“A” is for actionable!

Assessment geeks like me refer to this as “closing the loop” — using our assessment findings (whether direct or indirect) to make improvements in our assignments, course design, instructional methodologies, programs, or our student services. Or, when appropriate, using our assessment findings to showcase what we are doing really well!

In the Assessment Program at my university, we constantly try to ask this question: What can we do with this data? We often all have the What? and we might even have the So What? But then …

NOW WHAT?

Simply put: How will what we learn here help us improve? What actions should we take accordingly?

So now we are writing about some of these assessment projects we’re working on making more actionable in my colleague’s Actionable Data blog. (By “we,” I mean “she.”)

(Oh – who is she? Her name is Kim Firth, and she’s an awesome data geek and a very cool colleague.)

Here’s part 1 of several posts to come about a project we are working on (again, by “we” I mean “she”): the revision of our Alumni Survey. Read it and weep. Ok, don’t weep – it’s not sad. If anything it should make you happy that we’re being so intentional about making this survey actionable.

Lessons from an attempt at action-focused survey revision

• Team Building: Managing Work Groups
• Great Meetings! Planning and Facilitating Difficult Group Discussion
• Leadership Communication
• Managing Transitions
• Conflict Management
• Negotiation
• Legal Issues of Managing Human Organization
• HR for the Career Minded Professional
• Creating Inclusive Trust Cultures
• Listening Skills
• Public Presentations

Congratulations, Bobbi!

In Bobbi’s Final Reflection Essay she wrote, in part,

My biggest ‘ah-hah’ moment was towards the end of LRN 312 when I was seriously getting tired of writing essays. My inner voice was telling me that I was getting tired and I wanted to learn and write about something that I did not already know. Then it occurred to me that the PLA process and writing itself was, in fact, teaching me something new. I was learning how to and becoming a masterful writer!

Bobbi talks about her PLA journey and simple tips for success here:

• Effective Listening
• Small Group Communication
• Conflict Management
• Nonverbal Communication
• Planning & Facilitating Difficult Group Discussions
• Communication of Self-Esteem
• Team Building
• Intercultural Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Poverty and Schooling

In his Final Reflection Essay, Greg wrote, in part, “I learned how to analyze and evaluate theoretical texts from scholarly sources and to apply this material to my own life experience.  Organizing my essays produced a continuum, and with the completion of each paper the method became smoother.”  Greg talks more about his experiences with PLA and tips for PLA students here:

As part of her undergraduate program, Velda earned 25 credits for the following courses through Prior Learning Assessment:

• Effective Listening
• Public Presentations
• Human Emotion
• Publications and Performance
• Women Working for Change
• Readings and Special Project in the Teachings of Abd’ul-Bahá

In her Final Reflection Essay, Velda talked about how writing for PLA credits increased her confidence in her writing skills, so that now a 6-8 page term paper seems like an easy task after working on a 20-25 page PLA essay. She also commented that, “My love of writing has been increased as well as my skill in the art, and I look forward to my next terms with excitement.”

In this video Velda shares her experience in the PLA program – her enthusiasm for life-long learning is infectious!

• Introduction to Criminal Justice
• Introduction to Law – Fundamentals
• Introduction to Law – Substantive Areas
• Criminal Law
• Litigation
• Evidence
• Observation and Guidance I
• Environment and Curriculum II
• Instructional Strategies – Reading
• Interpersonal Communication
• Effective Listening
• Introduction to Christian Bible
• Nutrition
• Backpacking: Map and Compass

CONGRATULATIONS, CARLEEN!

One thing of note that Carleen included in her Final Reflection Essay was this:

As I was writing each essay, I was totally caught up in what I was writing about, and became aware how much knowledge I gained through different experiences.  Some of these experiences were over 10 years ago, but I was back at that time as I was writing the essay, and reading material showed me how much I know about a certain subject.

Hear Carleen talk more about her PLA experience here:

Spirituality is the eternal human yearning to be connected with something larger that one’s own ego.

BUT

This “yearning” can connect us with great evil, as well as great good.

SO

Clearly, higher education ought to be inviting students to give thoughtful consideration to the energy fields of both sorts on their way to a diploma.

FIRST: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO LEARN?

The first step, of course, is to identify what you want to learn. What would the learning outcomes of a visit be? Surely you will learn stuff you didn’t know you wanted to learn too, but if you can identify a focus for yourself and your institution, proposing a visit and the visit itself will be a lot more focused.

For example, for my recent visit to a university in SoCal, I identified these focus areas and shared them with my colleague there:

• What you are doing with Liberal Arts assessment, specifically using the VALUE rubrics and your institution’s core revision process?
• What the librarians are doing with their assessment work?  (You’d mentioned that they were using SAILS – I’m wondering if it would be possible to meet with them to learn more about how they are doing assessment?)
• A sense of how the Assessment Committee(s) work — their structure, charge, participants, etc.
• More about your Program Review processes and outcomes
• Your role in building the culture of evidence / assessment

This list helped her know who to set up meetings with and what materials I might be interested in seeing. (Indeed, it was a rather large list, but in all fairness, I was coming from out of town and only had one day to meet with them. I was trying to be comprehensive.)

TYPES OF VISITS

In my experience, there are two main types of learning visits:

1) Problem-based: This kind of visit is intended to help you work on a problem you or your institution has. For example, I arranged a phone visit for myself and 3 colleagues from my university to talk with a person at another institution in Chicago about how they manage the assessment of student learning in an outcomes-based liberal arts curriculum; this was a very real problem for us at the time. (Turns out it was for them too!)

2) Topic-based:  This kind of visit is more focused on a specific shared topic, such as “general education learning outcomes” or “facilitating internships.”  A while back, I set up a session with a person using the Mahara ePortfolio system at a different institution because we wanted to explore this system and see it in action. We used a web-based desktop sharing system and the phone, and she kindly took us on a 45-minute tour of how they are using Mahara ePortfolios. Nice!

IDENTIFYING WHERE & WITH WHOM TO VISIT

Figuring out where and with whom to visit per your desired learning outcomes is likely the next step. Here are some ideas for how to do so:

1) Look to your local network. Are there colleagues with similar job responsibilities at institutions near you? Do you know anyone at an institution near you that can connect you? Do any of your current colleagues have connections at these institutions that they could leverage for you?

2) Look to your distant network. Have you connected with folks at conferences that you can reconnect with? Even if you can’t visit physically, with the phone, Skype, or with other technologies you can visit virtually. I have a “coffee date” about once a term with a colleague from another institution across the country who I met at a conference; we both get a cup of coffee and talk on the phone for about an hour, and just learn from each other.

3) Look to your virtual network. If you use LinkedIn or Twitter, search for and follow people who are in similar roles or who have identified projects they are working on that are similar to yours. This is how I connected with the Mahara ePortfolio person; I had learned a lot from her by just following her on Twitter, and then when my colleagues and I were ready, I sent her a message with a few questions. From this initial conversation came the idea to have a short virtual meeting in which she took us on a tour.

PROPOSING THE VISIT

First, make contact and make a simple initial proposal. It might look something like this:

Hi there – My colleague XX shared with me your contact information because I am interested in learning about what you are doing with blah blah blah at your university; we are trying to implement this at my university as well, and I wonder if we might be able to set up a time to chat briefly about what is working and what’s not. Maybe we can learn some strategies from each other. Etc etc etc …

As demonstrated here, a proposal for a visit might be more compelling if you identify what you can bring to the table. What will be in the visit for them? What might you be able to contribute to the conversation?

Also, start small. You don’t need to visit for a whole day. Maybe you just begin with a short phone conversation, or maybe (if you’re close) you meet for lunch.

Finally, I think it’s useful to learn with others, as a team. If you can, take a colleague or two from your institution with you, or invite them to the phone / Skype conversation. Propose the person you’re meeting with do the same. The more the merrier!

DID YOU LEARN?

After the visit, assess your learning. Did you achieve your learning outcomes? If not, what might be next steps? What additional questions were raised for you, or what other resources should you explore? Likewise, was the person / institution you met with interested in learning more and continuing the conversation? If so, then maybe you all set up another learning visit with each other.

ONE LAST TIP

In the spirit of academic integrity,1) don’t take and just start using what is not yours and 2) give credit where credit is due. We all adopt and adapt ideas and materials all the time in higher education; if you want to borrow something from someone you’ve visited, ask permission and then attribute it. There may be nothing more irksome than being visited and sharing a rubric, for example, and not knowing the visitor adopted it or re-purposed it.

Happy visiting – learn lots!

• Go interdisciplinary
• Go international
• Go outside your institution
• Go to a neighboring institution
• Go to your local community

What a great way to broaden my perspectives and learn new things, and bring back good ideas to my own institution; what a neat form of professional development; and except for “go international,” many of these things I would be able do with low impact on my to-do list and relatively low-cost to me or my institution.

But then I realized that I already do this kind of stuff all the time. These kinds of activities have been integral to my own scholarship for a long time now (if you subscribe to Boyer’s definition of scholarship, which I do). Perhaps these kinds of activities might be defined as networking activities (as University of Venus does) or could even be considered some funny form of academic tourism, but I prefer to think of them as I have experienced them: learning visits.

Learning Visits, Not Academic Tourism

Let me share some recent examples. I will begin, first, with an experience of being visited:

Several months ago, colleagues from an institution similar to mine (but way across the country) contacted me about coming to my campus for a learning visit. I had met a few of these good folks at a conference a year before; we had a healthy exchange of ideas then and had remained loosely in touch. Their institution was planning to take a team of folks to three universities in the Pacific Northwest, just to learn. They came and spent a day with us, learning from and sharing with several folks on my campus.  It turned into a learning exchange within a learning community. Indeed, we asked as many questions of them as they did us, and we learned as much from them as I hope they learned from us.

Since then, one of the members of that visiting team and I have had virtual coffee dates to continue to discuss shared challenges and opportunities (mostly about assessment, but also about implementing liberal arts programs as well as working with adult learners in higher education). To continue our shared learning, next week several of us are visiting again (though this time virtually) to talk about Prior Learning Assessment. And we are visiting with each other just to learn: What’s working and why? What’s not? What ideas might we come up with to improve our programs and our students’ experiences?

This past Friday I completed a learning visit of my own to a university in Southern California (and my university will host them in a learning visit this coming week). This was actually one of the assignments for the WASC Assessment Leadership Academy in which I am participating, but it was a great excuse to spend the good part of a day at another institution learning about what they are doing with assessment and how they are building their teaching/learning/assessment culture. I met with folks from a few academic areas, student services, and institutional research, and also learned how their cross-college assessment committee supports this important work at their institution. I learned about their progress, and their challenges. The visit gave me several ideas for strategies and tools I might bring back to my institution (with adaptations of course), and it also confirmed some of the work we are already doing. I learned.

I am learning so much from these learning visits that I am planning more. With colleagues from our Assessment Program, I am planning a learning visit to a local college to explore their experiential learning simulations lab and think about how such teaching/assessment systems might apply to other disciplines. With a colleague from our Service Program, I am planning to visit another local university to learn about their service-learning program.

I have taken the challenge to heart, and I intend to keep doing so.  I think learning visits might be unique opportunities to higher education (perhaps I am incorrect, but I can hardly imagine car or technology companies doing “learning visits” with other car or technology companies). I also think they just might help all of us get better. If higher education is about learning — our students’ learning and our own — then learning visits are one relatively simple way we can achieve great learning outcomes.

Mr. Messy is a friend of my kid Mac, who for some reason is intrigued by Mr. Messy. We haven’t even read the book (so in fact I don’t know what it’s about), but we have seen his picture and sometimes it looks to Mac like Mr. Messy is:

a) wrapped up in pink silly putty, or

b) covered in strawberry jam, or

c) “like a flower with arms and feet!”

All of these scenarios might sound pretty neat if you are 3 — eh, hem, I mean 3 and 1/2 — years old.

For us grown-ups, though, messy may not be as fun. Messy means things are not simple, clean, or clear. Messy means being able to live in ambiguity (per my mother’s motto: “We’ll see…”). Messy means that emotions can be involved, that learning is tough, that life is sometimes challenging, that the world can be a difficult place. And as such, messy also provides opportunities. Learning to deal with messy means we get to problem-solve, think differently, find a way, and figure out how to navigate the rough and tumble seas, and then celebrate arrival to dry land and reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

Without messy, we’d likely be bored. And without messy we probably wouldn’t learn much.

To celebrate messy, let me share another goodie from The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal,by Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc:

If higher education cannot deal with the messiness of real life, educated people will not be prepared to use their knowledge amid the complexities and the cruelties that constantly threaten to undo civilization. And they clearly will not know how to use their knowledge with wisdom, compassion, and love. . . If higher education does not help people learn how and why to take the risks of love, its moral contributions to the world will fall short of its potential. (pgs. 38-39)

I like the idea of addressing messy with love because love represents embracing something fully and being devoted and caring. Dean Dad recently suggested that we should “tolerate” ambiguity by reframing it, and he has a great point in asking us to consider this:

Which sounds better: uncertainty or possibility? Failure or learning experience? Internal politics or growing pains?

Um, that’s easy: Possibility, learning experience, and growing pains, please!

Ultimately, for us folks who work and learn in higher education (hopefully there’s overlap there, right?), I think that love — in the way my kid seems to love Mr. Messy — is likely more sustainable and impactful than tolerance. To me, tolerance means I put up with something that might bother me (e.g., I tolerate my husband’s inherent need to reload the dishwasher after I’ve loaded it); love, though, means we can embrace the messy and, as Dean Dad proposes, work to make a difference.

My kid loves Mr. Messy.

And I am trying to, too. Even when he’s covered in strawberry jam (or in this case, nutella).

Meet Mr. Messy: Loving ambiguity one waffle at a time.

]]> http://prattlenog.com/2011/10/06/mr-messy-meets-higher-education/feed/ 0 melaniebooth messy nutella http://prattlenog.com/2011/10/04/this-makes-us-official/ http://prattlenog.com/2011/10/04/this-makes-us-official/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:53:02 +0000 melaniebooth http://prattlenog.com/?p=3147 ]]>

Marylhurst University

My colleagues in the Assessment Program and I finally got our program description and content on the Marylhurst website. We’ve been wanting to do so for a very long time, but we needed the time and space to get it all organized. Thanks to the great work of our Educational Assessment Specialist Sione, we’re now present, virtually.

I think that makes us official now, right?

Check it out:  Assessment at Marylhurst University