115 for and 67 against.

An unprecedented number of communitycollege students are transferring to four-year colleges and universities. Since 2000,community college transfers have increased byover 30 percent in Maryland and Virginia andhave spiked nationwide, according a recentarticle in Community College Week. In the wakeof the recession, more and more students areunable to pay four years of undergraduatetuition, so they are taking a cheaper route to abachelor’s degree. Before beginning university,these students save money, often by workingfull-time and living with their parents. Thismeans that their college experience is differentthan most, and that they are often older andpoorer than the average student. Because ofthis, many transfer students feel out of placeon their college campus, but administrators aretrying to change that. Some schools offertransfer students special orientations andpair them with other transfers as room-mates;and eight states have adopted commoncourse-number systems that guarantee thetransferability of community college credits.

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B Y C A T H E R I N E M . W E H L B U R G , T E X A S C H R I S T I A N U N I V E R S I T Y

Assessment, Teaching, and Learning

December 2010 5

CatherineWehlburg is the assistant provost for Institutional Effectiveness at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.She has taught psychology and educational psychology courses for more than a decade, serving as department chairand then branching into faculty development and assessment. Dr. Wehlburg has worked with both the Higher LearningCommission of the North Central Association and the Commission on Colleges with the Southern Association of Collegesand Schools as an outside evaluator. She is the author of Promoting Integrated and Transformative Assessment: A DeeperFocus on Student Learning and Meaningful Course Revision: Enhancing Academic Engagement Using Student LearningData. She is currently the editor in chief of New Directions for Teaching and Learning.

Vol. 28, No. 2 December 2010National Education Association

AS A NEWLY HIRED FACULTY MEMBER,fresh from graduate school, I steppedinto a campus-wide preparation for areaccreditation visit. Now, my trainingis in educational psychology, so Iknow how to write outcomes andmeasure learning. The first thing Inoticed is that the reaccreditationpreparation committee were runningaround in a relative frenzy trying toget the report written correctly with-out thinking a lot about the informa-tion that they needed. There was a lotof talk about margins and pagelength, but not a lot about what ourstudents were really learning. Thismade me realize that assessmentshould never simply be only aboutprocedural stuff. Instead, we shouldbe asking questions that would getus the information we needed toenhance the educational process forour students. That meant asking thehard questions so that we would getreal answers that were helpful … notbecause we were up for reaccredita-tion, but because we cared aboutlearning.

Of course, I ended up on thecommittee and I chaired the writingcommittee of our successful reac-creditation visit. But, in doing this, Iwas able to see all of the fabulousteaching and learning that went onacross campus—things that I neverknew our students were learning! Ingeneral, we don’t give ourselvesenough credit for creating incrediblelearning experiences for our stu-dents. But we should—because ifyou are teaching and your studentsare learning, you are probably doingsome excellent assessment work.

—Catherine M.WehlburgTexas Christian University

VISIT THE NEA HIGHER ED WEB SITE AT www.nea.org/he

Thriving inAcademeR E F L E C T I O N S O N H E L P I N G S T U D E N T S L E A R N

You can’t get through a faculty depart-ment meeting without someone men-tioning the word “assessment.”

Usually, that word is said with some repul-sion and possibly a shiver or two. But, let’slook at this in a slightly different light.“Assessment” is a word that just means toevaluate or appraise. On any given collegeor university campus, whatgroup knows the most aboutevaluating student learning?Which group knows exactlywhat a student should learnand what that student can doonce she has learned it? Ofcourse, it’s the faculty. Facultyknow content. Faculty knowwhen a student has learnedcontent and what a studentlooks like who has not.

Faculty know how to measure learning. Sowhy have most faculty not grabbed assess-ment and pushed it forward?

There are probably as many answers to thisas there are faculty members. But, no onelikes to be told what to do. And, if someone(like your Dean or your Provost) tells you thatyou have to do something, you may do it—

but you don’t have to like it.And, faculty are busy—whyadd another task that won’teven help you with tenure andpromotion? So assessment onour campuses has turnedinto a big bureaucratic, hoopjump. But it doesn’t have to bethis way. Assessment can helpyou transform your courses,your program, and even yourinstitution.

Tales fromReal LifeGET REAL ANSWERS

MEET CATHERINE WEHLBURG

Assessment may seem like a four-letter word, but it isn’t!Assessing learning is what college faculty do best. Why, then,do many of us have such a negative, visceral reaction to it?

Assessment should be a transformative process thatengages both the teacher and the learner and results inan even better educational experience. And, you may be

already doing it.Assessing student learning is done hun-

dreds of thousands of times each day oncollege and university campuses. Often,this information is used to help the facul-ty member decide what particular grade isappropriate for that particular student.This type of evaluation can also be used ina transformative way. To do this, the fac-ulty member can look across students todetermine which topics or areas of theclass seem to cause students the mostproblems. Then, using that information,the faculty member can make changesthat make sense given the context of thatcourse. This use of student learning datais so embedded in most of our courses,that we often don’t even know that we areperforming transformative assessment.But—we are. And, our students andfuture students would thank us for that if they knew what we did.

Transformative assessment, then, is a process that providesinformation and is appropriate, meaningful, sustainable, flexibleand ongoing, and uses data for improvement with the potentialfor substantive change. While the information we gather from ourcourses can also be used to demonstrate outcomes to others (forprogram or institutional level assessment), transformative assess-ment is primarily focused on how to enhance student learningand that learning typically takes place in the classroom. Notice,too, that you are double dipping! The same assignment that youuse to evaluate a student can also be used to assess the overallcourse. Using these “embedded assessments” for student evalua-tion and assessment typically means that the student work productis a more authentic measure of the learning outcome.

In order to be effective, transformative assessment should beappropriate, meaningful, sustainable, flexible, and should be usedto improve teaching and learning.

Transformative Assessment is AppropriateThe word “appropriate” implies that the assessment should fit a

particular faculty member’s teaching style, a specific course, thedepartment, or even the institution. What works in one class foran assessment tool or assignment will not necessarily work inanother. I taught a class as an adjunct once and had to use anoth-er faculty member’s syllabus. While the student exams and assign-ments may have worked well for another person, they did not fitwith the way I taught. So, even though the students learned the

material (as shown by their exam scores), I wasn’t able to use manyof the assignments in a transformative way – they just didn’t giveme the type of information about student learning that I needed.“Cookie cutter” approaches to assessment will almost always fail to

become transformative processes.Taking this idea to the next level,departmental outcomes will be spe-cific to the content and context ofthat department at that specific insti-tution. A biology department’s out-comes from a small, private, liberalarts college may be similar to a biolo-gy department from a large, researchuniversity with a large graduate stu-dent population, but they will proba-bly not be identical. The context ofthe institutional mission will haveimpact on the department missionstatement and resulting outcomes.

Transformative Assessmentis Meaningful

Without a meaningful approach toassessment, the process is almost always doomed to becoming anadd-on task that is done for bureaucratic purposes only.Meaningful assessment practices are those in which the facultymember really cares about the results. If your course has a focuson critical thinking, your course outcomes would likely focus (atleast in part) on critical thinking. And, you would be interested infinding out how well your students were learning. And, if many ofthem seemed to be falling short of where you wanted them to be,you would use that to transform some of what you did in thatcourse. If you didn’t care if your students learned to think criti-cally, but you were measuring critical thinking, you probablywouldn’t care too much if they learned it or not.

You may remember the feeling of gathering your research datafor the first time as a graduate student. You probably did what Idid—await the first results with bated breath! Getting those surveyresponses or seeing the lab results is quite thrilling, and it is excit-ing because it is meaningful. Assessment results could be viewedin the same way if they are truly meaningful. Course, department,and institutional assessment plans and measures should result indata that faculty care about.

Transformative Assessment is SustainableNo matter how meaningful and appropriate your assessment or

evaluation project is, it won’t be used for longer than one cycle if itcan’t be sustained. Often, as an institution gets ready for an accred-itation visit, elaborate and time-consuming assessment structuresare put into place. While the data that are collected may be useful

6 NEA Higher Education ADVOCATE

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THRIVING IN Academe

and important, if the added time and resources to do the assess-ment are too great, the assessment process will not be sustained.Similarly, if the time spent grading a large project becomes tootime consuming, you may not choose to keep it in the course forthe next semester if it becomes more work than it is worth.

Transformative Assessment is Flexible and OngoingOnce you have developed your evaluation and assignment

outline for your course or your department has created a depart-ment-level assessment plan for the major, and you have mea-sured your measures and used your findings for improvement,what happens? If the assessment process is flexible, then theassessment results should suggest modifications for the nextcourse or academic year. You may behorrified to find out that the assess-ment process is never-ending! Butjust like teaching and learning it isongoing, and it should be a forma-tive process that is re-evaluated at thebeginning and the end of eachcourse. This flexibility of your assess-ment plan will lead to sustainability,and this will promote the ongoing(or never-ending) distinctive mark ofa transformative assessment process.

Just as any course taught may be modified each semesterbased on the course evaluations, student responses on exams,and needs of the department, so should departmental and insti-tutional assessment plans. If a department is working on enhanc-ing student learning, student learning will probably increase inparticular areas. This should prompt you to “raise the bar” in

terms of student learning outcomes. What once might have oncebeen an acceptable level of learning might not be satisfactory anylonger.

Transformative Assessment should be used forImprovement with the Potential for SubstantiveChange

Clearly, if an assessment program is going to be successful,data must be used for improvement and there must be thepotential for change. Assessment is not a product or an end – itis a process that leads to enhanced teaching, learning, andinformed decision. “Doing” assessment is very different fromusing the results of an assessment process. If you think of assess-

ment as something that is only donefor others (accreditation or a boardof trustees, for example), yourassessment process will never be onethat is transformative. But when yousee your ongoing assessment plan-ning gives you information aboutwhat needs improvement, transfor-mation can happen.

Transformative assessment alsomeans that sometimes your resultscome in demonstrating that there

needs to be a change because something is working. This is thehallmark of transformation. You need to know what isn’t workingalong with knowing what to keep. True change comes from real-izing what needs to be removed or redesigned in your course oreven your department. Knowing what isn’t working is an oppor-tunity to make modifications.

BEST PRACTICES

Transformative assessmentmeans that sometimesyour results come in

demonstrating that thereneeds to be a change.][

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Creative Ways to Assess Student LearningWe all know about assessing studentlearning using exams and papers, butthere are other methods to find out whatstudents really know and how they think.While some of these may take a bit moretime to create and to grade, the resultscan be worth the time that is invested!

PORTFOLIOS – Over time, students gatherelements of their work to put into a portfo-lio. These can demonstrate student knowl-edge and the learning that led up to it. Askingstudents to do some self-evaluation can be agreat tool with portfolios, too. I have hadstudents write an analysis of their own workbased on course outcomes. These are often

very insightful and cause the student toappreciate the work that has been done!

COURSE-SPECIFIC ASSIGNMENTS – What doyou want your students to learn and howwould you know that they had learned this?

Making assignments that are very specific toyour course can enhance learning and avoidproblems with plagiarism. For example, anutrition course assignment has studentskeep a three-day record of their food con-sumption, analyze it, report on their eatingpatterns and overall healthiness, and thencreate a plan for improving it.

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES –Angelo and Cross (1993) created a set ofthese CATs. One of them is a “minute paper”in which students are asked to write for oneminute to answer a specific question from theinstructor.

AAHE - 9 Principles of Good Practicefor Assessing Student Learning,www.bergen.edu/Assessment/principles.htm.

Allen, M. J. (2004). Assessing Acade-mic Programs in Higher Education.Bolton, MA: Anker.

Angelo, T. A. and Cross, K. P. (1993).ClassroomAssessment Techniques: AHandbook for College Teachers, 2ndedition. San Francisco: Jossey-BassPublishers.

Banta, T.W., & Associates. (1993).“Making a Difference: Outcomes of aDecade of Assessment in Higher Educa-tion.” San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Brown, K. (2001). “Communitycollege strategies: Why aren’t facultyjumping on the assessment bandwagonand what can be done to encouragetheir involvement?”Assessment Update, 13, 8-10.

Huba, M., & Freed, J. E. (2000).“Learner-Centered Assessment onCollege Campuses: Shifting the focusfrom Teaching to Learning.” New York,NY: Allyn & Bacon.

Kallick, B., & Colosimo, J (2009).“Using Curriculum Mapping and Assess-ment Data to Improve Student Learn-ing.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Mueller, J. (2006).Authentic Assess-ment Toolkit. http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm.

Shavelson, R. (2007). “AssessingStudent Learning Responsibly: FromHistory to an Audacious Proposal.”Change, 39(1), 26–33.

Wehlburg, C. M. (2008). “PromotingIntegrated and Transformative Assess-ment: A Deeper Focus on StudentLearning.” San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Wehlburg, C. (2007). “Closing theFeedback Loop is not Enough: TheAssessment Spiral,” AssessmentUpdate, 19(2), p. 1-2, 15.

Walvoord, B. E. (2004). “AssessmentClear and Simple: A Practical Guide forInstitutions, Departments, and GeneralEducation.” San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.

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THRIVING IN Academe

Thriving in Academe is a joint project of the National Education Association and the Professionaland Organizational Development Network www.podnetwork.org in Higher Education. This section isintended to promote ever more effective teaching and learning in higher education through dialogueamong colleagues. The opinions of this feature are solely the authors’ and do not reflect the views ofeither organization. For more information contact the editor, Douglas Robertson, (drobert@fiu.edu)at Florida International University or John Rosales (JRosales@nea.org) at NEA.

THRIVING IN ACADEME

References& Resources Understanding Assessments

Answering some of the most often asked questions in assessing learning

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Why shouldn’t grades be used as a mea-sure of learning?Grades certainly are an indi-cator of learning – the problem is that we can’ttell what learning has happened just from thegrade. Here’s an example, a student in myGeneral Psychology course received a “B” onthe second exam. How much psychology doesshe know? Of course, you have no idea. Theresimply isn’t enough information. But, if Ishowed you the exam, showed you the ques-tions that she had gotten correct, and linkedthat to a specific learning outcome (such as“the student will correctlyidentify positive and nega-tive reinforcement whengiven several examples”),you would know howmuch specific knowledgethat student had shown.Grades are not usuallyabout a single learningoutcome, and they ofteninclude points for turningin a paper on time or pagelength. While all these are important, they cancloud the issue of assessing learning for a spe-cific outcome.What’s in it for me?Well, this is a hard one

to answer because much of it depends on yourparticular institutional reward structure. But,putting aside course release time or stipends,there are elements of assessment that make itworth the time invested. When you assess stu-dent learning in your course and can identifyareas that could be enhanced, you will end upwith a better learning experience for yourfuture students. Your students may learnmore, they may become even more engaged

with your class, and they will perform betteron assignments. What’s not to love?How do I get colleagues to buy in? The

short answer is that you can’t. But, that does-n’t mean that you can’t try! By this I don’tmean that you become the “assessment push-er” in your department. But, by assessinglearning in your courses and talking abouthow that has helped you to make tweaks andother improvements, you may help to bringyour unbelieving colleagues to view assess-ment as having a positive impact on teaching

and learning. And,even by asking forlearning outcomes tobe placed on yourdepartmental agen-da, you can help byfocusing the discus-sion on what studentsshould be learning incourses and acrossthe department. Anddon’t forget to find

the assessment office on your campus! Theymay be called by other names, but they willhave a wealth of ideas and even resources tohelp you.How do I measure things that can’t be

counted? Keep in mind that you don’t alwayshave to count things in order to measurethem. Qualitative research is extremely valu-able in gathering rich information that cangive you new insights into your course. What isthe quality of discussion in your class? Howdeeply are students responding to essays? Bygetting answers to these qualitative questions,you can measure things that aren’t countable.

December 2010 9

HIGHER EDUCATION News

As government officials in Brittainannounced devastating cuts to universities—as part of the government’s plan to reducepublic-sector costs—an estimated 50,000students marched peacefully on the Parliamentbuilding last November while a breakawaygroup stormed the headquarters of PrimeMinister David Cameron’s Conservative Party. Atpress time, reports indicated that thegovernment was likely to cut about 80 percentof the current $6.2 billion it pays annually foruniversity teaching and about $1.6 billion fromthe $6.4 billion it provides for research. Theplan could triple the cost of tuition forhundreds of thousands of students.

To make up for the shortfall, universitieswould have to raise tuition to an average ofmore than $11,000, which would requireParliament to lift the cap on such fees, nowset at $5,260.

While Britain’s universities are heavilysubsidized by the state, a series of recent cutshave forced administrators to reduce thenumber of classes and shut downdepartments.

Nation Professional NewsWorldFaced with the challenge of boostingstudent achievement in the face ofslimmer budgets, many colleges anduniversities are turning to technology for asolution. Since 1999, teams of facultymembers and administrators at 150 diverseinstitutions have partnered with the nonprofitNational Center for Academic Transformation(NCAT) to redesign a variety of courses, fromgeneral biology to world literature.

NCAT’s tech transformations don’t involvecutting teachers—only one of the six redesignmodels is fully online, while the otherssupplement traditional instruction withinteractive software.

For the high-enrollment introductory courseson which NCAT has focused, this software offersstudents instant feedback, new modes forgroup collaboration and opportunities for extrapractice, said NCAT vice president CarolynJarmon.

“Students have more modes of engagementthan they ever have before,” she said. For moreon course redesign, see www.thencat.org.

The California Supreme Court recentlydecided unanimously that undocumentedimmigrants may continue to be eligible forin-state tuition rates at the state’s collegesand universities rather than pay the higherrates charged to those who live out of state.The high court held that California law thatguarantees the lower tuition for studentswho attend California high schools for atleast three years and graduate does notconflict with a federal prohibition on givingillegal immigrants educational benefitsbased on residency.

California is one of several states thatpermit undocumented immigrants to takeadvantage of lower college tuition forstudents who attend high school andgraduate in state. About 25,000undocumented immigrants are estimated toreceive in-state tuition rates in California.

The court observed that the state lawalso benefits U.S. citizens who reside inother states but attend and graduate fromhigh school in California.

From the beginning days of the G.I. Bill to the early days of the Higher Education Act, the federal share of high-er education funding rose dramatically. During that expanding funding period, the growth in family income grewacross the board. However, since the mid-1970s, government funding for higher education has gone down asa proportion of college and university budgets, and at same time growth in family incomes has decreaseddramatically for all but the highest income levels.

2003–04 Community College Students Who Were Still Enrolledor had attained a degree or certificate from first institution or transferred to a 4-year institution within 3 years of enrollment(institutional retention), by Community College Taxonomy: 2006

1 Reported intentions to complete program, enrolled in formal degree program in first term (if AA or certificate track), and attended at least half time in first year.2 Did not meet “strongly directed” criteria, but enrolled in a formal degree/certificate program or reported intentions to complete a credential or 4-year transfer.3 Not enrolled in formal degree/certificate program and did not report intentions to complete a credential or 4-year transfer.NOTE: Students attending more than one institution were excluded. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. Standard error tables are available at http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/reports.asp.SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003/04 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, First Follow-up (BPS:04/06).

0

10

20

30

40

50

60Percent

Total All tracks 4-yeartransfer track

AA degreetrack

Certificatetrack

4957

41

59

4755

35

49 47

33

�Strongly directed1

�Moderately directed2

�Not directed3

3-year institutional retention

December 2010 11

THE Dialogue

Ibelieve that corporate gifts andgrants to higher education institu-tions undermine and degrade

teaching and learning. They are theflip side of corporate efforts to reducetaxes on wealth and profits, which hasled the Massachusetts Legislature tosteadily reduce public higher educa-tion system funding over many years.Without much success, system leadersseek corporate gifts and grants in lieu of state funding, but privategifts will never adequately meet system funding needs.

Teaching and learning can be undermined if programs areencouraged to be attractive to corporations, all of whose chartersrequire profit-making as their primary duty.

Reductions in government funding for higher education (bud-gets and student financial aid) put the burden for financing on stu-dents and their families. University of Massachusetts fees have beenincreasing for years, the latest increase being $1,500 last year. Moststudents have large loans to repay. They lack time to study andreflect on course material. I’m always impressed by how well theydo under these circumstances, even as I’m frustrated by the limitsof their learning capacity.

The corporate sector demands that government cuts to highereducation support budgets. It then offers gifts that don’t make upfor the cuts and that establish directions for teaching and learning.Corporations have no business setting academic and pedagogicaldirections. A less degrading way for corporations to support col-lege teaching and learning is for them to pay taxes commensurateto their vast wealth.

For more information, see a recent issue of the AAUP onlinemagazine at www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/.

Ihave received corporate supportfor research from both a largemultinational corporation and a

struggling start-up. My students haveparticipated in both research projects.Not only did this funding provide theresources to fund their research, italso provided a glimpse into the dailyoperations of a corporate researchenvironment. On a recent project, I

had a very gifted but unsure graduate student funded by a largecorporate grant in which we reported our progress monthly. Aftera few reports lead by the student, he says he realized that he wasdoing world class research. This experience was pivotal in his edu-cation. He eventually took a corporate research position upongraduation in which he was afforded the type of responsibility andautonomy usually reserved for much more experiencedscientists.

In my field of biochemistry, we have the opportunities to devel-op technologies that could have significant benefit in fields such asmedicine if developed to a product. In the research and develop-ment timeline there is a region after the discovery stages fundedby traditional academic grants but before product developmentknown as the “Valley of Death.” Corporate grants can be used tosupport this translational research providing the faculty with addi-tional opportunities.

I have never experienced any of the perceived downsides ofcorporate sponsorship such as pressure to influence researchresults or to prevent publication. I believe that this alternativeavenue is only positive as long as the role of the professor is keptclearly in focus.

Question:Do corporate gifts and grants to higher education institutions

undermine or degrade teaching and learning?

Send comments toJRosales@nea.org

WHERE DO YOU STAND?

Yes,corporations have no business settingacademic and pedagogical directions.

CRAIG SLATIN

Craig Slatin, is a professor and chairof the Department of CommunityHealth and Sustainability in theSchool of Health and Environment,University of Massachusetts Lowell.He has been teaching public healthpolicy since 1999.

No,corporate grants open the door to student opportu-nities and provide support for faculty research.RON UTECHT

Ron Utecht, Ph.D., is a professor ofchemistry and biochemistry at SouthDakota State University. He joined thefaculty in 1988 and has served asthe state president of the SouthDakota Education Association’sCouncil of Higher Education.

Me: digital immigrant. You: digitalnative. When the ‘me’ is the profes-sor and the ‘you’ is the student how

does the digital immigrant/digital nativemetaphor affect how we meet in steel and con-crete classrooms anywhere?

I borrow the digital immigrant/digital nativeconcept from an article Marc Prensky wrotenearly a decade ago. The topic seems more rel-evant now than then. Many of today’s collegestudents have comeof age with Google(www.google.com)binoculars to searchthe World WideWeb; with Wikipedia(www.wikipedia.org)to isolate facts;and with Facebook(www.facebook.com)for documentingvisual images of theirlives in the social net-works they create. Digital natives.

When these digital natives scan my syllabuswith its injunction that hand-held devices areprohibited during class time, do they sense mycraftiness at fathoming how smart phones andmedia players can wreak havoc on the attentionspan and diminish academic achievement?

Or do they believe I am a Luddite, a personwho fears and loathes technology?

I am no Luddite. I embrace technologieswhich have appeal to digital immigrants anddigital natives alike.

Students ‘in the know’ are grateful Ihave caught up with presentation toolslike Microsoft PowerPoint that allow meto incorporate animation, sound, and imagesfor a rather more engaging interaction than

that afforded by a dusty chalkboard.That the PowerPoint technology appeals to

multiple senses means it reaches differentlearning styles and makes it more likely studentsremain engaged. They are especially engagedwhen they become guardians of the technology.

When a young person connects to a micro-blogging service and shares with everyone howshe might create a 140-character Tweetcampaign to reduce tobacco use, the chasm

between digital nativeand digital immigrantnarrows.

When the classgathers to watchvideos students haveuploaded to YouTubethe chasm betweendigital immigrant anddigital native narrows.

Our greatest phi-losopher of education,John Dewey, notes

that students thrive in an environment wherethey are allowed to experience and interact withthe curriculum, and have the opportunity totake part in their own learning.

He reminds us that as teachers our goalsshould not be to impose dogmas or rigid ideasbut to facilitate our students’ urge to be self-directed life-long learners.

I am going native.

Going NativeS P E A K I N G O U T

Opinion

IN RESPONSE TO “THRIVING,” MYcolleague and I developed a team-teaching approach for our “bridge”students in critical reading transition-ing into a literature class. Thesestudents are commonly either adevelopmental student needingfurther assistance in reading or astudent that tested into readingbecause of their low Accuplacer score.Our topic was also poetry.We collabo-rate and co-teach this lesson to thesame type of “disinterested” studentsfeatured in “Naturally Averting StudentContempt” article.We incorporatetechnology and music, and added aresponse to the literature component.

—Christine KiehartLackawanna College

Scranton, PA

I AM WRITING TO COMMENT ON“Thriving Academe” (October), partic-ularly “Issues to Consider: Why Quar-ters?” I am an adjunct lecturer.WhileI often teach an introductory classthat falls into the category Dr. Lewesdescribes ("the distribution course,populated almost entirely by non-majors who are there simply becausethey must be"), I believe my studentsare a little too worldly to perform forquarters. Much more importantly, Imake so little teaching that I saveevery quarter I come in contact within order to do my own laundry. (Forgetabout affording dry cleaning!)

—Laura MorrisHunter College, CUNY

New York, NY

Nigel Thomas has been a lecturerin the Health, Physical Education,and Wellness Department at BronxCommunity College, City Universityof New York, since 2004. He is alsoa doctoral candidate at TeachersCollege, Columbia University.

I’d like to say!

I am no Luddite. Iembrace technologieswhich have appeal to

digital immigrants anddigital natives alike.][

12 NEA Higher Education ADVOCATE

1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W.Washington, DC 20036-3290