Blackboard Blogs

360º View

When I was growing up, a 360º was the benchmark for cool: Cycle as fast as you can . . . pull on the back brake . . . push out the back wheel . . . and if you were going fast enough, you completed a circle.  Only a few could do it, whilst the rest watched.

As we got a bit older, the 360º was the benchmark for the reckless: Drive as fast as you can . . . pull up the handbrake . . . turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction . . . spin the back wheels . . . complete the circle.  Even fewer could do that.

Shedding the spirit of youth and entering into the 1990s, the 360º became a key workplace feedback technique for evaluating how you were doing, what people thought of your performance, and where you needed to go next.  With the Internet, 360º takes on its fourth dimension.

Three quotes jump to my mind this week about the impact of the Internet in making the previously invisible visible:

It’s Not the Tool that Matters Most But How One Uses It

Recent controversy around a Ryerson University student who created a study group on a social networking Web site reminded me of another episode where new technology played a similar role.  I think it will be useful to look at those past events to anticipate the progression of current developments. 

Back in late 90s, when personal home pages gained popularity, many students started displaying/sharing their academic papers on their personal Web spaces.  Some pushed this further, creating Web sites with vast databases of member-submitted student papers and even providing a marketplace where students could buy and sell paper-writing services.  At first, this seemed to be the end of education as we know it, at least to some – there were discussions in academia about banning Internet access in educational institutions or even dropping written assignments as a form of assessment. 

However, within just a few years educators realized that paper-trading and plagiarism were not actually caused by the Internet. The Internet, as a powerful new channel, empowered everything, regardless of ethics or intent, and individuals could make right or wrong decisions.  This realization shifted the focus from the frustrations to educational objectives and led to a number of positive developments, such as increased attention to plagiarism and proper academic conduct.  Many institutions decided to revise their honor codes and other policies to make them more clear and up-to-date, and some adopted technology, such as SafeAssign, to boost their efforts in both raising student awareness about plagiarism and deterring cheating.  In the end, written assignments are still an important method of assessment, and educators actually encourage students to use the Internet to showcase their written work via electronic portfolios, blogs and Wikis. 

I expect student collaboration via social networking follows a very similar path, but much quicker.  The education community is now much more open to innovation and is quickly realizing that social networking is a powerful and valuable concept that can facilitate many collaboration scenarios, most of which are legitimate and productive.  In the end, it’s not the tool that matters most but how one uses it.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like . . . KPIs?

I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with colleagues talking in depth to a vice-chancellor from a well-known UK university about key challenges facing UK higher education.  This was in the context of the Blackboard Outcomes System and its role in supporting planning and assessment processes.

Before detailing those conversations with you, however, I’d like to briefly discuss a popular news story here in the UK which, after reading, I find myself contemplating questions similar to those in assessment processes.

As Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revival of the musical “The Sound of Music” nears the end of its run in London, swansong news articles published last week reflected on the performance of the show’s star, Connie Fisher.  Fans of reality TV, especially programmes with live audition eliminator formats, probably remember Ms. Fisher from “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria,” which ran in prime time on the BBC in 2006.  That show turned out to be the trailer for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revival and produced a “West End Musical Star out of a call centre worker”: Connie Fisher.

The news stories I read played on the dramatic tension of an “amateur” playing the role of a professional, intimating:

• Could someone without a conventional formal theatrical training history ever achieve an acceptable level of performance?
• Now that the show is coming to an end, is it effectively the end of Fisher’s career?

That news coverage set me thinking again about what constitutes “acceptable performance,” by what criteria, and how that is measured.  In short, how do you know something is good?

While talking in-depth with colleagues and the vice-chancellor about key challenges facing UK higher education, we kept coming back to the same problem – the business techniques through which UK universities are increasingly managed boil down to the ability to:

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?”

Assessment Activities at Seton Hall

Campus Technology recently published a case study online about a member of the Blackboard product development partner program: Seton Hall University, the private, Roman Catholic-affiliated school in New Jersey with, according to its Web site, a combined enrollment of 8,400 undergraduate and graduate students.

In the article, Paul Fisher, the head of Seton Hall's Teaching, Learning and Technology Center, explains why the university chose the Blackboard Outcomes System as its assessment solution and how it is deploying the system in three areas across campus which the school has identified as critical to meeting its mission:

• as an assessment and portfolio tool in the university’s College of Education and Human Services;
• to measure students’ progress toward achieving the school’s graduation requirements, called “Universal Proficiencies”; and
• to make its First-Year Writing Program more effective.

(Note: The image of the Seton Hall flag and campus in South Orange, NJ, appears originally on the university's Web site.)

Avoiding “Barney Partnerships” when Insight Partnerships Are Possible

A “Barney partnership”—that’s the way to describe a relationship that may sound positive and start productive, but soon becomes fluffy and empty.

For those who don’t have small children, Barney is a large purple creature who sings songs with lyrics like “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family,” which sound just as fresh and entertaining the 100th time you hear them.

Many partnerships in higher education though, like in any sector, quickly degenerate into Barney partnerships.  It’s hard enough to coordinate one organization towards a common goal, let alone two or more.  And in education, the common goal of better educating students is so compelling that it motivates many partnerships.

I’ve come to realize, however, that education organizations have more to gain from partnering than almost any other organization.  The missed opportunity lies in what I would call “insight partnerships”—partnerships that provide a learning organization with greater insight to inform ongoing improvement of its learning effectiveness.

Seton Hall Stirs Up Discussion on Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education

Hi – my name is Neil Allison and this is my first post to the Blackboard Educate Innovate blog. I joined Blackboard a few months ago as a Director in the Product Marketing Group focused on the upcoming Blackboard Outcomes System.

If you haven’t heard about the Blackboard Outcomes System, you’ll be hearing a lot more over the next few months as we prepare to launch this exciting new solution.

For now, I wanted to pop in on the blog to introduce myself as a new poster and give a quick summary about a thought-provoking seminar Seton Hall University hosted with Blackboard last week on a topic of key concern to our clients – outcomes assessment.

The session took place in the Chancellor’s Suite at the University Center on Seton Hall’s South Orange campus – just 14 miles from New York City in northern New Jersey.  Leaders from a dozen colleges and universities in New Jersey and New York joined executives from Blackboard on campus for the discussion.

Outcomes, Assessments, and More from Dr. Robert Mundhenk

Last year Blackboard announced Project Caliper, a major research and development initiative to create a product to help academic institutions plan and manage educational outcomes. (And it's what I spent a good chunk of 2005 working on!) Because the field of outcomes assessment is going to be a continuing focus for Blackboard, we want to provide opportunities for you to learn about it at the upcoming Bb World '06 conference.