Category: Blog

by Pat Hutchings and Mary Deane Sorcinelli The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)—held January 23-26th in Atlanta, Georgia--focused on the need to create more compelling narratives about the value of higher education.  Two critical elements in doing so are the assessment of student learning outcomes and faculty development. The idea that these two activities might be “better together,” working in partnership with each other, was the theme … [Read more...]

Indiana University will be hosting its second annual Learning Analytics Summit on April 3-5, 2019, in Bloomington, IN. Sponsored by the Center for Learning Analytics and Student Success (CLASS), this years' theme is Engaging Faculty in the Research of Student Success. Registration is free but space is limited! The purpose of the annual summit is to foster the widespread use of learning analytics by faculty, providing them with the support and tools they to conduct scholarly research about … [Read more...]

BVA’s RAC1, TRESTLE, has a brown bag webinar scheduled January 28 at 3PM Central time.  “Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Leveraging Course Transformation for Broader Curriculum Design,” will be facilitated by Andrea Greenhoot and Joshua Potter of KU. You can find a link to register for the webinar here. Previous brown bag webinars included: Colloquium: “How to be a great embedded expert,”  Stephanie Chasteen (University of Colorado Boulder) and Warren Code, UBC) ,December 3, … [Read more...]

The BVA aims to support and sustain the widespread adoption of instructional methods leading to better student learning.  That, in turn, means being more aware of the challenges students face as learners.  This short YouTube video captures the experience of faculty at Indiana University Bloomington as they reflect on the need to provide students with explicit guidance about the “mental moves” of their discipline or field.  As research makes clear, doing so is key to helping students overcome … [Read more...]

Queen’s University (Kingston) has published a report for a four-year project on Learning Outcomes Assessment funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO). The findings are important not just for Queen’s University but for the higher education sector as a whole. The project demonstrated that there was a measurable increase in students’ abilities in higher order cognitive skills like critical thinking, problem solving and written communication across a four-year degree. The … [Read more...]

By Doug Ward   From the trenches, the work to improve college teaching seems interminably slow. Those of us at research universities devote time to our students at our own peril as colleagues who shrug off teaching and service in favor of research earn praise and promotion. When we point out deep flaws in a lecture-oriented system that promotes passive, shallow learning, we are too often told that such a system is the only way to educate large numbers of students. We seemingly write the … [Read more...]

By George Rehrey, Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) faculty members were recognized at this year’s Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK) for their contributions to the emerging field of learning analytics. Their work in furthering student success at IUB was featured in a paper titled Implementation of a Learning Analytics Fellows Program, which received the Best Practitioner Long Paper award from a review committee representing the Society for … [Read more...]

by Doug Ward, University of Kansas Over recent months, the assessment of student learning outcomes has been taking a beating. Many visitors to this site may have seen, for example, the New York Times op ed piece by Molly Worthen, entitled “The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes." Worthen’s view is no doubt shared by some faculty on some campuses but it has also prompted a flurry of counterpoints. One of those follows here, from Doug Ward, a BVA member from the University of Kansas, … [Read more...]

One of the central themes of the Bay View Alliance is the importance of effective leadership in supporting and sustaining the widespread adoption of teaching approaches that lead to better student learning. This piece explores how leaders can tap into and accelerate what John Kotter calls the "Thrive Channel." While the call for change is often met with a "flight or fight" response (the "Survive Channel"), the Thrive Channel evokes positive emotions and helps people focus on perceived … [Read more...]

In the Fall of 2017, Queen’s launched the “Cognitive Assessment Redesign” (CAR), a Learning Outcomes Assessment Consortium 2 initiative, funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. The CAR project features an integrated support network to expand learning opportunities and tailoring assessment to directly target the skills of critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving. Instructors from 25 first and fourth year courses expressed interest in redesigning assignments to … [Read more...]