The Other 85 Percent

Faculty: should they support learning outcomes accountability and assessment?

February 26, 2008 | Filed under: Capella, Capella University, Inside Higher Ed, Mike Offerman, The Other 85 Percent, Transparency by Design, college degree, continuing education, distance learning, faculty, higher education, learning outcomes, online learning

One of the questions I get about learning outcomes transparency is how faculty respond to this initiative.  The questions often come with an apparent bias that faculty would resist such an accountability approach.  While there may be some faculty who do not understand what we are doing and others who may be opposed, my experience is that faculty at adult-serving institutions generally embrace the idea of pursuing high quality education and a focus on learning.  They have questions and concerns, but approach the work on learning outcomes transparency in a problem-solving mode: seeking to determine the best ways to create relevant and effective curricula while preserving the creativity and “magic” of the learning exchange.

Recently, I joined several colleagues at Capella University as we have engaged some 150 faculty in discussions about learning outcomes transparency, and we had lively and exciting discourse on a range of issues.  But what strikes me most is that our focus on adult learners leads us to a recognition that we must be clear about what learning outcomes we seek to deliver, how we can best teach and measure those outcomes, and how we can do so in ways that engage the learner effectively.  It is my sense that we are fortunate to have faculty who self-select to teach adults and are passionate about doing so.  It is also my sense that the effort to make sure we are clear about teaching and assessing learning outcomes provides a means to engage with faculty about the essence of what we do in teaching and supporting adult learners.  In this sense, learning outcomes transparency opens up discussion about important issues and is a positively disruptive strategy.

Here are a couple brief quotes from our discussions:

“This seems a very natural and essential process: shared learning outcomes that are understood by both teacher and learners. Assessment and instruction done in this way go hand in hand.”

“I’m impressed by this effort to provide top-quality education!”

But, I am well aware that faculty at different types of institutions sometimes have very different views of assessment and accountability.  Here is an excellent article in Inside Higher Ed followed by series of comments that make it clear that not all faculty embrace the idea of assessment.

The author of the article, Gerald Graff, who is current president of the Modern Language Association and professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, declares that he has become a “true believer in the potential of learning outcomes assessment, which challenges the elitism of the Best-Student Fetish.”  That fetish is his term for one result of what he describes as the “obsessive competition among colleges for the cream of the high school senior crop” in order to increase the reputation of the college.  He asks why schools don’t “recruit bad students and see if we can actually teach them something?”  He sees outcomes assessment as holding all of us in higher education to our obligation to students rather than to operate as “classroom divas and prima donnas” and calls for us to act as “team players who collaborate with our colleagues to produce a genuine program.”

However, he goes on to cite other educators who see outcomes assessment as a conservative political effort that should be seen in “the context of the increasing privatization of higher education, the co-optation of accreditation by the for-profit educational sector, and the attempt to force colleges to accept a version of the No Child Left Behind law . . .”  Simply put, the position of some educators “can be summarized in one word: resist!”

And here is a quote from a comment that was posted in response to the article:  “Gerald Graff’s argument on behalf of outcome assessment makes my blood boil. . . . Perhaps Professor Graff suffers from guilt over what’s happened to his own field—English—during the past several decades. After all, he’s witnessed the destruction of the study of the putative subject at hand in favor of theory. That’s a sad thing, and to the extent that he participated in it, he ought to feel guilty. For the rest of us who didn’t destroy our subjects, however, Outcomes Assessment is a wretched thing.”  Strong emotions indeed.

I must say that I am certain that many folks who support outcomes assessment and accountability, including myself, would be surprised to hear that some people think we are part of some grand conservative strategy to do harm to our chosen profession.  I know for me the opportunity to work in an adult serving, outcomes-based institution allowed me to pursue a passion to extend higher education opportunities to folks who might not otherwise perceive that they had access and to do so in a way that is forthright and accountable.  And I think most of the people I work with share that passion.  What I do know is that being certain that learning is occurring is an honorable thing to do, assessing how effectively we are teaching is not a bad thing, holding ourselves accountable to high standards is the right thing for us to do.  This is not a political movement.  It is an education movement and I am proud to be involved in outcomes assessment and accountability.

Having said that, what are your thoughts?  Which faculty would you most like to work with?  Those for or against assessment?

Mike

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