Why is the concept of Student-Ready College so important?
Having a college degree reduces the risk of being unemployed and increases socioeconomic mobility. The student population is becoming more diverse with students attending college from different backgrounds and cultures at much higher rate than in the past. Many students attending college are non-traditional learners, having joined the workforce after high school instead of going directly to college. These students struggle to stay in college and graduate. It is essential for colleges to adapt student services, business operations, and academic programs to be responsive to the specific needs of all students so they are successful. In the past, colleges expected students to come to college prepared to be successful. For many lower-income students or non-traditional students, they are not prepared and look to the college to help them develop the academic and social skills they need to be successful in the real world. Student-ready colleges do this by focusing on the individual to prepare them to succeed in college and to be active participants in society once they graduate. Who needs to be involved for this transition to happen? The motivation for transitioning to a student-ready college needs to be clearly articulated so everyone understands their role and how they are contributing to the process. The transition to a student-ready college should be inclusive and include everyone working on a college campus. Letting faculty and staff have a voice at the table during the transition is an excellent motivator. If they are able to contribute their ideas to the transition, they are more likely to buy into the transition and work to make the transition successful. This is a great example of what shared governance should look like. It is also important for students to have role models that they can relate to. Using faculty and staff to connect with students is a great way to develop leadership skills and for students to feel connected. One way this could be done is by connecting first-generation students enrolled in college with faculty and staff that were also first-generation students. The faculty and staff can serve as role models for these students and help them navigate the college process. Empowering staff to engage with students is a way for the entire campus community to be actively engaged and supportive of the transition. Everyone is working towards a common goal of serving students. Students should also be part of the discussion and give insight on how to move the transition forward. Having a voice at the table will go a long way to getting buy in on the process from the students and make them active participants in the process. Who will benefit from this concept and why? This is a situation where everyone benefits. Students benefit from a campus community that is engaged and actively working to help the students succeed academically and socially. The administration, faculty, and staff are working together to use their experiences to serve students. On many college campuses, staff do not feel connected to the student experience. Actively engaging staff in educating students makes them feel like they are active participants in the campus community and will increase productivity and morale. Faculty will engage in students differently in a student-ready college and focus on student success. Faculty will need to know who their students are, what their background or culture is, and understand their socio-economic status to understand how each student learns to be effective teachers. Students will have more empathetic instructors and be treated as an individual instead of lumped into a group. What is the benefit to the institution for doing this? A student-ready campus creates an inclusive campus community. This is one of the biggest benefits of this concept. All employees across every level of teaching and service feel part of the transition process and are focused on student success. Faculty will become better teachers and connect more with their students. Students will have a nurturing environment in which to learn. Students will all be treated as capable learners and will be encouraged and supported as they develop the social and academic skills they need to be successful contributing members of society. McNair, T. B., Albertine, S. L., Cooper, M. A., McDonald, N. L., & Major, T. (2016). Becoming a student-ready college: A new culture of leadership for student success. Jossey-Bass.
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Global Learning
Global learning is part of international education associated with study abroad but now includes other interactions with people from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds and activities that analyze and address complex global problems. The activities can occur on and off-campus, globally through internships, capstones, study abroad, and locally through community-based experiences based on a global problem or issue or experiences in-country within a culturally different community from students' own culture. Each higher education institution uses global learning to enhance students' intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes to communicate and act appropriately with people from other cultures. This includes understanding, respecting, and accepting different cultures and their impact on society. Students develop a global perspective through their knowledge and experiences to look at global and cultural situations from all perspectives and understand the local and global impact of their decisions. Assessment The Global Learning VALUE Rubric was developed by a group of faculty experts from colleges and universities in the United States through the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). The rubric provides clear, essential criteria for each learning outcome and performance level that require progressively higher levels of knowledge and skills. The rubric is not used for grading and is intended only for evaluating and discussing student learning on a programmatic level across a student's entire college career. The rubric may not be the best way to assess a specific experience, course, or assignment because it is designed to be used over a long period of time. The rubric provides a basic framework for evidence of student learning so it can be shared by universities across through country and used for specific campuses, disciplines, and courses. The Global Perspective Inventory (GPI) is a web-based tool developed at Iowa State University to assess global learning experiences and perspectives. The GPI provides a holistic approach to learning and growing by focusing on three dimensions of global learning:
The Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES) is a tool used to assess the degree to which students possess competencies critical to interacting successfully with people from different cultural backgrounds. The IES focuses on three dimensions of intercultural effectiveness that are combined to produce an Overall Intercultural Effectiveness Score. The three dimensions are:
This helps overcome students' resistance to learning because they see how they are progressing. IES also helps instructors assess students' abilities to understand what they need to do to move their learning forward. Students can also create a personal development plan based on the initial IES results and work on it for the semester. Assessment that involves some student self-reflection is emerging as a trend. This includes developing ePortfolios focused on enhancing student self-reflection and creating surveys specific to a course or program that combine context in the discipline and cultural knowledge. These tools can be used in conjunction with IES, GPI, or VALUE Rubric. Customized surveys will not have benchmarks outside of the program or course context, making it difficult to draw statistical inferences. Institutions that used student self-reflection and ePortfolios describe lower levels of student effort than expected. Barriers There are several barriers or challenges to creating and implementing innovative assessments for student global learning. Faculty can be resistant to any assessment, whether it's innovative or something that's been used extensively. Faculty and staff may not understand the purpose of the assessment. Defining and clearly stating the learning outcomes is essential, so faculty understand what is being assessed. Faculty may not know how to design an effective assessment plan or understand the different assessment methods and align those methods to the learning outcome. There may also be little confidence from faculty in the new assessment tool. Faculty also need to understand how to use the assessment data in the right way. Cultural Responsiveness Students must be culturally competent to be culturally responsive. Each dimension of the IES includes additional dimensions that assess intercultural competence. For example, the IES Continuous Learning dimension includes self-awareness and exploration. Self-awareness measures the level of students' awareness of their values, strengths, weaknesses, how they interact with others, their behavioral bias, and how they impact other people. Exploration assesses student's openness to cultures with ideas, values, norms, situations, and behaviors that are different from their own. It also assesses a student's desire to learn new things through new experiences and learn from their mistakes and adjust their behaviors. The VALUE Rubric assesses student's ability to understand their local, national, and global responsibility to society and to understand and examine global challenges through respectful collaboration with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures. References Association of American Colleges & Universities. (n.d.) Global learning VALUE rubric. https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/global Hundley, S. and Kahn, S. (2019). Trends in assessment: Ideas, opportunities, and issues for higher education. Stylus. Sterling, VA. Iowa State University. (2015–2019). Global perspective inventory. http://www.gpi.hs.iastate.edu/dimensions.php Kozai Group. (2012). Research studies that employed the intercultural effectiveness scale. https://www.kozaigroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Research-Studies-Focused-On-The-IES.pdf Kozai Group. (2017). The intercultural effectiveness scale. https://www.kozaigroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IES_Guide.pdf Kozai Group. (2018, October 29). Using the IES with Donna Evans [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/BqpG7SvTF_M Accreditation standards are the biggest reason for increased assessment for graduate and professional programs. Regional accreditation includes assessments for all programs, including graduate and professional, but the primary focus has been on undergraduate programs. Disciplinary accreditation is more focused on assessment for graduate and professional programs, and the emphasis on outcomes assessment varies depending on the accrediting organization.
Graduate and professional programs use a variety of assessment frameworks and methods unique to each discipline. The assessments are not standardized across disciplines, and there are no minimum competencies or learning outcomes expected of graduate and professional students. There is also a lack of communication about the achievement of basic competencies for each program or profession. These factors make it very difficult to develop interprofessional competencies between programs. Public scrutiny of higher education has increased because of the rise in student debt and the decline in employment outcomes due to the economy. New assessment methods will need to be used to justify the value of a graduate or professional degree. In addition to the focus on accountability, health professions have a growing concern to measure entrustable professional activities (EPAs). EPAs are tasks that a trainee can perform once they attain adequate knowledge and competency so that trainees can carry out the tasks without supervision. EPAs include knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students progressively achieve. Many medical, dental, and pharmacy programs are using EPAs to assess learning outcomes. While EPAs are not currently part of the required accreditation standards, they will likely be required in the future as part of the accreditation process. Medical, pharmacy, and dental education were some of the first programs that required specific standards and benchmarks to be met for accreditation purposes. Current assessment methods for these professional programs also include competency assessment beyond accreditation to include problem-based learning to assess critical thinking. Gleason et al. (2013) used the VALUE rubric to assess a doctor of pharmacy program. The study found this rubric to effectively assess student growth and achievement in critical thinking and problem-solving. Graduate and professional programs can become more culturally responsive by integrating real-world experiences that involve people from different cultures and backgrounds into their curriculum and assessment process. For example, understanding different cultures and communicating with patients from different backgrounds and cultures is essential for anyone in a medical profession. The assessment process should include students’ ability to understand other cultures and backgrounds, recognize and address any inherent personal bias, and communicate with diverse populations. As described in the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (2016), establishing core competencies for interprofessional collaboration creates a taxonomy that health profession schools can share to guide curriculum development. Association of American Colleges & Universities. (n.d.) Global learning VALUE rubric. https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/global Gleason, B. L., Gaebelein, C. J., Grice, G. R., Crannage, A. J., Weck, M. A., Hurd, P., Walter, B., & Duncan, W. (2013). Assessment of students' critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities across a 6-year doctor of pharmacy program. (Links to an external site.) American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 77(8), 166. Hundley, S. and Kahn, S. (2019). Trends in assessment: Ideas, opportunities, and issues for higher education. Stylus. Sterling, VA. Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2016). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: 2016 update (PDF). (Links to an external site.)Washington, DC: Interprofessional Education Collaborative. Guidelines For the Assessment Process
Establish goals – Goals are the outcomes or objectives we expect students to be able to do when they complete a course or program. Program goals are what we expect students to learn from all the courses within the program. Goals can also be called learning outcomes. In the Capstone course I teach the goal is for each student to be able to create a comprehensive communications plan based on their client’s needs. The plan needs to include specific components that have been taught throughout the master’s program. Gather information – Gathering information that provides evidence of how well students are achieving the established goals of the course includes reviewing students’ assignments and talking to the students about what worked for them and what didn’t in the course. I review my students’ final communication plans to determine if they understand each component and have applied the component to their clients’ needs. This review tells me what areas students understand and the areas where they need additional support and instruction. Taking action – Actions can be taken to improve students’ learning based on the information gathered on the achievement of course and program goals. This can include gathering additional information, changing curriculum or other aspects of the program. It can also include changing policies, funding, and planning that support learning, and faculty development. In my Capstone course, action resulting from the information gathering step includes creating a mini bootcamp for each component of the communications plan at the beginning of the course to refresh what students have already learned. 4. Assessment is a natural, scholarly act (Walford, 2010). As academics, we look for evidence to support our claims and assumptions. The data collection we are doing for our dissertation will provide evidence of what we’ve learned about our dissertation topic. My topic is the impact of COVID-19 on the college admissions process for first-generation students. My data will provide evidence that supports what I’ve learned about that impact. Assessment happens naturally as we determine what students’ work tells us about what they are learning. Assessment also provides evidence to all stakeholders that students are actually learning. These stakeholders include educators, parents, students, and administrators. Walvoord, B. E. (2010). Assessment clear and simple: A practical guide for institutions, departments, and general education. John Wiley & Sons. Hundley, S. and Kahn, S. (2019). Trends in assessment: Ideas, opportunities, and issues for higher education. Stylus. Sterling, VA. |
AuthorI am a higher education administrator with over 15 years of experience in communications and operations. The views in my blog are my own. Archives
February 2023
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