Ok, how excited am I to post my first BbWorld 2010 blog entry? SO excited!
So – what’s coming up? Well, you can mark your calendars now for BbWorld 2010, being held July 13-16, 2010 at the Gaylord Palms Hotel & Convention Center in Orlando, Florida!
Sure, Florida is hot. But don’t worry – it will also be humid!
As a Blackboard strategic consultant, I work with 2- and 4-year institutions around the globe in designing manageable and sustainable assessment processes that produce actionable knowledge – knowledge that leads to action – action that increases the quality of educational and administrative programs and services. While I love my work, I often find myself wishing for a magic wand. My magic wand would wave and the potential of outcomes assessment would become evident to everyone around. Institutions would see that “accountability” is not about metrics but about having a means of evaluating the impact of their work and taking action to increase the quality of that impact. Assessment would be seen not as a burden, but as a powerful gift. This power would be understood as making the work of higher education visible – to students, faculty, programs, institutions, and oh, yes, to those pesky entities demanding accountability. What do I mean by visibility?
Best wishes for 2010! Those of us who are involved in assessment are frequently asked “Why would anyone want an assessment job?” All of the assessment people that I know love their work and are passionate about the benefits that assessment offers. As we start a new year, perhaps we should stop now for a few moments to reflect on why we “assessment people” believe so strongly in our work.
As a director or coordinator of assessment, you are always balancing the demands from your stakeholders. The administration wants the institution to meet improvement goals while meeting the standards of the accrediting agencies. The faculty members, already overburdened, often view assessment as another chore to accomplish and want assessment to be as easy as possible. Meanwhile, the “shifting sands” of the accrediting space are always demanding changes in established (and comfortable) assessment practices. In addition to being an administrator and assessment evangelist, you must also find the time to remain current in your practice.
Guest post from Esther Jubb, Manager, Institutional Assessment for Blackboard Global Services.
Hi, I’m Esther. Greetings from the UK, where I work with Blackboard’s international clients as a strategic consultant and subject matter expert in the area of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness. As part of an ongoing series of posts on assessment, this post is going to offer the community a comparison of the assessment environment in the UK and the US and offer context to some of the challenges that we’re currently facing.
As we kick off this new Assessment topic on the Blackboard Blog I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself. My name is Jim Chalex; I’m the product manager for Blackboard Learn for Outcomes Assessment. I previously worked at ANGEL Learning as a product manager where I was responsible for the assessment-related aspects of our products. Before starting at ANGEL, I spent several years at Pearson Education in a variety of product management and user experience roles, all with a focus on professional and higher education. Throughout all of these positions I’ve had the good fortune to work with and learn from many talented educators and technologists who continually strive to improve their learners’ experiences and outcomes.