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...]