Tests With and Without Motivation

The extent to which a student is personally motivated to do well on tests that measure learning outcomes can significantly skew a college’s “value-added” score, or the difference between entering and graduating students’ performance at a given school. In a study conducted by ETS researchers, students exhibited greater learning gains when they were told before testing that their scores might be released to faculty or potential employees. These results suggest that the findings presented in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses might be inaccurate, since the book’s authors based their research on scores from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a learning outcomes test that most schools have not incentivized for their students. Jaschik, Scott. “Tests With and Without Motivation.” Inside Higher Ed, 2 Jan. 2012. Read article »

Deferring Six Figures on Wall Street for Teacher’s Salary

This article calls out Teach for America and other teaching programs like NYC Teaching Fellows as increasingly attractive choices for top college graduates. The article highlights similarities and ties between the financial sector and elite teaching programs like TFA. Dartmouth acting co-director of Career Services Monica Wilson says that “as Teach for America has been around longer and hired very smart people, it’s gotten even better at how they recruit students, while the financial services industry has slowed down and experienced negative publicity in the media. Many regard earning a spot in Teach for America a ‘badge of success.’” TFA and others are luring an increasing percentage of business and economics majors away from the financial sector and into their programs, says the article. Eidler, Scott. “Deferring Six Figures on Wall Street for Teacher’s Salary.” The New York Times Deal Book, 2 Jan. 2013. Read article »

Predictors of Civic Values in College: Student-Level and Institutional-Level Effects

"A 2013 study published in the Journal of College Student Development, 'Predictors of Civic Values: Understanding Student-Level and Institutional-Level Effects” (PDF), sought to better understand the factors that influence the “importance that students assign to their involvement in activities that promote a social and civic community.'" "The study’s findings include: -Colleges with high standardized test scores did not necessarily perform very well. -Women and students with higher high school GPAs were found to have lower civic value scores. Being of higher socioeconomic status and being a student of color was associated with higher civic values. -As for women’s lower scores, the researcher notes that this data represents a “new finding when comparing results to prior studies examining civic values.” -'Political orientation in students’ senior year significantly impacted civic values; as students’ political orientation moves from right (conservative) to left (liberal), civic values increases.' -A number of student characteristics in college were also found to impact civic value scores. Students who took an ethnic or women’s studies course typically had a significantly higher civic value score than students who took neither. Study abroad and majoring in a social science were also positively correlated with civic value. Involvement in student government, participation in leadership training, and engaging in protest also were associated with higher civic value scores. Whether or not a student volunteers — in particular, the amount of time spent volunteering — had the second strongest association with greater civic values. -The most powerful predictor of students’ civic values in 2004 was their score four years earlier, suggesting that the formation of values prior to college remained extremely important." Lott, II, Joe L. "Predictors of Civic Values..." Journal of College Student Development, Vol 54, No 1. Read article »

Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: Data and Learning Analytics

In part 7 of her series “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012,” Audrey Watters calls out big data as one of the most important trends of the year in higher education. She outlines how advancements in learning analytics and data mining technology have led to a boom in information about everything from how well students perform in virtual schools to who has student loan debt and how much. Watters then poses the question: how can all of this data be put toward a concerted effort to enhance student learning and predict student success? Watters, Audrey. “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: Data and Learning Analytics.” Inside Higher Ed, 20 Dec. 2012. Read article »

Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: MOOCs

This lengthy article has a broad overview of what the New York Times is calling “The Year of the MOOCs.” Watters provides a brief timeline of developments in online education since January, when Sebastian Thrun launched Udacity, to December, when Wellesley and Georgetown became edX’s fifth and sixth partners, respectively, and British universities announced a MOOC platform of their own called Futurelearn. Watters distinguishes between xMOOCs – the type offered by Coursera and edX – and cMOOCs, which are founded on principles of connectivism – the theory that knowledge exists in the world rather than in the head of an individual. Finally, Watters covers MOOC pedagogy and student demographics, as well as the unbundling potential of MOOCs for higher education. Watters, Audrey. “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: MOOCs.” Inside Higher Ed, 18 Dec. 2012. Read article »

At U. of Maryland, an Effort to Make Introductory Courses Extraordinary

The University of Maryland at College Park is experimenting with newly retooled introductory courses for its undergraduate students. The university’s “I-Series” draws its name from the buzzwords of higher education that start with the letter “I”: “imagination,” “inspiration,” “innovation,” etc. After a two-year pilot, the new intro courses are now campus-wide at U. Maryland, with all incoming freshmen taking at least two I-Series courses this fall. The courses, while still offering much of the same content as standard intro courses in the same type of large lecture setting, are “organized around provocative questions or propositions” like “Is America Destined to Fall by 2076?" and "Rise of the Machines: Artificial Intelligence Comes of Age.” Berrett, Dan. “At U. of Maryland, an Effort to Make Introductory Courses Extraordinary.” Chronicle of Higher Ed, 17 Dec. 2012. Read article »