Members:

I recently attended my mid-year meeting of my Journalism Leadership Institute for Diversity Institute (JLID) meeting in Chicago.  It was extremely informative. Each of the sessions allowed me to see what I really DON'T know about administration. Anyway, Jennifer McGill, our extremely hardworking program coordinator (and AEJMC executive director) requested that each of us encourage others to consider applying for the program.  By now, you should have received the JLID brochure in the mail. If you have other questions, give me a call when you get a moment---I'd be happy to chat about the program as I am really thankful to be a fellow this year.

Also, inserted below is what I'm told was the second lead article in this morning's NYTimes. It's worth reading as it raises some startling questions about the future of higher ed.  In fact, this article might even make you appreciate more the accreditation process that many of our programs must endure every six years.

Thanks
Lillie
MAC Vice Head

Panel Explores Standard Tests for Colleges
 By KAREN W. ARENSON
New York Times

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.

Charles Miller, a business executive who is the commission's chairman, wrote in a memorandum recently to the 18 other members that he saw a developing consensus over the need for more accountability in higher education.

 "What is clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats," Mr. Miller wrote, adding that student learning was a main component that should be measured.

Mr. Miller was head of the Regents of the University of Texas a few years ago when they directed the university's nine campuses to use standardized tests to prove students were learning. He points to the test being tried there and to two other testing initiatives as evidence that assessment of writing, analytical skills and critical thinking is possible.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education, appointed last fall by the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, has until August to make a report on issues that include accountability, cost and quality. Educators are wary. "To subject colleges to uniform standards is to trivialize what goes on in higher education," said Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. "Excellence comes in many unusual ways. You cannot apply the rules of high-stakes testing in high schools to universities."

 In an interview, Mr. Miller said he was not envisioning a higher education version of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires standardizing testing in public schools and penalizes schools whose students do not improve. "There is no way you can mandate a single set of tests, to have a federalist higher education system," he said.

 But he said public reporting of collegiate learning as measured through testing "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents, taxpayers and employers" and that he would like to create a national database that includes measures of learning. "It would be a shame for the academy to say, 'We can't tell you what it is; you have to trust us,' " Mr. Miller said.

 He said he would like the commission to agree on the skills college students ought to be learning - like writing, critical thinking and problem solving - and to express that view forcefully. "What happens with reform," he said, "is that it rarely happens overnight, and it rarely happens with a mandate."

"It does happen with levers," Mr. Miller added, "and maybe the accreditation process will be one. Or state legislators. Or members of Congress."

His push comes as college officials in an era of high tuition say they already feel pressure to justify costs.

 But university officials are wary of the notion that testing regimes should be used to measure all the different institutions that make up American higher education - small liberal arts colleges, large public universities, proprietary schools and religious academies - particularly if there is government involvement.

David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges, a group representing private, nonprofit colleges, said: "What we oppose is a single, national, high-stakes, one-size-fits-all, uber-outcome exam. The notion of a single exam implies there are national standards, and that implies a national curriculum. Then we are on the way to a centralized Prussian education system."

 When Ms. Spellings, the education secretary, named the commission, she said that choosing a college was one of the most important and expensive decisions families make and that they were entitled to more information.

 There is no unanimity on the commission, but some members also expressed interest in measuring student learning.

 Kati Haycock, a commissioner who is director of the Education Trust in Washington, which has supported standardized testing, said in an e-mail message: "Any honest look at the new adult literacy level data for recent college grads leaves you very queasy. And the racial gaps are unconscionable. So doing something on the assessment side is probably important. The question is what and when."

Jonathan Grayer, another commissioner, who is chief executive of the test-coaching company Kaplan Inc., said that with so many students in college and so many tax dollars being spent, "it is important for us to seek some type of knowledge about how much learning is going on."

"What I am for is for institutions on their own or in groups to seek their own standards to show what they are achieving," Mr. Grayer said. "Whether that should be elective or mandatory, that is something the commission is thinking about."

 The question of how to assess higher education has been simmering for years. In the mid-1980's, the Department of Education directed the groups that accredit colleges and universities to include assessments of student academic achievement.

College students have always been graded on exams, but there were relatively few standardized measures of the skills they had when they left college, except for licensing exams and graduate school admissions tests. And even those did not show how much the students had learned.

 "The unanswered question in higher education is: How good is the product?" said Robert Zemsky, a commission member who is a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania. "A growing number of people are beginning to want answers. What higher education is about to learn is that they can't play the 'trust me' game anymore."

Part of what is driving the demand for accountability is money. Ms. Spellings has said that about one-third of the annual investment in higher education comes from the federal government and that officials know very little about what they are getting in return.

In addition, there has been growing attention to how many college students drop out and how poorly even graduates perform in the workplace and on literacy tests in an era of rising global competition. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, found that less than a third of the college graduates it surveyed demonstrated that they were able to read complex English texts and draw complicated inferences.

 It is not clear whether the commission would recommend that funding be used as an incentive for testing or else withheld from colleges that refuse to use standardized testing.

 Although public universities seem most vulnerable to regulatory oversight because they are subsidized by state taxpayers, Mr. Miller points out that private colleges are subject to regulation, too. They are accredited by groups authorized by the federal government. And they must meet certain standards to qualify for federal grants and financial aid.

"What we call public universities would be under the most pressure," Mr. Miller said. "But the question is, How public are some of the private universities? They depend a lot on public funding, too. And we have shifted more of the cost back to students. So I think consumers and other people will begin to ask questions like this more."

"It would be O.K. with me," Mr. Miller added, if individual institutions like the elite universities in the Ivy League did not want to offer measures of student learning on standardized tests. "But would it be O.K. with everyone?" he asked, referring to their trustees, their donors, potential employers and others.

Of course, being sure that tests measure what students learn is difficult. Peter T. Ewell, a testing expert at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in Colorado, said it was hard for students to take tests seriously unless they were "embedded in the curriculum."

"You have to provide incentives for students to want to do it and to do their best," he said. Still, numerous colleges are experimenting.

 Mr. Miller, in his recent memorandum and in the interview, pointed to the recently developed Collegiate Learning Assessment test as a breakthrough. The exam, developed by the Council for Aid to Education, a former division of the RAND Corporation, asks students to write essays and solve complex problems.

 Mr. Miller also cited a recent demonstration project backed by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and a computerized version of a test from the Educational Testing Service in New Jersey.

 The University of Texas has worked for several years to address the Regents' mandate that its campuses use standardized testing to assess student learning.

 Pedro Reyes, the system's associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the campuses first tried to develop their own tests but concluded it was too time-consuming. Next, they turned to an Educational Testing Service exam, but found it "didn't quite get what we were looking for," Dr. Reyes said. The university then turned to the Collegiate Learning Assessment exam, which Dr. Reyes called "a much better tool not only to improve student learning but also to enable conversations about academic expectations and standards."

Not everyone on the Texas campuses is enthralled with standardized testing. John R. Durbin, a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at Austin and former faculty council officer, said in an e-mail message, "It would be a sad state of affairs if the people at the top had so little confidence in our faculty that they really believed outside bureaucrats and committees could help us raise standards."

Mr. Miller expressed confidence that the process would improve learning. "I think the process has been very effective," he said. "The surprising thing is that people who went through it, some of them reluctantly, all felt they had gained."


                Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

    --
John B. (Jack) Zibluk, Ph.D.
Associate professor,
Arkansas State University
Department of Journalism
P.O. Box 1930
State University, AR 72467
(H) 870-931-1284
(W) 870-972-3075
(cell) 870-219-3328
http://www.clt.astate.edu/jzibluk2



-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory D. Russell
Sent: Wed 1/25/2006 8:15 PM
To: William Allen; Faculty-L
Subject: RE: something to talk about

The thing that troubles me is the assumption that any given 'technique' or 'techonology' is the answer. This is a 'one size fits all' notion which has no merit, no empirical evidence to support the claim, and, at least theoretically, is troubling. Prior to coming to ASU I was at Washington State University. While I was the Director of the on campus Criminal Justice Program, I also directed the programs at three other campuses which were largely televised (not by CVN, but by short wave TV). In addition, for the last four of the five years there (year five was part research leave) I also directed the Distance Degree Program for our major (Criminal Justice). You could obtain an entire degree by distance. I had students from Guam to Berlin (and playing winter baseball in the pros). The point is this. In that major, most students would be required to, among other things, be able to correctly take precise notes of conversations with those interviewed, and do it fast. They would also need to network with others in problem solving operations (e.g., drug task forces). I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is that placing notes online defeats, at least in MY field, part of the point of the education. Moreover, removing people from a setting (i.e., classroom) where they must interact with others and solve problems is self-defeating. Don't get me wrong. Most people who know me think of me as a power-user when it comes to computing (they likely think other things as well but, well, you know what I likely think of them). I guess I am. But it is a TOOL, nothing more. At the current state of 'average' technology (the kind our students get to use most often) it is only a partial crutch and imperfect at that. We need to be very careful about the entire business, and it does not help that there is little reliable empirical research on the effect of the use of this technology on learning. Surely you are aware of the research out of the UK that the increased use of technology in the work place (email, PDAs, etc.) was associated with declining IQ during the work day. In fact, those who used it most registered at the level of those who were 'stoned' on pot. That is sobering, not to make a pun. The use of technology in teaching must be approached from an empirical perspective, and sadly, in my view, that is really not going forward in most venues.

Greg

Gregory D. Russell JD, Ph.D. Assoc. Prof.
Director of Criminology
Director of Forensic Sciences
Dept. of Criminology, Sociology, and Geography
Arkansas State University
State University, AR  72467-2410
(voice) 870-972-2284
email:  [log in to unmask]

________________________________

From: William Allen
Sent: Tue 1/24/2006 11:35 PM
To: Faculty-L
Subject: FW: something to talk about



________________________________

From: Karen Swan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 10:16 AM
Subject: something to talk about



        Here is something from the Sloan-C list I thought worth forwarding

        Saw this in EDUCAUSE today...can't resist sending and commenting.

        SOME FACULTY SEE DOWNSIDE OF TECHNOLOGY
        Despite the obvious benefits of putting lecture materials online, some
        faculty have seen a sharp rise in absenteeism that results from
        students' having access to class content over their computers. Terre
        Allen, a communication studies scholar at Cal State Long Beach, said
        that when she posted most of her notes online, attendance in her classes
        dropped from about 65 percent to only about 35 percent. "Too much online
        instruction is a bad thing," she said. Faculty at other institutions
        have reported similar drops in attendance when lecture notes are
        available on the Web, and many have adjusted their approach to teaching
        in an attempt to deal with the change. Some, like Lee Ohanian, an
        economics professor at UCLA, only post selections from lecture notes.
        Others have resorted to giving more pop quizzes, including test
        questions that specifically are not covered in the notes posted online,
        and offering extra credit to students who show up for class.
        Los Angeles Times, 17 January 2006
        http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-noshow17jan17,1,3883942.story

        I can't help but chuckle at the blind spots that some faculty (like all
        of us) have. Three years ago our (then) Dean of Engineering told me how
        he ran his online course - he said he never spent class time on
        lecturing, because it was too valuable and the online course took care
        of content. He said the great thing about online teaching was to use
        class time for questions, experiments, discussions - all the stuff he
        NEVER had time to do when he had to lecture in class.

        A LOT of faculty could learn from that comment. If they think teaching
        is simply posting lecture notes online, and the solution is to give lotsof tests, no wonder students don't show up in their face to face
        courses.

        ******************************
        Al Powell
        Director, Independent Learning
        Colorado State University
        970-491-6226
        [log in to unmask]
        www.learn.colostate.edu
        ******************************


        Karen Swan
        201 Moulton Hall
        Research Center for Educational Technology
        Kent State University
        Kent, OH 44242
        330-672-3317; FAX 330-672-5834



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