Student Learning,

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• Student Learning,
• Assessment Accreditation
• Criteria and Contexts

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• Lynn Priddy, Ph.D. Director,
  Education and Training The Higher Learning
  Commission of NCA
• Lpriddy_at_hlcommission.org

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The Criteria Plus

• Five Criteria, each with 4-5 Core Components
• Three Commission position statements explain
  HLCs thinking and key emphases across the
  Criteria.
• Four themes that cut across and capture the
  nature of the Criteria. This presentation
  presents the Criteria from the perspective of
  student learning (learning-focused is one of the
  four themes).

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Using the New Criteria

• Compliance thinking kills the intent power of
  the Criteria their holistic, overlapping nature
• Criteria are designed to prompt new conversations
  about the future, student learning, connections
  with constituents, and institutional
  distinctiveness
• The Criteria are more than the sum of the Core
  Components

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Learning Focus Across CriteriaMultiple Core
Components
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Commitment to Student Learning
Extended
Deepened
More Fundamental
and assessing to improve learning
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What matters most?

• What do you most want your students to learn
  during their time with you? To get from their
  whole experience at your institution?
• What are they actually learning?
• Is it the right learning? Right level? (effective
  for what and for whom?)

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What matters most?

• What difference do you want to make in their
  lives? What difference does that make to
  society? To their profession?
• What evidence do you have that youre worth the
  investment? That they achieve the learning
  intended?

New Questions from Many Audiences
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What are your commitments? How does your mission
set the context for what learning is the right
learning? What do you claim you do?
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Mission Integrity
The organization operates with integrity to
ensure the fulfillment of its mission through
structures and processes that involve the board,
administration, faculty, staff, and students.
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Mission Integrity

• The organizations mission documents are clear
  and articulate publicly the organizations
  commitments.
• In its mission documents, the organization
  recognizes the diversity of its learners, other
  constituencies, and the greater society it serves.

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Mission Integrity

• Understanding of and support for the mission
  pervade the organization.
• The organizations governance and administrative
  structures promote effective leadership and
  support collaborative processes that enable the
  organization to fulfill its mission.

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Mission Integrity

• The organization upholds and protects its
  integrity.

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Who are your constituents? How do you engage
them to know what learning Is valued?
Needed? How will the changing demographics of
constituents change learning needs? Teaching?
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Engagement Service
As called for by its mission, the organization
identifies its constituencies and serves them in
ways both value.
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Engagement Service

• The organization learns from the constituencies
  it serves and analyzes its capacity to serve
  their needs and expectations.
• The organization has the capacity and the
  commitment to engage with its identified
  constituencies and communities.

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Engagement Service

• The organization demonstrates its responsiveness
  to those constituencies that depend on it for
  service.
• Internal and external constituencies value the
  services the organization provides.

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Position on Diversity
Diversity represented in many formsRecognizing
diversity is one of the values embraced by the
Commission.Commission does not prescribe a set
of actions to address issues of diversitydoes
expectorganizations to evidence positive
responses to issues of diversity and to show the
relationship of those responses to the integrity
of their operations.
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Position on Diversity

• Member organizations urged to evaluatehow well
  they address issues of diversity
• Create maintain teaching and learning
  environments that provide educational
  opportunities for diverse individuals and groups.
• Provide learning environmentsin which students
  can contribute to and learn from the diversity
  that broad life exposure offers.

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How do you support and foster a life of learning
consistent with your mission? What do you intend
for your students to learn? Is it relevant,
useful, reflective of higher learning? How does
this learning drive faculty, staff, board,
administrative Learning?
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Acquisition, Discovery, Application of Knowledge
The organization promotes a life of learning for
its faculty, administration, staff, and students
by fostering and supporting inquiry, creativity,
practice, and social responsibility in ways
consistent with its mission.
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Acquisition, Discovery, Application of Knowledge

• The organization demonstrates, through the
  actions of its board, administrators, students,
  faculty, and staff, that it values a life of
  learning.
• The organization demonstrates that acquisition of
  a breadth of knowledge and skills and the
  exercise of intellectual inquiry are integral to
  its educational programs.

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Acquisition, Discovery, Application of Knowledge

• The organization assesses the usefulness of its
  curricula to students who will live and work in a
  global, diverse, and technological society.
• The organization provides support to ensure that
  faculty, students, and staff acquire, discover,
  and apply knowledge responsibly.

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Position on General Education
Regardless of how a higher learning organization
frames the general education necessary to fulfill
its mission and goals, it clearly and publicly
articulates the purposes, content, and intended
learning outcomes of the general education it
provides for its studentsshows its commitment
togeneral education.
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Position on General Education

• Effective general education can be shaped to fit
  unique organizational contexts. General
  education must be valued and ownedwhether
• Courses created, purchased, shared
• Faculty full- or part-time or employed by partner
  organization
• Organization creates general education through
  curriculum or experiential and off-campus
  opportunities

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Are students learning what you intended for them
to learn? What is the evidence that teaching is
effective? Learning Environments? How do you
support and value teaching learning that
ensures effective programs?
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Student Learning Effective Teaching
The organization provides evidence of student
learning and teaching effectiveness that
demonstrates it is fulfilling its educational
mission.
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Student Learning Effective Teaching

• The organizations goals for student learning
  outcomes are clearly stated for each educational
  program and make effective assessment possible.
• The organization values and supports effective
  teaching.

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Student Learning Effective Teaching

• The organization creates effective learning
  environments.
• The organizations learning resources support
  student learning and effective teaching.

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How do you allocate your resources to ensure the
centrality of student learning? Accomplishment
of all parts of your mission? Respond to new
opportunities? How do you evaluate and
improve your programs, services? student learning?
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Preparing for the Future
The organizations allocation of resources and
its processes for evaluation and planning
demonstrate its capacity to fulfill its mission,
improve the quality of its education, and respond
to future challenges and opportunities.
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Preparing for the Future

• The organization realistically prepares for a
  future shaped by multiple societal and economic
  trends.
• The organizations resource base supports its
  educational programs and its plans for
  maintaining and strengthening their quality in
  the future.

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Preparing for the Future

• The organizations ongoing evaluation and
  assessment processes provide reliable evidence of
  institutional effectiveness that clearly informs
  strategies for continuous improvement.
• All levels of planning align with the
  organizations mission, thereby enhancing its
  capacity to fulfill that mission.

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Position on Assessment of Student Learning
FOCUS IS ON LEARNING
Assessment of student academic achievement is
fundamental for all organizations that place
student learning at the center of their
educational endeavors.
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Position on Assessment of Student Learning
FOCUS IS ON LEARNING
Commitment to and capacity for effective
assessment and improved learning figure more
prominently than ever in are more fundamentally
linked to all accreditation standards.
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Expanded Learning Statement
Through the Criteria for Accreditation and
multiple Core Components, the Commission makes
clear the centrality of student learning to
effective higher education organizations
and extends and deepens its commitment to and
expectations for assessment.
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Five Fundamental Questionsas Prompts to
Conversation

• How are your stated student learning outcomes
  appropriate to your mission, programs, and
  degrees?
• What evidence do you have that students achieve
  your stated learning outcomes?
• In what ways do you analyze and use evidence of
  student learning?
• How do you ensure shared responsibility for
  student learning assessment of student
  learning?
• How do you evaluate and improve the effectiveness
  of your efforts to assess and improve student
  learning?

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How does the Commission define assessment?
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As a Strategy of Inquiry
ASSESSMENT of STUDENT LEARNING is a
participatory, iterative process that

• Provides data/information you need on your
  students learning,
• Engages you and others in analyzing and using
  this data/information to confirm and improve
  teaching and learning,

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As a Strategy of Inquiry
ASSESSMENT of STUDENT LEARNING is a
participatory, iterative process that

• Produces evidence that students are learning the
  outcomes you intended,
• Guides you in making educational and
  institutional improvements,
• Evaluates whether changes made improve/impact
  student learning, AND DOCUMENTS THE LEARNING AND
  YOUR EFFORTS.

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Evidence More Fundamental
Evidence via assessment is more fundamental than
ever to knowing students are learning what they
need to learn, to ensuring student learning is
central at our institutions, and to
demonstrating higher educations effectiveness
to the public and others.
Why document?
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What about evaluation? Institutional
effectiveness?
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Student Learning is Central to determining
Educational Quality
What does this mean in action?
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Assessment is central to improving Student
Learning
Assessment is a strategy in part for
organizational accountability, distinctiveness, ac
creditation, and effectiveness.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, assessment is a strategy for
understanding and improving student learning and
educational quality.
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Commitment to Student Learning
Extended
Deepened
More Fundamental
and assessing to improve learning
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Accountability for Student Learning
Purposeful
Assessable
Transparent
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What have we learned about assessing student
learning?
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What have we learned?

• No one right way to set up efforts to assess
  BUT should be informed by scholarship, good
  practice, mission, degree level, culture, and
  context.
• Institutions take a diversity of approaches and
  paces to assessing learning (grad differs from
  undergrad as well).

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What have we learned?

• Institutions adopt techniques models, assuming
  theyll work. Adopting anothers model wholesale
  rarely works.
• Common principles apply, but institutions must
  discuss, research, create ways to fit their
  contexts (all levels).

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What have we learned?

• Assessment needs to be meaningful useful to the
  institution and to intended learning.
• Assessment is not about amassing data, but rather
  about analyzing and using it to make a difference
  in student learning.

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In Fact
A focus solely on structures processes of
assessing keeps many institutions from taking
the next step--to a focus on understanding
improving student learning
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Key Issues
Effective efforts to assess learning

• Require stable, committed leadership widespread
  agreement on learning as priority
• Employ workable processes with reasonable
  schedules -- it takes time
• Are characterized by fits, starts, revisions, and
  experimentation, yet a sustained effort still
  evident

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Key Issues
Effective efforts to assess learning

• Engage faculty (beyond buy-in) and administrators
  and others across the institution
• Figure out the balance with already heavy work
  loads focused on other priorities
• Gather use meaningful, useful data on learning

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Key Issues
Effective efforts to assess learning

• Require dialogue, time to talk about learning and
  assessment and to analyze and to act on data
• Are fit to purpose for the institution, the
  degree, the program, the students
• Are sustainable and sustained with resources
• Influence planning, budgeting, decision-makingins
  titutional improvement and shared responsibility
  for learning

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Myths and Misconceptions

• The more outcomes the better at every level.
• The more assessment the better you must assess
  everything at every level every time.
• You must have certain structures in place.
• You must have certain positions in place.
• You must have specific types of measures for
  assessment to be credible.
• Assessment of learning is in the academic side of
  the house it is the facultys responsibility.

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Insatiable curiosity about what students are
learninga drive to understand and make a
difference in that learninga strategy to make
the difference a reality
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Five Fundamental Questionsas Prompts to
Conversation

• How are your stated student learning outcomes
  appropriate to your mission, programs, and
  degrees?
• What evidence do you have that students achieve
  your stated learning outcomes?
• In what ways do you analyze and use evidence of
  student learning?
• How do you ensure shared responsibility for
  student learning assessment of student
  learning?
• How do you evaluate and improve the effectiveness
  of your efforts to assess and improve student
  learning?

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Using the Questions

• Not a writing activityrather a dialogue process
• Reveals all that you are already doing at many
  levels and across many people
• Shifts the conversation to learningassessment is
  a tool, a strategy to get at that learning

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Commitment to Student Learning
Effective assessment becomes a matter of
commitment, not a matter of compliance