Too often, students see their overall education as a disconnected series of courses and experiences. Situating a wide range of skills and areas of knowledge over a four-year scale, institutions can use the VALUE rubrics to help students see how their skills and knowledge build sequentially over time, from course to course, and sometimes, from institution to institution.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/

Folks:

The posting below looks at the use of ePortfolios at different institutions in evaluating so-called VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) rubrics, and is by J. Elizabeth Clark, professor of English, LaGuardia Community College and Bret Eynon, assistant dean, Center for Teaching and Learning, LaGuardia Community College. The article is from Peer Review, Fall 2011/Winter 2012, Vol. 13, No. 4/Vol. 14, No. 1. Peer Review is a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities [http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/about.cfm] Copyright © 2012, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Learning Theory and Online Instruction

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

------------------------------------------------------ 2,226 words ------------------------------------------------------

Measuring Student Progress with E-Portfolios In his “An Essay on Criticism,” Alexander Pope defines wit thusly: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed, /What oft was said, but ne’er so well expressed/Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, /That gives us back the image of our mind.”

In higher education today, “What oft was said, but ne’er so well expressed” serves as a compelling metaphor for the progressive uses of institutional rubrics. Are our institutions doing what we say they are? Institutions often tout student progress and achievement based on new initiatives and proven programs and approaches built over time. What happens, however, when we connect these claims to authentic student work? Do they align? Can we talk about student work and achievements across institutions? Why would we want to do so?

Faculty, students, and administrators are engaged in exciting new conversations about definitions of educational progress. While many faculty have long used rubrics to measure student achievement in a course or on a specific assignment, institutions are increasingly using rubrics to assess authentic student learning based on student-produced work connected to larger institutional outcomes. Because of the national, collaborative work in creating the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ VALUE rubrics, these rubrics lend themselves to extending the conversation about work in individual courses, in programs and majors, in institutions, and across institutions.

Academic Pathways Through Higher Education

The flexibility of the VALUE rubrics allows them to be used in different segments of higher education and adapted to serve multiple purposes. Students are the ultimate stakeholders and beneficiaries, and so a key national issue in higher education today is helping students to see a clear pathway to graduation and to achieving their personal academic and vocational goals.

Too often, students see their overall education as a disconnected series of courses and experiences. Situating a wide range of skills and areas of knowledge over a four-year scale, institutions can use the VALUE rubrics to help students see how their skills and knowledge build sequentially over time, from course to course, and sometimes, from institution to institution.

Jason C. Evans, chair of the English department at Prairie State College, believes the VALUE rubrics are helpful for engaging students in a common language around academic expectations. “Since they’re widely used in two-and four-year settings, we can feel comfortable knowing we’re more or less in line with other colleges. They provide a helpful common language for our students to understand what they’re learning and why.”

Natalie McKnight explains that in Boston University’s College of General Studies (CGS) “The rubric is important because it makes faculty and students more conscious of what we are trying to accomplish; knowing and discussing our goals enables us to reach them more successfully. Plus students, faculty, and administrators can use the rubric as a gauge to assess the impact of our program, something we can all benefit from knowing.” She adds, “Articulating goals and then evaluating how well one has achieved those goals are essential to progress and learning in any field. The VALUE rubrics have played a key role in that process for us, as have e-portfolios.”

For students, the four-year scale of the VALUE rubrics allows them to understand their present learning in connection with future learning at their present or future institutions. Dean Susan Solberg of Prairie State College believes the power of the VALUE rubrics lies in this inter-institutional credibility. “I especially like the fact that we can say that we are adopting standards that have national credibility because many college and universities have worked on them collaboratively.” Sarah Burns-Feyl, Joy Tatusko, and Linda Anstendig of Pace University note, “The VALUE rubrics provide a gold standard for assessing learning outcomes and are grounded in theory and practice. After all, these rubrics were developed by teams of faculty over an eighteen-month period, and have been tested in various settings.” Knowledge building becomes more than situational at a particular college or university, communicated instead as a cultural value and a benchmark of higher education.

Adapting the Rubrics to Meet Local Needs

A key component of VALUE rubrics is their cross-institutional construction and transferability to local campuses as institutions transform the rubrics to make them relevant for local student learning.

Alison S. Carson explains how Manhattanville College adapted the rubrics to find new ways to talk with students and faculty about evaluating students through their distinctive portfolio program, transforming from paper to e-portfolios: “We began with the recognition that the rubric had to work for our unique portfolio requirements and learning outcomes, as well as be user-friendly, which meant not too long.”

Burns-Feyl, Tatsuko, and Anstendig of Pace University also believe that adapting nationally normed rubrics for a specific, local educational mission allows them to think differently about student learning.

At Pace, we have had various initiatives and pilots to assess learning outcomes (especially related to our last Middle States accreditation evaluation), but now as our ePortfolio program evolves, we have the opportunity to pursue assessment in a much more systematic way, and the VALUE rubrics (as well as our adaptations of them) are a crucial part of this process.

Engaging Students in Self-Assessment

Another important emerging trend is using the rubrics with students. Rather than just “assessing” students, some colleges and universities are asking students to engage in self-reflection and self-analysis. How do the rubrics allow them to understand their own growth and development over time?

Boston University’s CGS introduces students to a modified VALUE rubric in their freshman year. At the end of the year, students write a self-assessment essay or a video analyzing their own development.

At Stony Brook University, Nancy Wozniak engages her student e-portfolio consultants in the use of the VALUE rubrics focused on measuring “intensity” in student e-portfolios over time.

Understanding Student Learning

The VALUE rubrics have also provided an important benchmark for emerging work in e-portfolio research in individual courses, in college-wide e-portfolio programs, and across emerging national networks.

At Manhattanville College, Carson explains that the VALUE rubrics provide a way to establish a “more consistent, objective and transparent way of evaluating Portfolios.” The college has decided to use “the integrative and written communication VALUE rubrics to align with the college’s learning outcomes for their Portfolio system.”

Virginia Tech is an early leader in the use of e-portfolio rubrics to measure student learning. Marc Zaldivar explains the university’s pilot of three different rubrics to evaluate learning gains in first-year experience and the way the institution then hopes to use the emerging data:

The VALUE rubrics are a constant resource for Virginia Tech. As we work with new programs that are exploring assessment or learning with e-portfolio frameworks, we use these as a starter guide to defining specific learning outcomes (from the LEAP initiative) and how to assess those outcomes with the VALUE rubrics. Our largest project to adopt them is our growing first-year experiences, which is a combined, cross-campus effort for our Quality-Enhancement Plan for our recent SACS accreditation. In this, we are collecting artifacts and reflections from students on three specific outcomes: problem solving, integration of learning, and inquiry. For each of these outcomes, a modified version of the VALUE rubric will be employed to assess student learning in those three domains. The academic year 2010–2011 was our first year of this pilot effort, with six participating programs and roughly one thousand students. Assessment of those materials will begin in the next few months. The next academic year will expand to [assessment of] twelve different programs and approximately two thousand students. Our target is to reach 100 percent of the entering students, or roughly five thousand students, within the next three years. Other programs at Virginia Tech, such as the SERVE Living Community, are also exploring ways that other VALUE rubrics, such as the civic engagement and critical thinking rubrics, may be used to help them assess the effectiveness of their programs.

Like Manhattanville College and Virginia Tech University, LaGuardia Community College has also begun to use the VALUE rubrics to assess student learning. The college modified the information literacy rubric for its local research and information literacy (RIL) competency.

Recently LaGuardia conducted college-wide Benchmark Assessment Readings to assist the college in preparing for its Middle States Review comparing student work from students with twenty-five credits or less and forty-five credits or more. The college believes that the data gleaned from student artifacts will provide an additional understanding of the extent of student learning of general education outcomes. In an examination of student work submitted for the RIL competency, an interdisciplinary group of faculty scorers found that students made a gain of +1.45 on a six-point rubric, demonstrating key gains between an earlier and later point in students’ tenures at the college.

For LaGuardia, this gain indicates that the college is effectively helping students to make gains in research and information literacy throughout the curriculum cumulatively over time. As students prepare to enter four-year colleges after graduation, they are better prepared for the rigors of research in the junior year. These findings are also helping the college to shape its conversation about student learning over time and preparing students for transfer to four-year institutions.

What emerged as one of the most significant findings of this evaluation process at LaGuardia, however, was the importance of reading and scoring student work as part of the college’s faculty development. Faculty found this process most meaningful because of the way it helped them to understand their relationship to student learning, the college’s core competencies, and the work of departments and disciplines. The assessment readings proved to be an enormously rich site of shared faculty exploration into the general education (core) competencies, and how those competencies play out in different courses. As a direct result of this process, several programs have already begun to revise assignments they use in order to ensure that what they ask students to do more effectively corresponds to the college’s competencies and rubrics. More importantly, faculty were engaged in reading student artifacts, using the assessment interface, and defining the college’s assessment outcomes.

Integrative Learning and E-Portfolios

Building on its work as a national e-portfolio leader, LaGuardia Community College recently launched the Connect to Learning project (C2L), a national three-year FIPSE-funded project coordinated by LaGuardia’s Making Connections National Resource Center in partnership with the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning. The C2L project works with a national network of twenty-two campuses—community colleges, private colleges, and research universities—to engage in a collective and recursive knowledge-generation process. The project focuses e-portfolios on reflective pedagogy and student learning, correlating improvement on student success measures, such as retention, with more nuanced assessment of student work using the VALUE rubrics.

As LaGuardia Community College, Manhattanville College, Pace University, Boston University, Stony Brook University, Virginia Tech, Prairie State College, and other campuses in the C2L network expand their campus-based use of various VALUE rubrics, the C2L network as a whole will begin experimenting with VALUE as a tool for cross-institutional exchange. Highlighting the use of e-portfolio to support and surface students’ longitudinal development across semesters and disciplines, the C2L network will consider ways to use the VALUE rubrics to examine student work and compare student learning in diverse institutional settings.

This past summer, the teams from twenty-two campuses sampled student e-portfolios in a structured conversation around integrative learning and e-portfolio at the C2L Summer Institute. The teams used the integrative learning VALUE rubric to explore the range of integration in student e-portfolios. Every campus contributed a sample student e-portfolio. The campus teams rated the student e-portfolios in teams and small groups and then discussed the characteristics of integrative learning.

What emerged in a large group discussion is the importance of intentional e-portfolio development on our campuses. Reflection and integration have to be prompted and structured activities for students as they learn to be more reflective learners integrating their knowledge across disciplines. The group also concurred that asking students to integrate across disciplines can be particularly challenging when institutions do not model effective integration and cross-disciplinary practice for students. It is our collective hope that this will provide us with new ways to discuss e-portfolios as a pedagogical resource for higher education and point the way to future study.

Building a Relational Culture in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education have always been proficient at talking about what their campuses do well. The VALUE rubrics represent a radical shift, encouraging institutions to build a common discourse and to ground our exchange about pedagogy and innovation in a nuanced examination of student learning that these rubrics afford. Not meant to be prescriptive, the VALUE rubrics are broad and flexible enough to encourage campuses as diverse in their educational missions as Prairie State College, LaGuardia Community College, Manhattanville College, Pace University, Boston University, Virginia Tech, and Stony Brook University to assess student learning on their campuses in a relational way. They also present a unified view of the cultural, social, and economic importance of key skills like written communication and information literacy while also creating space for emerging concepts like integrative learning. This work allows us to talk concretely rather than abstractly about student learning and our shared vision for higher education in the United States. It “[G]ives us back the image of our mind,” for what higher education has always aspired to: creating a community of educated individuals poised to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Students beware! When you indulge either in literal plagiarism or intelligent plagiarism either knowingly or unknowingly, you are putting all the authors in the manuscript at risk. Detection of plagiarism after publishing the paper can result in serious consequences to the organization where you work, and can severely damage your reputation and that of the co-authors.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/

Folks:

The posting below looks at the important and sometimes murky area of academic plagiarism. It is by M. Jagadesh Kumar, Dept of Electrical Engg., IIT, New Delhi, INDIA and is from his blog posted on April 11, 2012 at: http://mamidala.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/275/ Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Measuring Student Progress with E-Portfolios

Tomorrow's Research

---------------------------------------------- 1,359 words ---------------------------------------------

Literal and Intelligent Plagiarism: Students Beware! Academic plagiarism has become like a viral fever that can affect even a healthy person if sufficient preventive measures are not taken. Untrained research students, who need to write good quality research papers under tight time constraints, are usually the victims. It is not uncommon for research supervisors to experience a psychological burden while approving the student’s paper for submission to a journal or conference. Who knows if a sentence copied by the student while writing a research paper may be detected years later, subjecting the research supervisor to a great embarrassment. When the supervisor asks them to be careful about plagiarism, the students may also feel that they are being treated with suspicion. Let us look at how incautious writing of a research paper can lead us to these potential plagiarism risks.

You write a research paper when your experiments are complete and you feel that the results are unique and a significant advancement in knowledge. Research papers typically contain an abstract, an introduction, experimental details, analysis of results including tables and figures, conclusions and a list of references. Preparing figures or tables, analyzing the results and making conclusions are the easier tasks of writing a research paper since you must have spent a couple of years working on the problem. However, writing the introduction of the paper is the most difficult task and is often written at the end just to make sure that no important points of rationale that support your work are left out. The reader should get an overall picture and important highlights of your contribution after reading the introduction so that he is enticed to delve further into your paper.

In the introduction, you briefly survey the field, and identify the limitations of the known approaches to justify why you have taken up the current research problem. You then go on to state the results you have obtained and why they are important in the present context. You may also highlight the limitations of your work in the broader context. In my view, writing the introduction part of a research paper is not easy because this is where you are making that emphatic selling point for your research. Students are generally clueless on writing the introduction to the research paper since it requires taking a broader view of the research area. This invariably leads them to read a variety of published papers to look for leads on how to build their case as the most novel and original idea with respect to the knowledge already known.

Borrowing a few words from others sentences to beautify the sentences in your own manuscript by itself cannot be called plagiarism as long as you have not borrowed the ideas. However, students whose native language is not English or those who are not fluent in English are tempted to use the easier way of “copying and pasting” entire sentences. This is called literal plagiarism. The introduction of a thesis or a research paper is the one where you will find most cases of literal plagiarism. Even if cosmetic changes are made in the sentences, it does not keep you from being called a plagiarist. Let me illustrate this with an example. The following sentences are from my research paper.

Original text : Bipolar transistors exhibit a number of significant advantages such as well-controllable characteristics, high speed, high gain, and low output resistance. These are excellent properties for mixed-signal circuit design and analog amplifiers. An emergent trend in modern high-density Very Large Scale Integrated circuits is the integration of bipolar transistors with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology on thin silicon-on-insulator (SOI).

Let us say an author copies the above text in his paper with slight modifications (in italics) as given below.

Copied text with minor modifications : Bipolar transistors show a number of significant advantages such as well-controllable characteristics, high gain , high speed, and small output resistance. These are useful characteristics for mixed-signal circuit design and analog amplifiers. A modern trend in high-density VLSI circuits is the integration of bipolar transistors with CMOS technology on thin silicon-on-insulator (SOI).

Carefully check the above two paragraphs. There are only a few changes in the choice of words. The modified and copied text will still be considered as literal plagiarism if the original source is not cited at the end of the copied text. I would even suggest that you put the modified and copied text in quotes or in italics and cite the original reference. This is to make sure that the reader is aware that the material has been taken from a different source. But this does not mean that you put every sentence in a written paragraph in quotes followed by a reference. This indeed has happened with one of my students. He brought a manuscript in which every alternate sentence is in quotes followed by a reference number. Such a collection of quotes does not lead to any original intellectual contribution and looks awkward.

If you examine the original text given above, it has three sentences. The first/second sentence is a general statement about bipolar transistors and therefore is standard stuff. However, the third sentence conveys an idea or a thought attributable to the original author. Only an expert working in the field could say it authoritatively. When the student copies a statement or thought from another paper because that sentence perfectly conveys what the student wanted to say, there is another danger. You might have copied an idea too along with the language of the sentence. You might not have used this idea in your paper. However, you have failed to acknowledge that the original author is the one who has presented that point of view. This is called idea adoption. If the plagiarist tries to hide the original source to represent the idea as his own during the idea adoption, it leads to intelligent plagiarism.

What we tend to forget is that it is not possible for two different human beings to exactly write the same set of sentences on a given idea. If you have watched a nice movie and wanted to convey the story to your friend, I am sure you would tell it in your own words. We can similarly summarize a written text without the need to copy from the original source. Let me re-write my original text given above to illustrate how you can avoid literal plagiarism.

Modified text : The significant advantages of bipolar transistors are (i) well-controllable characteristics, (ii) high speed, (iii) high gain, and (iv) low output resistance. These benefits make them highly useful in mixed-signal and analog amplifier circuit design. Integration of bipolar transistors with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology on thin silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is an emerging trend in modern high-density VLSI integrated circuits.

While there is no literal plagiarism in the above paragraph, the viewpoint expressed in the last sentence needs a citation of the original source although the viewpoint is re-written. However nicely you may summarize an idea of another author, you must remember that the idea is not yours and must, therefore, acknowledge the original source. Failure to do so can land you in intelligent plagiarism which is even more malicious compared to literal plagiarism.

Students beware! When you indulge either in literal plagiarism or intelligent plagiarism either knowingly or unknowingly, you are putting all the authors in the manuscript at risk. Detection of plagiarism after publishing the paper can result in serious consequences to the organization where you work, and can severely damage your reputation and that of the co-authors.

Academic institutes should evolve an enforceable policy defining the boundaries between fair use and plagiarism and make this policy widely available to their communities via their websites. This plagiarism policy should help the academic communities in improving their self-awareness about (i) what constitutes plagiarism and (ii) the consequences of plagiarism. Providing easy access to plagiarism detection tools through campus-wide licensing will make it easier both for the students and the faculty to keep out of situations that can be classified as plagiarism.

We need to recognize that while plagiarism is bad, we can definitely prevent it from happening through good practices.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Self-directed online learning is not the best: Collaborative or instructor-directed online learning achieved results superior to those attained through independent, self-directed online learning, which may provide a partial explanation for why online learning has not proven to be a money-saver for cash-strapped educational institutions.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ Folks:

The posting below looks at what recent research says about the effectiveness of technology-enhanced learning. It is prepared by the Research and Evaluation Team, Office of Information Technology, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. http://z.umn.edu/research. In an effort to make research in the educational technology field more accessible, OIT's Research & Evaluation team produces frequent brief synopses of important recent studies. These synopses may be freely shared and used for non-profit academic purposes. http://z.umn.edu/briefs. For further information contact Dr. J.D. Walker (jdwalker@umn.edu).

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Literal and Intelligent Plagiarism: Students Beware!

Tomorrows' Teaching and Learning

--------------------------------------------------- 991 words --------------------------------------------------

Is Technology-Enhanced Learning Effective? * What the Research Says about TEL

Instructors interested in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) frequently want to know whether digital technology is educationally effective. Their question is not whether students like digital technology, or whether students are engaged by it, but instead whether it enhances student learning outcomes.

Despite a growing body of research into TEL, it is hard to give a simple answer to this question, in part because TEL studies are frequently deeply embedded in a particular context, which makes it difficult to know how well the studies generalize outside of that context.

A recent thorough and methodologically sound meta-analysis[1] by Barbara Means and colleagues for the U.S. Department of Education helps to address this problem by providing an overview of conclusions that are supported overall by the research on TEL. Means’ primary concern was to compare the effectiveness of courses with an online component[2] to fully face-to-face courses.

Means used a stringent selection procedure in selecting studies for the meta-analysis, limiting the studies to those that used a comparative research design, measured learning outcomes objectively, controlled statistically for possible differences between control and treatment samples, and reported effect sizes for student learning outcomes. This procedure yielded 50 contrasts from studies conducted between 1996 and 2008.

* The DOE Meta-analysis: Findings

Online versus face-to-face : Means found that an average effect size of +0.20 (p < .001) standard deviations favoring the courses with an online component. This means that, on average, students in courses with an online component outperformed students in face-to-face courses by a small but statistically significant amount, after controlling for other factors.

Means is careful to say, however, that this finding almost certainly does not represent a pure effect of technology, or of the delivery method used in the different courses. Instead, online courses were associated with other instructional conditions, such as increased learning time, different materials, and enhanced opportunities for collaboration, which are the likely mechanisms through which they achieved superior results.

Factors that had no effect : The meta-analysis analyzed the influence of a large number of potential moderator variables and found that the main effect holds independent of the vast majority of these variables, including:

* learner type (K-12, undergraduate, graduate/professional); * subject matter (medical/health care, others); * type of knowledge tested (declarative, procedural, strategic); and * type of computer-mediated communication with peers and with instructor (asynchronous only versus asynchronous plus synchronous).

Factors that had an effect : Several other moderator variables were statistically significant, however or nearly so, including:

* Blended learning : The authors separated purely online education from "blended" or "hybrid" conditions, or courses in which face-to-face instruction is enhanced or supplemented by online materials and/or activities. They then compared each of these separately to fully face-to-face conditions. Completely online instruction had an advantage of +0.05 (p = .46, not significant) standard deviations over purely face-to-face instruction, while the advantage of blended instruction over face-to-face was +0.35 (p < .001).

* Curriculum and instructional methods : When students in the online condition were exposed to a different curriculum and/or instructional methods from students in the face-to-face condition, the advantage of the online condition was +0.40 (p < .001); when these factors were equivalent across conditions, it was +0.13 (p < .05). This finding suggests that the positive effects of using online technology in education are enhanced when an instructor adapts curriculum and instructional approach to the use of technology.

* Type of online learning experience : Instructor-directed, expository learning had an effect size of +0.39 (p < .01); collaborative, interactive instruction, +0.25 (p < .001); independent, active online learning, +0.05 (not significant).

* Time on task : When students in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition, the advantage of the online condition was +0.45; otherwise it was +0.18. This difference approached the threshold of statistical significance (p = .06).

Variants of online learning : Means’ study also examined different ways of implementing TEL. In other words, in addition to comparing online and face-to-face learning, the meta-analysis addressed studies which compared different learning conditions all of which involve online technology.

This part of the analysis found that some frequently recommended online learning practices did not result in improved learning outcomes. These included providing multimedia in online learning materials (e.g. enhancing text with static graphic and embedded video), and incorporating quizzes into the online environment.

A group of studies which examined the effects of giving learners control over online resources produced mixed results, with some studies favoring providing learner control and others yielding null results.

However, it does appear that learning in the online environment can be improved by individualizing instruction (providing feedback and guidance customized to each learner’s performance) and by promoting learner reflection (through prompts designed to foster student self-assessment and metacognition).

* Discussion and Best Practices

Blending works : This study adds to a growing consensus around the conclusion that the most effective type of instruction combines the online and face-to-face environments. Other meta-analyses which reach this conclusion are Bernard et. al (2004) and Zhao et. al (2005).

Adapting instruction works : Means’ work supports the thoughtful adaptation of instructional methods and materials to the online environment, and forthcoming research by OIT’s Research and Evaluation Team reaches a similar conclusion.

Self-directed online learning is not the best : Collaborative or instructor-directed online learning achieved results superior to those attained through independent, self-directed online learning, which may provide a partial explanation for why online learning has not proven to be a money-saver for cash-strapped educational institutions.

References:

1 Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., Jones, K. (2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning. Center for Technology in Learning, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved May 10, 2010 from http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html .

2 “Courses with an online component” included courses which merely supplemented an unchanged face-to-face course with online materials, as well as courses delivered entirely online with no face-to-face interaction.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Start writing before the experiments are complete. Start writing while you are still doing the experiments. Writing often evokes new ideas: you may realize that there are additional experiments to run or additional controls that you need to add. If you wait until you are done in the lab, have dismantled the equipment, and possibly moved on to another position, you will not have the opportunity to test these ideas.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/

Folks:

The posting describes 20 important steps to writing a research article. It is by Beth A. Fischer and Michael J. Zigmond, Survival Skills and Ethics Program, University of Pittsburgh Article reproduced with permission, and is from the November 2009 issue of the online publication, Graduate Connections Newsletter [http://www.unl.edu/gradstudies/current/dev/newsletter/], pp 11-14, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is published by the Office of Graduate Studies. ©2009 Graduate Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Is Technology-Enhanced Learning Effective?

Tomorrow's Research

------------------------------------------------- 2,503 words ----------------------------------------------

Twenty Steps to Writing a Research Article THE PROCESS OF MOVING FROM IDEA to published manuscript can be a daunting one. Here we break that process into a series of steps designed to make this essential task more manageable. Our list has been modified and expanded from a list provided by the Council of Biological Editors, 1968. If 20 steps are too many to manage, focus on the 13 steps that we have marked with an asterisk (*) – these cannot be skipped!

1. Determine the authors. When designing a research project, we recommend preparing an initial list and order of authors. Such a list of authors should be based on established guidelines and should make explicit the estimated contribution of each individual to the project. We recommend that every research group establish and make known to its members the criteria for authorship on papers resulting from the work to be conducted. In so doing, the group may wish to make use of existing guidelines; see our essay on “Components of a Research Article.”

A list of authors will ensure that all individuals to be involved in the project understand at the outset whether or not they can expect to be an author and, if so, what their contribution is to be. It should be viewed as a tentative list, as the final version should reflect actual contributions to the work. (Also, there may be more than one list as it might be anticipated that more than one paper will derive from a given project.)

2. Start writing before the experiments are complete. Start writing while you are still doing the experiments. Writing often evokes new ideas: you may realize that there are additional experiments to run or additional controls that you need to add. If you wait until you are done in the lab, have dismantled the equipment, and possibly moved on to another position, you will not have the opportunity to test these ideas.

3. Decide it is time to publish. It is time to publish when your findings represent a complete story (or at least a complete chapter), one that will make a significant contribution to the scientific literature. Simply collecting a given amount of data is not adequate.

4. Draft a title & abstract. Drafting a working title and an abstract helps define the contents of the paper, identifying which experiments you will publish in this paper, and which studies you will save for inclusion in another paper. (See our Components of a Research Article on the preparation of these two items.)

*5. (Re)examine the list of authors. When you have now determined which experiments will be included in this paper you must select the authors and the order in which they will appear. If you have followed our advice to this point, you already have such a list. Reevaluate it based on the contributions that were made to those experiments and the additional contributions that will be made through the preparation of the manuscript. If a list already exists, make adjustments to ensure compliance with your guidelines. Of course, any changes should be done with caution and tact.

6. Determine the basic format. There are three basic formats for peer-reviewed research articles:

• Full-length research articles: These articles contain a comprehensive investigation of the subject matter and are viewed as the standard format. It uses the “IMRAD” format: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. (See “Components of a Research Article.”) • Short (or brief) communications: While not as comprehensive in scope as full-length research articles, these papers also make a significant contribution to the literature. Their length will be set by the journal but is usually 3500 words or less and will contain up to 12 tables and figures. Unlike full papers, methods, results, and discussions may be combined into a single section. • Rapid communications: These articles quickly disseminate particularly “hot” findings, usually in a brief communication format. Articles that have immediate implications for public health would be appropriate for such a format, as might findings in a highly competitive and quickly moving field.

7. Select the journal. There are several factors to consider when choosing a journal. It is unlikely that one journal will have all the features you are looking for, so you may have to compromise. However, there is one essential feature you should not compromise on – manuscripts must be peer reviewed for publication if they are to be considered research articles.

Language: English has become the dominant form for international scientific communication. Thus, if you are interested in communicating your results widely to the international scientific community, then it is essential to publish in English. If, on the other hand, you wish to communicate to a more localized community (e.g., physicians in a particular geographical area), you might chose a journal that permits another language.

Focus: What type of research does the journal publish? Is its focus broad or narrow? Which disciplines are represented? What is the journal’s orientation – for example, is it clinical or basic, theoretical or applied?

Indexing: Is the journal indexed in the major electronic databases such as Medline, Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, or Current Contents?

Availability: Is the journal broadly available? Is there an online version of the journal? Are papers provided in pdf format?

Reputation: Although it can be rather subjective, there are several ways to gauge the reputation of a journal. Ask colleagues which journals they respect. Look at recent articles and judge their importance. Check the members of the editorial board and determine if they are leaders in their fields. Determine the journal’s impact factor (an annual measure of the extent to which articles in a given journal are cited. How selective is the journal in accepting papers for publication? Note, however, these ratings can be artificially inflated in journals that publish review articles, which tend to be cited more than research articles. See (www.isinet.com). Try to find out the acceptance rate of the journal.

Format: Do you like the appearance of published articles – the format, typeface, and style used in citing references? If relevant, does the journal publish short and/or rapid communications?

Figures: Do figures published in the journal have the resolution that you need?

Time to Print: Using the “date submitted” and a “date accepted” that are published on the article, along with the date of the issue, you can estimate the length of the review process as well as the time from acceptance to publication in print.

Charges: Some journals bill the author for page charges, a cost per final printed page. Most journals have a separate charge for color plates. This may be as much as $1000 per color plate. Many journals will waive page charges if this presents a financial hardship for the author; color plate charges are less readily waived and would at least require evidence that the color is essential to the presentation of the data (e.g., to show a double-labeled cell).

Once you decide on a journal, obtain and read that journal’s instructions to authors. This document describes the format for your article and provides information on how to submit your manuscript. You can usually obtain a copy of the journal’s instructions to authors on its Web site or in the first issue of a new volume.

8. Stock the sections of your paper. As you think about your paper, store relevant material in folders marked Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. This will save time and avoid frustration when the writing begins. Stored items might include figures, references, and ideas.

9. Construct the tables, figures, and legends. Yes, create figures and tables before the writing begins! The entire paper should be organized around the data you will present. By preparing the tables and figures (and their legends and appropriate statistical analyses), you will be certain of your results before you worry too much about their interpretation. You also may be able to determine if you have all the data you need. Note: except under unusual circumstance, you may not include any data that you have already published. (See “Components of a Research Paper.”)

10. Outline the paper. An outline is like a road map. An outline details how you will get from here to there, and helps ensure that you take the most direct and logical route. Do not start writing without it! If you have coauthors, you may wish to get feedback from them before you proceed to the actual writing phase. And if you have “stocked” your sections (Step 8), those files should be useful here and in the writing that follows.

11. Write the first draft. Write the first draft of the entire manuscript. If you are writing with coauthors, you may wish to assign different aspects of the manuscript to different authors. This can save time, allow more individuals to feel that they are making substantive contributions to the writing process, and ensure the best use of expertise. However, it also can lead to a mixture of styles. Thus, if you take this approach, be certain that the final product is carefully edited to provide a single “voice.”

“Components of a Research Article” discusses what goes into each section of the manuscript. For a more extensive presentation of this and many other aspects of preparing a paper, see Day (1998). At this point, do not worry about it being intelligible. That comes later.

Some people recommend that you begin your writing with the Introduction and continue through in order each section of the paper. This can help ensure flow. However, others suggest that you start wherever you wish – anything to get rid of that blank screen or piece of paper. Whatever your approach, heed the advice of Charles Sides (1991): “If you try to write and edit at the same time, you will do neither well.” And because editing is often a lot easier than writing, push through this step as quickly as possible. If you are taking much more than two full days, you have probably paused to edit!

*12. Revise the manuscript. This step involves three major tasks, each to be carried out in the order given:

Make major alterations: Fill in gaps, correct flaws in logic, restructure the document to present the material in the most logical order.

Polish the style: Refine the text, then correct grammar and spelling.

Format the document: Make your manuscript attractive and easy to read. It is important to do the tasks in the stated order. Otherwise, you may find yourself spending a lot of time revising material that you later delete.

*13. Check the references. Ensure that the citations are correct and complete. Do one last literature search to make certain that you are up to date. (See “Components of Research Article” on the matter of reference selection.)

*14. Write the final title and abstract. Many changes are made during the editing process. Make certain that your title and abstract match the final version of your article.

*15. Reread the journal's Instructions to Authors. Review the details of how the manuscript is to be formatted and submitted. Revise where necessary.

*16. Prepare the final illustrations. Ensure that your tables, figures, and figure legends are complete, clear, self-contained, and in the format required by the journal. Do not allow any chance for misunderstanding.

*17. Get feedback on your manuscript and then revise your manuscript again. Getting feedback is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your article. First, be sure your co-authors have had a chance to read and comment on the draft. Then, when it is ready, give the manuscript to some colleagues. Indicate when you would like to receive their comments, and what levels of information you would like (e.g., comments on the science, logic, language, and/or style). After you get their comments, revise your manuscript to address their concerns.

Do not submit your manuscript until you feel it is ready for publication. Once it is accepted, further changes in your manuscript will be difficult and may also be costly.

*18. Submit the manuscript to the editor. Follow the Instructions to Authors to determine what items you need to submit, how to submit them, and to whom you should send them. Note that some journals permit (or even require) a “pre-review,” i.e., a letter indicating the content of the article so that the editors can determine whether they will accept the manuscript for a full review. At this point you may wish to list possible reviewers (or individuals to be avoided). If necessary, contact the editor to be sure that the manuscript was received. And if after a month you have not received a response concerning the acceptability of your manuscript for publication you may wish to contact the editor about this, too.

*19. Deal with reviewers' comments. Most manuscripts are not accepted on the first submission. However, you may well be invited to resubmit a revised manuscript. If you choose to do so, you will need to respond to the reviewer comments. Do this with tact. Answer every concern of the reviewers, and indicate where the corresponding changes were made in the manuscript if they were, indeed, made. You do not need to make all of the changes that the reviewer recommended, but you do need to provide a convincing rationale for any changes that you did not make. When you resubmit the manuscript, indicate in your cover letter that this is a revised version. An alternative is to submit the manuscript to another journal. However, if you do so, it may still be best to take the reviewer comments into consideration. Even if you feel that the reviewers have misunderstood something in your paper, others might do the same. Of course, if you submit to another journal you probably will need to modify the format. And please note: You may not submit your manuscript to more than one journal at a time!

*20. Check the proofs. Once the manuscript is accepted and prepared for print, the publisher will send the corresponding author page proofs of the article. This may be accompanied by a list of queries, such as missing information regarding a reference. The proofs may be sent via e-mail or as hard copy. If there is a chance that you will be away when the proofs arrive, have a plan for making certain that they are received and you are notified. You may only have 24-48 hr to return the proofs. Carefully correct any typos and factual errors. And read the manuscript for clarity – this is your last chance!

However, try to limit changes to editorial queries plus minor modifications. If you think anything more major is required, you must first get permission from the journal editor and be prepared for additional costs and publication delays.

20+. Celebrate! As Robert Day says in How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper (1998), “The goal of scientific research is publication....A scientific experiment, no matter how spectacular the results, in not complete until the results are published.” Your experiment – at least one phase of it – is now complete. Enjoy the moment!

Selected Bibliography

For a more complete set of references on writing, see our web site (www.survival.pitt.edu).

Council of Biology Editors, Committee on Graduate Training in Scientific Writing (1968) Scientific Writing for Graduate Students: A Manual on the Teaching of Scientific Writing. New York: Rockefeller University Press. (This was subsequently revised, see Woodford below.)

Day, R.A. (1998) How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 5th Edition. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

Fischer, B.A., Zigmond, M.J. (2004) Components of a Research Article. www.survival.pitt.edu.

Institute for Scientific Information. www.isinet.com

Sides, C. (1991) How to Write and Present Technical Information. USA: Oryx Press.

Woodford, F.P. (1999) How to Teach Scientific Communication. Reston, VA: Council of Biology Editors.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

This talk discusses the future of higher education, which has been based on the same educational model for more than 100 years. But the status quo is about to be disrupted, by the Internet and those educators -- including new competitors -- who would unleash its potential. Higher education institutions as a whole have not adequately recognized the threat to the status quo, or come close to responding adequately to it. In truth, responding adequately will be very difficult, because higher ed faces a classic innovator's dilemma.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ Folks:

The posting below is an abstract of an interesting, and somewhat controversal TEDx talk on the future of higher education by Michele R. Pistone, professor of Law, and Director, Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES), at Villanova University School of Law in Villanova, PA 19085. Here is the link to the talk itself: You can post any comments either on the TP Blog site at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/, or you can write to Professor Pistone directly at:

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Twenty Steps to Writing a Research Article

Tomorrow's Academia

-------------------------------------------- 330 words --------------------------------------------

The Future of Higher Education is Online This talk discusses the future of higher education, which has been based on the same educational model for more than 100 years. But the status quo is about to be disrupted, by the Internet and those educators -- including new competitors -- who would unleash its potential. Higher education institutions as a whole have not adequately recognized the threat to the status quo, or come close to responding adequately to it. In truth, responding adequately will be very difficult, because higher ed faces a classic innovator's dilemma.

Michele Pistone guides law students as they evolve from student to lawyer at the Villanova School of Law. She founded its current clinical program and is the Director of the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES). Through CARES she and her students provide free legal representation to asylum seekers fleeing persecution, torture, unlawful imprisonment and other forms of mistreatment. Her clinic's clients are survivors of human rights abuses directed at them because of their religion, their political opinions, or other beliefs and characteristics that we as a nation have always sought to protect. Among the clients that she has represented are former child soldiers from Sierra Leone and Uganda; political dissidents from Belarus, Cameroon, and Afghanistan; women's rights activists from Nepal and Kenya; children's rights activists from Peru; and religious minorities from Iraq; among countless others.

She is a lifetime learner, always curious about other cultures and ideas, and loves to create anything, from tasty meals, to crafts, to engaging scholarship.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Talk of “post-tenure review” is in circulation at the University of Texas System after the Board of Regents approved tougher rules earlier this month – requiring tenured faculty members in the system to be evaluated annually and receive rankings from “exceeds expectation” to “unsatisfactory.” Two unsatisfactory reviews can lead to a comprehensive review and a possible dismissal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ Folks:

The posting below looks at a proposed new post-tenure review system at the University of Texas and its implications for other systems as well. It is by Kaustuv Basu and is from the March 2, 2012, issue of INSIDE HIGHER ED, an excellent - and free - online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. You can subscribe by going to: http://insidehighered.com/. Also for a free daily update from Inside Higher Ed, e-mail [scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com]. Copyright ©2011 Inside Higher Ed Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: The Future of Higher Education is Online

Tomorrow's Academic Careers

------------------------------------------------- 1,580 words -------------------------------------------------

Post-Tenure Blues The phrase “post-tenure review” can mean different things to different people.

Talk of “post-tenure review” is in circulation at the University of Texas System after the Board of Regents approved tougher rules earlier this month – requiring tenured faculty members in the system to be evaluated annually and receive rankings from “exceeds expectation” to “unsatisfactory.” Two unsatisfactory reviews can lead to a comprehensive review and a possible dismissal.

To some, “post-tenure review” raises the issue of whether a professor’s tenure will continue. To others, it is a process of evaluating performance to provide valuable feedback.

The latter is how Francisco G. Cigarroa, chancellor of the UT system, put it during a visit to the offices of Inside Higher Ed last week. Cigarroa stressed the importance of “performance differentiation” and how those professors getting unsatisfactory reviews will be helped with a remediation plan. He said one weakness of the previous post-tenure review system was that the best rating a professor could attain was “satisfactory.” And irrespective of what happened in between, a tenured professor would get a comprehensive review only once in six years.

The new professor ratings are: exceeds expectations, meets expectations, does not meet expectations and unsatisfactory. The post-tenure evaluations can be used for salary raises and promotions, and those failing remediation may lose their jobs. The department chair, dean or a peer-review committee will do the initial evaluations with the department chair or dean doing a final review of the evaluation. In case of a comprehensive review, a peer review committee including representatives of the school or department will also be appointed. Individual campuses will set their own policies using the new post-tenure review rules as a template.

Officials were not able to provide data on how many tenured UT professors have been dismissed in the past.

“The new document links annual reviews, post-tenure reviews and possible reviews for termination,” said Alan Friedman, a professor of English who is the chairman of the UT-Austin faculty council and member of the systemwide faculty advisory council. “The annual review that was used primarily for salary increases will take on much greater significance."

University of Texas professors have been under fire from some quarters in the state, with Rick O’Donnell, a former special adviser to the UT system, calling them slackers. But Cigarroa stressed that the new rules came about after discussion with the university’s Faculty Advisory Council. “This is not punitive but constructive,” Cigarroa said.

Last year, a draft version of a new post-tenure review process, was approved by the UT System Faculty Advisory Council. But this version was not too much different from the system already in place, according to Friedman, and wasn’t to the liking of the chancellor and other administrators.

Another version of the revised post-tenure review rules developed by a task force of faculty council members and administrators was eventually adopted. This version was tweaked before it passed, because it had been criticized by some faculty council members. According to Murray Leaf, a professor of anthropology and political economy at UT-Dallas who is on the executive committee of the FAC, subtle changes were made to the final version. For example, the language was changed to reflect that two unsatisfactory annual reviews “may” lead to a comprehensive review instead of “shall.” Also, a few sentences were added to a section on annual reviews to clarify that they are different from the comprehensive review.

“The way I interpreted it from the information given to us was that the chancellor was in a tough place in regard to the regents and we were being asked to support this plan,” Friedman said. “Some faculty members will be spending a lot more time evaluating productivity than being productive. The chairs of different departments have a major new workload,” he said. Friedman worried that the new review plan would have a negative impact on the reputation of the university. “Many people will see this as an assault on tenure. It will become harder to recruit and retain outstanding faculty,” he said.

The step by UT -- one of the largest public universities in the nation, with 5,268 tenured faculty members -- not only gives rise to the question of whether more universities will follow suit but also the inevitable question about the viability of tenure.

Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, said the revamping of the rules seemed highly visible because it was happening at the state’s top university, and wondered whether the rule changes were more about setting an example for the rest of the state. “I think the changes are pretty minor and there is only a slight change in the rules. I do not think this will make much of a difference,” Hamermesh said. “The new rules are not such a bad thing and the professors will adjust accordingly.”

The American Association of University Professors has long criticized the practice of post-tenure reviews and its leaders said such a system rarely provided any benefits. “It can deprive a tenured faculty member of the presumption of competence and it can have a chilling effect on academic freedom,” said Greg Scholtz, AAUP’s director of academic freedom, tenure and governance.

AAUP’s existing policy on such reviews says that “no procedure for evaluation of faculty should be used to weaken or undermine the principles of academic freedom and tenure. The association cautions particularly against allowing any general system of evaluation to be used as grounds for dismissal or other disciplinary sanctions."

While the organization approves of reviews for merit raises, it does not call them post-tenure reviews. “We are also not opposed to voluntary reviews that are intended to assist a professor in improving his or her performance. But such a review is not what is usually called 'post-tenure review,' ” Scholtz said.

Scholtz drew a distinction between formalized post-tenure processes and a “dismissal for cause”, which can be a way for a tenured professor to be fired but also added that “some post-tenure reviews procedures can, and all-too-often do, lead to a faculty member being dismissed for cause.”

But those cases, because they are so rare, can test the system. The Faculty Council at the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus has been debating the strength of evidence required against a tenured professor to recommend dismissal. The issue revolves around allegations against Greg Engel, an associate professor of engineering at the Columbia campus, who has been accused by three Chinese students of racism and sexism after he gave them failing grades for alleged plagiarism.

A student grievance committee has cleared Engel and a Faculty Responsibility Committee also cleared him because of a “lack of clear and convincing evidence.”

“The question that has come up is whether the Committee on Faculty Responsibility should rule by a ‘preponderance of evidence’ or ‘clear and convincing evidence,’ ” said Clyde Bentley, an associate professor of journalism and member of the Faculty Council. The provost has suggested that the lower standard - “preponderance of evidence” - be used and the case be sent back to the responsibility committee, which could recommend dismissal. A tenured professor can be fired through a decision of the Board of Curators. On Thursday, UM’s Faculty Council recommended that the chancellor uphold the original decision by the faculty responsibility committee.

But is UT’s new review process a harbinger of the future of tenure? The AAUP does not collect data on post-tenure reviews, but Scholtz said his rough estimate was that one-third of universities have such systems in place, based on his reviews of some faculty handbooks every year.

David Adamany, the former president of Temple University and Wayne State University, said he did not foresee widespread adoption of policies that would put the institution of tenure at risk. He said it was hard to foresee faculty committees making decisions that would get their colleagues dismissed.

“Most major universities have an annual form of review. My own view is that a more formal review at periodic intervals of 7 to 10 years is helpful to give faculty members feedback on what their strengths and weaknesses are,” he said. “Faculty members can get a sense of their career trajectory from these kinds of reviews.”

The reason that the demands for post-tenure reviews are more visible now might be connected to the removal of an exemption in 1994 from the 1986 Age Discrimination Act, Adamany said. The exemption allowed colleges, until 1994, to enforce mandatory retirement at 70. “There is a category of much older faculty like me who do not retire and might not be rigorously reviewed,” he said. Such a situation not only makes it expensive for a university but also prevents younger faculty members from finding jobs. “But I do not see any real drive in this country to end tenure,” Adamany added.

Hamermesh, the UT-Austin professor, felt the tenure system might become bifurcated such that the top public universities are not affected, but lesser universities undergo some kind of modification when it comes to tenure.

At UT, some faculty leaders think that the evaluation process would turn the tenure system on its head. "There is no question that the post-tenure review system undermines tenure. Professors will be looking over their shoulders. There will be no more independent thinking,” said James Aldridge, vice president of the University of Texas Pan American chapter of the Texas Faculty Association. “We fear that the intent of the new policy is to arbitrarily increase the number of professors whose performance is deemed unsatisfactory."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/02/what-does-post-tenure-review-really-mean#ixzz1nyJA0rHZ Inside Higher Ed

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Designing effective hands-on projects takes time and practice, and preparing students to succeed with these assignments requires a different kind of teaching, but most instructors find that the rewards are worth it. The following suggestions may ease the transition from more traditional practices to the hands-on activities and assignments described (below).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ Folks:

The posting below gives some specific advice on designing good hand-on experiences for students. It is IDEA Item #14 by Virginia S. Lee and is from POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction series. Michael Theall, Youngston State University, series editor. POD is the Professional and Organizational Development Network [http://www.podnetwork.org/] and the IDEA Center is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve colleges and universities committed to improving learning, teaching, and leadership performance.[http://www.theideacenter.org/] July, 2004. ©2005 The IDEA Center. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT:

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

---------------------------------------------- 1,000 words ---------------------------------------------

Involving Students in ‘Hands-on’ Projects Such as Research, Case Studies, or ‘Real Life’ Activities

Background According to a number of contemporary theories of learning that are bundled under the umbrella term “constructivism,” learners don’t acquire new knowledge simply by being exposed to it. Rather, they put new information into existing mental frameworks or “schema.” Thus, learning does not necessarily take place through processes like delivery, transmission, or osmosis: a kind of one-way flow from teacher to student that is assumed by traditional teaching practices such as the lecture. Instead learners construct new ideas and concepts through an active process of engagement. Further, knowledge is highly context dependent, acquired through experience and involvement in real-world situations ( 1).

In many schools serving professions such as law, business, engineering, and medicine, teaching practices such as the case study method and problem-based learning are becoming increasingly common, replacing traditional teaching methods. Over time experts in these fields have found that novices often struggle to translate knowledge acquired through lectures and memorization into the useable forms required by practice. Research in medicine, for example, has found that experienced doctors store their clinical knowledge in the form of specific cases with accompanying scripts about the relevant illness (2). More and more undergraduate instructors, regardless of discipline, are catching on and using similar methods with their students (3), and students in turn are reporting that they enjoy these experiences and learn from them (4). Finally as more and more institutions aspire to higher-level learning outcomes such as critical thinking and problem-solving, engaging students in hands-on projects becomes increasingly important.

Well-designed activities and assignments not only require students to possess foundational knowledge, they also ask students to think like professionals. For example, students must ask questions like: What does the particular context require? Who is my audience, and what can I assume about it? What form of presentation is most appropriate for this situation? What is the best solution to this problem, and why? (5). Most students like learning this way, and learn more as a result, and because the level of discourse is higher, it’s also more challenging for instructors, often rekindling their excitement about teaching.

Helpful Hints

Designing effective hands-on projects takes time and practice, and preparing students to succeed with these assignments requires a different kind of teaching, but most instructors find that the rewards are worth it. The following suggestions may ease the transition from more traditional practices to the hands-on activities and assignments described here:

Start small .

Don’t think that you have to completely transform your teaching: one day nothing but the lecture, the next problem-based learning all the way. If you’re like most instructors, you’re juggling many responsibilities and don’t have time to do a full-scale overhaul all at once. So start small: for example, get your feet wet with a small case study that students read and discuss in small groups during class time. Then build from there.

Persist.

If your first attempt doesn’t work exactly as you had planned, try to figure out why, tweak it, and try again. It will take both you and your students a while to get used to this way of teaching.

Explain.

Tell students why you’re using hands-on projects and solicit their feedback. Some students may be resistant at first: they may never have done projects like these and are not sure what you expect. Explain the project thoroughly and encourage students to ask questions. Monitor students’ progress throughout and try to catch misunderstandings early.

Get advice.

Ask a colleague or a consultant from a teaching and learning center to read your assignment of a hands-on project before you give it to students. What may be perfectly clear to you may not be clear to someone else. Clarifying assignment requirements at this stage will reduce student confusion and insure that more students have the kind of learning experience you intend through the assignment.

Revise.

Adapt hands-on projects for larger classes. Even in large classes, hands-on projects are possible, if you divide students into groups of four or five students for in-class activities or out- of-class assignments. If out-of-class assignments seem too ambitious, try them as an option for some students.

Use technology.

Appropriate use of technology can make hands-on assignments easier. Cases or short examples might be in video or other formats that can be available via a course website or through a course management system. WWW resources are always available and students can either be directed to them or be required to search for them. Technology can also facilitate student meetings or communications with you or other students.

Assessment Issues Depending upon whether you’re using hands-on projects such as in-class activities or out-of-class assignments, the assessment requirements will differ. If you’re concerned about issues related to in-class activities including their design and management, then asking an experienced colleague and/or a staff member from a teaching and learning center to review your activity plan or observe your classroom when you run the activity, may be the best course. Soliciting feedback from students is also a good idea. Questions like, “Were your directions clear?”, “Did they enjoy the activity?”, “Did they believe they learned something from it?”, and “What changes could have improved the activity and its impact on their learning?” are all helpful. On the other hand, if you’re using a hands-on project as an assignment, in addition to having a colleague review the assignment beforehand, you might also wish to assess the impact of the assignment and related class activities on student learning. Here designing a rubric or scoring guide to accompany the assignment will be helpful (6). A rubric will help you pinpoint your expectations for the assignment, communicate them to your students, and clarify indicators of different levels of performance on the assignment. In addition to facilitating better feedback to students, rubrics also allow you to identify aspects of the assignment that most students seem to understand and those aspects that give students difficulty. Identifying areas that give students difficulty will also help you target aspects of your teaching that need attention and fine-tuning.

References and Resources (1) See, http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/construct ivism.html Retrieved August 4, 2004.

(2) Irby, D. M. (1994). What clinical teachers in medicine need to know. Academic Medicine, 69(5), 333-342.

(3) See, for example, http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/ case.html and http://www.udel.edu/pbl Retrieved August 4, 2004.

(4) Light, R. J. (2001). Making the most of college: Students speak their minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

(5) Huba, M. E., & Freed J. E. (2000). Learner- centered assessment on college campuses: Shifting the focus from teaching to learning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. See chapter 7.

(6) Walvoord, B. E., & Anderson, V. J. (1998). Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. See chapter 5.

IDEA Paper No. 34: Focusing On Active, Meaningful Learning, Stalheim-Smith

IDEA Paper No. 38: Enhancing Learning-and More! - Through Cooperative Learning, Millis ©2005 The IDEA Center This document may be reproduced for educational/training activities. Reproduction for publication or sale may be done only with prior written permission of The IDEA Center.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

First we decided that he needed to convert his success with multiple choice items into support for writing practice. I suggested he take an old exam and convert the multiple choice questions he’d answered correctly into essay questions and write out the prose answer that caused him to choose the answer that he chose. So, for example, if the multiple choice question stem said “Which of the following examples illustrates the idea of cognitive load?” he would write out why he had chosen the answer he had. Since he already knew his choice was correct, he didn’t have to worry about his reasoning.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/

Folks:

The posting below looks at some suggestions for overcoming "writer's block" during exams. It is by Marilla Svinicki of the University of Texas at Austin and is #60 in a series of selected excerpts from The NT&LF reproduced here as part of our "Shared Mission Partnership." NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching and learning. If you are not already a subscriber, you can check it out at [ http://www.ntlf.com/ ] The on-line edition of the Forum-like the printed version-offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways of helping students reach the highest levels of learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter, Vol. 21, Number 2, February 2012.© Copyright 1996-2012. Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Involving Students in ‘Hands-on’ Projects Such as Research, Case Studies, or ‘Real Life’ Activities

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

-------------------------------------------------------- 649 words -------------------------------------------------------

Writer’s Block: An Essay Test-Taker’s Bane Last semester I had a student in my class who was a real conundrum. He was very smart, very engaging, very eager to learn . . . and very rotten at the essays on the test. He did fairly well on the multiple choice items. When we had discussions in class, his questions and answers were very insightful and showed that he really did understand the material. But sometimes he wouldn’t even try to write the essay answers.

I confronted him after a class in which I returned yet another test on which he hadn’t done the essay questions. He said that he froze up when he had to write something out. He knew the answer, but didn’t know where to begin. Rather than waste time trying to get going on the essays, he put his efforts into getting the other questions right. He looked pretty discouraged, so I asked him to come see me and we’d figure out how to overcome his block, because that’s really what it sounded like—writer’s block.

Obviously my student was suffering from a common malady, something we’ve all experienced. Staring at a blank space on a page and trying to corral our roiling thoughts is frightening. For a student who is shaky in his self-efficacy for learning in the first place, this could be interpreted by him as yet another example of why he doesn’t deserve to be in college.

I’m not an expert in writer’s block, but I know about learning. I decided to disentangle the two parts of an essay in order to give him a chance to practice what was causing the most problem. He knew the material already; he just couldn’t get started writing. First we decided that he needed to convert his success with multiple choice items into support for writing practice. I suggested he take an old exam and convert the multiple choice questions he’d answered correctly into essay questions and write out the prose answer that caused him to choose the answer that he chose. So, for example, if the multiple choice question stem said “Which of the following examples illustrates the idea of cognitive load?” he would write out why he had chosen the answer he had. Since he already knew his choice was correct, he didn’t have to worry about his reasoning.

A second technique was for him to write out essay questions that he figured I would be likely to ask on the test, a strategy frequently used by good students. Then he could write his own answer as well. This has two benefits. First, by thinking about what I might ask, he would be focusing on key ideas. Second, by writing about this before the exam, he would have an opportunity to think through an answer before he was under the pressure of the actual exam. This technique separated the coming up with an answer from the writing it down. In the real test, he had to do both. By doing a little forecasting about what would be on the test, he’d only have to remember what he had already written during studying.

The third strategy was to find a test preparation buddy, a classmate who would trade essay question ideas before the test. Both of them would write out five or six questions and exchange them. This should help because he would now have reached the stage of responding to someone else’s questions, just as he would have to do on the real test.

I’d like to report that he did splendidly on the next exam, but he didn’t. But at least he tried to answer the essay questions that time. I hope he found the ideas useful, but he showed me that maybe the reasons for poor essay performance had nothing to do with his ideas, just the need for practice in writing them down.

Email: msvinicki@mail.utexas.edu

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

At its simplest, blended learning courses are those in which a significant amount of seat time, that is, time spent in the classroom, is replaced with online activities that involve students in meeting course objectives.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/

Folks:

The posting below is the introduction to the new book, Blended Learning: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy, edited by Francine S. Glazer who is also the author of the introduction. Published in Association with the National Teaching and Learning Forum, by Stylus Publishing, LLC. 22883 Quicksilver Drive Sterling, Virginia 20166-2102. [http://www.styluspub.com]. Copyright © 2012 by Stylus Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Writer’s Block: An Essay Test-Taker’s Bane

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

---------------------------------------------- 864 words -----------------------------------------------

Blended Learning: Introduction Today's college students lead blended lives. In fact, if we loosely define the term blended to mean "partially virtual, partially tangible," then we can safely say all our lives have steadily become more and more blended. We access our news online, we pay bills online, we communicate through e-mail and social networks. People with Internet access go first to the web for information. We access the world via smartphones; why not access education that way too?

At its simplest, blended learning courses are those in which a significant amount of seat time, that is, time spent in the classroom, is replaced with online activities that involve students in meeting course objectives. Educause, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the intelligent use of information technology in higher education, classifies courses based on the amount of time spent in each modality (Allen, Seaman, & Garrett, 2007). According to its classification scheme, blended courses have between 30% and 79% of activities online, face-to-face courses can include up to 29% of online activities, and fully online courses can include up to 20% of face-to-face activities.

Garrison and Vaughan (2008) define blended learning as "the thoughtful fusion of face-to-face and online learning experiences . . . such that the strengths of each are blended into a unique learning experience . . . Blended learning is a fundamental redesign that transforms the structure of, and approach to, teaching and learning" (p. 5).

The unique characteristic of blended learning is that a significant portion of the activities occur in two areas: in person and online. Various other pedagogies - lecture, problem-based learning, Just-in-Time Teaching, cooperative learning, and others — can then be superimposed on the blended framework. The challenge of blended learning is to link, or blend, what happens in each medium so that face-to-face and online activities reinforce each other to create a single, unified, course.

A large body of literature, often categorized as the no significant difference literature, is often cited in support of the contention that there is no discernible benefit in the learning outcomes of students taught online compared to students taught in a face-to-face environment. In fact, careful meta-analyses of this literature reveal an important difference: Online learning, and in particular blended learning, can result in significantly better student learning compared to learning in the conventional classroom.

A meta-analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (2009) winnowed down over 1,000 empirical studies to 51 that used a rigorous research design to measure student learning outcomes in both environments and provided sufficient information to allow calculation of an effect size. The finding was that students in fully online and blended courses tend to perform better than students in face-to-face courses, with students in blended courses performing significantly better. Another finding of the study was that the more time students spent on task, the greater the differential in student performance. These findings are attributable in part to active learning strategies, which include opportunities for reflection and interaction with peers, and in part to the enriched content that characterizes well-designed online and blended courses.

However, a significant caveat is in order: The studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior regardless of how it is implemented. The combination of elements in the treatment conditions produced the observed benefits. In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum, and pedagogy. The successful courses included additional learning time. Online and blended learning, lacking the time constraints imposed by face-to-face courses, are much more conducive to the expansion of learning time (U.S. Department of Education [2009] p. xvii). The successful courses also included more interactive materials (learning objects) and additional opportunities for collaboration.

In another meta-analysis of the literature, Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai, and Tan (2005) identified three types of interactions—instructor and students, students and their peers, and students and content—as essential elements in determining the efficacy of a course's design. They further stated that courses with synchronous and asynchronous components—for example, blended courses—report more positive outcomes than courses that are entirely synchronous or entirely asynchronous. When the design of the various studies is teased apart, it's possible to group subsets that identify specific variables. Three components of online learning stand out as contributing to more effective learning: discourse, via discussion boards, blogs, or other media; reflection, either public or private; and writing to learn strategies.

To summarize, blended learning courses employ active learning strategies through the use of a variety of pedagogical approaches. The asynchronous nature of the blended component of the courses has the salutary effect of expanding the time students spend on course material. Discussions conducted online encourage reflection and usually reach 100% participation. As a result, the face-to-face time can be used more effectively, with students extending the material beyond what might be achieved in a conventional face-to-face course. The students in a blended course make more and richer connections between what they are learning and what they already know, creating a robust scaffold to organize the information. The following sections contain a more detailed look at some of the characteristics of successful blended learning courses.

REFERENCES

Allen, I. E., Seaman, J., & Garrett, R. (2007). Blending in: The extent and promise of blended education in the United States. Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium. Retrieved from http://sloanconsortium.org/sites/default/files/Blending_In.pdf

Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. D. (2007). Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

U.S. Department of Education. (2009). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. Washington, DC: Author.

Zhao, Y., Lei, J., Yan, B., Lai, C., & Tan, S. (2005). What makes the difference? A practical analysis of research on the effectiveness of distance education. Teachers College Record, 107(8), 1836-1834.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

If student evaluations are to be a key component in the documentation of effective teaching, then let us be certain that effective teaching is being measured. In addition, if student evaluations are not truly evaluations of teaching effectiveness, then let us not assert that we are measuring effective teaching through these procedures.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php

Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu

Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ Folks:

The posting below looks at differences in student versus faculty perceptions of an effective teacher. It is by Kimberly A. McCabe and Leslie S. Layne and is from The Department Chair: A Resource for Academic Administrators, Winter 2012, Vol. 22, No. 3. For further information on how to subscribe, as well as pricing and discount information, please contact, Sandy Quade, Account Manager, John Wiley & Sons, Phone: (203) 643-8066 (squadepe@wiley.com). or see: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-DCH.html

Regards,

Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Blended Learning: Introduction

Tomorrow's Academic Careers

------------------------------------------------------ 1,182 words ---------------------------------------------------------

The Role of Student Evaluations in Tenure and Promotion: Is Effective Teaching Really Being Measured? As a dean, the fall semester always left me a bit uneasy as I discussed the tenure and promotion process with my faculty members. As at most colleges and universities, our institution states that the criteria for tenure and/or promotion are based on teaching, research, and service. In my opinion, service to the college is demonstrated through various activities such as committee memberships, college lectures, and community involvement. Research is documented most easily through publications. However, teaching, and, in fact, effective teaching, remains unclear. After years of discussing the importance of student evaluations with faculty, and actually having one faculty member suggest that they should serve doughnuts on the day they survey the students to better their evaluations, a colleague and I began to explore what students and faculty really believe is demonstrated by the phrase effective teaching.

According to Laube, Massoni, Sprague, and Ferber (2007), administrators routinely rely on the quantitative rating of students when attempting to document effective teaching. These ratings, which are administered at the end of the semester, most often involve the faculty member leaving the classroom while students answer a variety of questions related to classroom management, class content, and the faculty member’s delivery of subject matter. Since the 1980s higher education has routinely incorporated these student evaluations into personnel decisions (Thorne, 1980). However, for more than three decades, many questions have been emerging about the validity of student ratings for the purpose of faculty evaluations (Sheehan, 1975), and to date few questions have been answered.

An article in this publication stated that faculty members, regardless of their institutional affiliation, expect evaluations of their teaching (Ewing & Crockford, 2008). A study on student assessments of teaching suggested that student evaluations of instructors were overemphasized in the tenure and promotion process (Wattiaux, Moore, Rastani, & Crump, 2010). If student evaluations are to be a key component in the documentation of effective teaching, then let us be certain that effective teaching is being measured. In addition, if student evaluations are not truly evaluations of teaching effectiveness, then let us not assert that we are measuring effective teaching through these procedures. As a dean or department chair, one is charged with guiding and protecting their faculty (McCabe & Bryant, 2009); to do so they must be provided accurate information.

My question to other deans and department chairs is simply this: If we are dependent on student evaluations of faculty for tenure and promotion, should we not first be assured that what we assume is being measured (effective teaching) is truly the measure we are obtaining? Our research attempted to address this question.

Methodology

The research design for this project was cross-sectional, with surveys administered to 265 faculty and students at a private liberal arts college. The survey was designed to capture demographic information on respondents (sex, rank of professor/ level of academic standing, and discipline/major) and provide the respondents the opportunity to define the phrase effective teacher. This opportunity for definition was afforded by providing a list of thirty options to the respondents and asking them to rank from 1 to 4 (with 1 being their best choice) their response to the question: How do you define an effective teacher? For clarity, options for the answers to the question included statements such as: motivates students to do well in the course, uses a variety of teaching methods, makes the grading requirements clear, and so on. The survey instrument was pretested on both faculty members and students outside the population of this study to help ensure the reliability and validity of the instrument. Data were analyzed in terms of a frequency table to display general trends for reporting the findings.

Results

The population for this study was 32 faculty members and 233 students from a variety of disciplines (social sciences, humanities, math, physical sciences, health, business, and education). Approximately 40% of the students were male and approximately 60% were female. Approximately 50% of the faculty members were male and approximately 50% were female.

As displayed in Table 1, some of the more common definitions of an effective teacher by students were: a sense of humor (15%), someone who is able to relate to students’ lives (13%), someone with patience and flexibility (21%), someone who is able to keep students’ interest (44%), and someone who clearly indicates materials to be tested (16%). As displayed in Table 2, some of the more common definitions of an effective teacher by faculty members were: the love of the subject (50%), an instructor who outlines the course expectations (22%), someone who utilizes a variety of teaching methods (24%), someone who is organized (44%), and someone who encourages student questions (22%).

Table 1. Definition of an Effective Teacher by Faculty and Students

Faculty (n = 32) Students (n = 233)

Number Percent Number Percent A sense of humor 1 3.1 34 14.6 Able to relate to students’ lives 1 3.1 30 12.9 Patience and flexibility 2 6.2 49 21.0 Able to keep students’ interest 2 6.2 103 44.2 Clearly indicates material to be tested 1 3.1 36 15.5

Table 2. Definition of an Effective Teacher by Faculty and Students

Faculty (n = 32) Students (n = 233)

Number Percent Number Percent

Uses a variety of teaching methods 13 40.6 56 24.0 A love of the subject 16 50.0 77 33.0 Outlines course expectations 7 21.9 23 10.3 Organized 14 43.7 30 12.9 Encourages student questions 7 21.9 15 6.4

Discussion

The results of this exploratory study provide some interesting insights into the differences in student versus faculty perceptions of an effective teacher. In general, students and faculty define effective teaching very differently. From a faculty perspective, an effective teacher should love the subject and be able to present it in multiple ways. From a student perspective, an effective teacher should be funny, interesting, and able to relate to students.

Here lies our dilemma. From an administrator’s position, if we are dependent on student evaluations to better our professors’ efforts in the classroom and, ultimately, a professor’s tenure and promotion, then are we not concerned when many students perceive an effective teacher as someone who perhaps does not deliver correct information but who keeps them entertained?

If we are interested in effective teaching, then perhaps other methods for evaluating teaching (peer observations, evaluations from those in the field of education, or the model of “teaching to the test”) should be incorporated into the mix. It is disconcerting to think that an effective teacher may be denied tenure because he or she did not induce laughter in the classroom. Again, if we are truly interested in rewarding effective teaching, then let us be assured that we understand the various definitions of effective teaching. If colleges and universities are committed to the idea of teaching and learning, then they must begin by defining this amorphous phrase of effective teaching. Research such as this study only begins to address this issue.

------ Kimberly A. McCabe is dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Leslie S. Layne is assistant professor of English, both at Lynchburg College. Email: mccabe@lynchburg.edu, layne.l@lynchburg.edu

------ References

Ewing, J. K., & Crockford, B. (2008, Winter). Changing the culture of expectations: Building a culture of evidence. The Department Chair, 18(3), 23–25.

Laube, H., Massoni, K., Sprague, J., & Ferber, A. L. (2007). The impact of gender on the evaluation of teaching: What we know and what we can do. National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 19(3), 87–104.

McCabe, K. A., & Bryant, S. M. (2009, Spring). Motivations of a dean: Change or profit? The Department Chair, 19(4), 17–20.

Sheehan, D. (1975). On the invalidity of student ratings for administrative personnel decisions. Journal of Higher Education, 46(6), 687–700.

Thorne, G. (1980). Student ratings of instructors: From scores to administrative decisions. Journal of Higher Education, 51(2), 207–214.

Wattiaux, M., Moore, J., Rastani, R., & Crump, P. (2010). Excellence in teaching for promotion and tenure in animal and dairy sciences at doctoral/research universities: A faculty perspective. Journal of Dairy Sciences, 93(7), 3365–3376.

* * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor