The Other 85 Percent

Credentials versus outcomes in higher education

October 6, 2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Two of my previous blog posts have considered Peter Ewell’s most recent book on accreditation and quality assurance.  One of the core values of accreditation described by Ewell is “professional practice.”  He states that “the academy is above all a culture that values expertise” and “the clearest manifestation is the historic preoccupation of accreditors with faculty credentials.”

He then describes two consequences of an overreliance on faculty expertise that I consider unfortunate.  First, Ewell describes the “role of deference and reputation in determining quality” that results in a tendency not to look beyond faculty credentials in deciding if quality exists.  That is, faculty credentials can lead reviewers to assume that quality exists simply because the faculty have good credentials, even when there might be signs that quality is lacking.  There is sometimes a failure to develop concrete evidence of quality performance if faculty credentials are of an acceptable level.

Second, a “subtle consequence of valuing expertise is a tendency to privilege sound design over consistent execution in curricula and teaching practices.”  This means that if professionally trained faculty have designed and are delivering a curriculum, that is sufficient evidence of quality.  Ewell concludes that “the underlying culture of deference to expertise inherent in the academic culture sometimes blinds its members to the need to consider deeper curricular implementation issues like whether or not students are taking their courses in the right order or whether they are even completing their programs.”

Certainly it is important to assure that faculty have the right preparation to effectively teach the subject-matter at a level appropriate to the degree program in which they are involved.  However, Ewell points out the dangers of over-emphasis on credentials and the importance of concrete evidence of “consistent execution in curricula and teaching practices.”

Online programs tend to involve considerable advanced planning and development.  Increasingly, that development is focused at the curricular or program level.  In the early days of online education development, much emphasis was placed on developing courses.  But this approach suffered from the same problems that more traditional education approaches encountered in that a collection of courses do not necessarily make an effective curriculum.  As Ewell points out, there must be consideration of sequence and program outcomes achievement.  There are various ways being employed to assure a program level focus and to measure program learning outcomes.  Transparency by Design institutions are committed to measuring and reporting learning outcomes at the program level.

As an example of one way to deliver on this commitment, Capella University has made substantial efforts to expand the usual online development team of faculty subject-matter expert with an instructional designer to also include a curriculum specialist and an assessment specialist.  These added roles are intended to assure an end-to-end perspective on the program curriculum and to embed outcomes assessments throughout the courses that make up a program.  Each program then has a curriculum map that shows when and how desired learning outcomes are presented and measured and concludes with a capstone where a student is expected to demonstrate achievement of the program level outcomes.  We are assessing how well our students actually demonstrate achievement and will report these findings, along with the other Transparency by Design institutions, in early 2009.

Perhaps the next time a book like Peter Ewell’s is written, the value of identifying, measuring and reporting on learning outcomes will be included as part of what drives accreditation and the academy.  That learning outcomes assessment will be valued in a balanced way along with faculty preparation and expertise in a more holistic view of what constitutes quality.

Your thoughts? I look forward to seeing your comments.

Mike

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