Blackboard Forum: Accountability in Higher Education
Blackboard held its second forum in the Blackboard Education Leadership Series on November 14. The forum, titled “Promises and Pitfalls of Accountability in Higher Education,” was held at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C.
Five experts on assessment in higher education participated in a panel discussion of the increasingly important and innovative roles that data, measurement, and technology play in the improvement of student learning and institutional accountability.
Pictured above are the forum panel members, from left to right:
- Dr. Catherine Finnegan, Director, Assessment & Public Information, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia
- Dr. Cathy Kelley, Assistant Provost for Educational Technology, Fairleigh Dickinson University
- Dr. Steven Crow, President, Higher Learning Commission
- Dr. Peggy Maki, International advocate for student learning assessment and author of Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution
- Moderator Terrell Rhodes, Vice President of Quality, Curriculum & Assessment, Association of American Colleges and Universities
Forum Attendees
Following their informative exchange, the panelists answered questions posed by audience members, comprised of representatives from several learning institutions, including Baltimore International College, Bowie State University, Georgetown University, Howard University and Morgan State University; education associations, such as the American Council on Education, and Center for College Affordability and Productivity; U.S. Congressional staff members; and writers from industry publications and the mainstream media, such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Magazine Group and U.S. News & World Report.
Panel Discussion
To open the forum, after introducing each of the panelists, Mr. Rhodes slyly framed the discussion with a provocative question: “A culture change is occurring. We live in a culture with NCLB [No Child Left Behind], rankings for everything, and we want to know the score of everything. What’s wrong with that?”
Dr. Maki pointed out that scoring occurs in an isolated moment, so assessment by a single score doesn’t measure what students are learning. Using one indicator can’t measure the teaching and learning cultures of the institutions, or other factors such as the diversity of students. As a result, Dr. Maki explained, “[w]e need to track the chronology of student learning over time.” She stressed the importance of mapping to student learning both the curricular and co-curricular activities available to students.
Dr. Crow, of the Higher Learning Commission, then provided an historical view of assessment in higher education: “Assessment has occurred in higher ed for some 20 years,” he explained, “but it has been largely invisible, because accrediting institutions considered assessment a part of self-improvement [for institutions]. So the success stories have been [in] documenting individual programs and specific schools.” During the last decade, however, major advancements have occurred, toward wider assessment and the collective ownership of student learning.
Trends in Assessment
Dr. Crow identified three shifts, or contemporary trends, in assessment practices:
- Transparency
- National Standards
- Comparability
Previously, institutional improvement drove assessment activities, so the processes often remained opaque to outsiders. Now, however, greater transparency is demanded in the collection and provision of data.
The focus of assessment practices also has shifted because of the standardization (and codification in law) of national expectations: Are U.S. learning institutions getting more students into the K-20 education pipeline and ensuring they graduate?
Finally, in our contemporary “culture of ranking” (that Mr. Rhodes detailed when opening the discussion), every educational institution must know itself well and how it compares to other institutions—in its geographic area, across the country and abroad.
Dr. Finnegan noted that, until recently, “[a]ssessment of students and programs has been in two separate houses.” In line with the three trends outlined by Dr. Crow, Dr. Finnegan then discussed how the University System of Georgia is moving from a course-based assessment model to a system-based model. She said, “From a systems perspective, gathering all the data can be daunting,” so, two or three times each year, they gather faculty members to discuss the process and share success stories with one another.
Dr. Kelley explained the highest priority at Fairleigh Dickinson University is implementing models of assessment, and she offered two examples of implementations at the program level that led to highly successful results, within the university’s nursing program and the hotel, restaurant and tourism management program.
Accrediting Agencies
Mr. Rhodes, the panel’s moderator, then shifted the focus of discussion to accrediting agencies and asked how they view, and are responding to, these three shifts in assessment modeling.
Dr. Crow explained that “[e]ssentially, institutions are giving information dumps in reaction to the performance templates” mandated by NCLB and advocated by the Spelling Commission. Such large chunks of data are leading to information overload and make facile comparisons between schools difficult. Dr. Crow said a challenge faced by learning institutions and accrediting agencies now is determining how to deal with this conundrum.
Technology in Assessment
Discussion amongst the panelists then shifted to the role technology plays in assessment. Dr. Kelley, of Fairleigh Dickinson, explained, “Technology enables us to create learning experiences for all areas of students—from remedial to advanced students.” She added, “On an institutional level, the increasing complexity of assessment has made it very difficult to record and compare data. Technology is helping with this.”
Dr. Finnegan, of the University System of Georgia, described the increased amount of data now obtainable and shareable because of technology as being “a blessing and a curse”: “With more information, we need more advanced and creative statistical models to gauge student progress and success.” However, she explained, “Administrators use the data captured in LMSs [learning management systems] and within publisher packages to assess courses and programs, and adjust them on the fly to increase opportunities for students.”
Assessment and e-Portfolios
Dr. Crow raised the topic of e-portfolios, which Dr. Maki strongly endorsed as the best example of how technology can be used to gauge student learning and success, as they allow us to “look at a student’s progress chronologically against an institution’s expectations.”
Dr. Maki pointed out that e-portfolios enable co-curricular aspects of students’ experiences to be included in the assessment of their learning. Future employers, she explained, “like being able to see multiple aspects of a student’s career to gauge their learning and experiences.”
Dr. Finnegan noted e-portfolios are beneficial on the institution level as they enable us to gauge an instructor’s performance over time. And Mr. Rhodes added a further benefit derived from the use of e-portfolios: they enable students to assess their own learning and receive feedback (which most scoring assessment models don’t allow for). “Technology is allowing faculty members and students to pull data together and share it,” he explained.
Questions and Video of Forum
During the Q&A, panelists discussed several of the questions raised by audience members, but—as often happens during interesting forums—the time available ran down, and the panelists were unable to address some of the queries and weren’t able to answer others as fully as they would have liked.
We will post the questions submitted during the forum here on EducateInnovate.com, and in future posts the panelists will offer longer, more comprehensive responses. If you have a question you’d like to pose to the panelists, please e-mail it to blogfeedback@blackboard.com, and I will include it in a future post.
In the coming days, we also will post a video of the entire forum both here and on the Blackboard Web site.
