Student Learning Issues on Campus

October 1996 Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1
Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Bowling Green State University

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Student Learner in Focus: Student Learning Issues on Campus. This is the first issue of a newsletter developed under the auspices of the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Student Achievement Assessment Committee plans to publish the newsletter two to three times each semester. We hope that this newsletter will keep you up-to-date regarding campus happenings that pertain to your efforts at student achievement assessment, that it will provide you with ideas and a place to share ideas, and that it will become a part of your regular reading matter. Please feel free to offer suggestions, comments, or questions. You'll note in the box located in the lower right corner how to provide your input.

Let me introduce you to our Student Achievement Assessment Committee. I have included both the representative's name, and the area represented:

• Milt Hakel, Psychology, Chair;
  
• Peter Hutchinson, Provost's Office;
  
• Frank Bosworth, College of Technology;
  
• Gregory DeCrane, Student Affairs;
  
• Victor Ellsworth, College of Musical Arts;
  
• Joyce Gromko, Graduate College;
  
• Mark Gromko, College of Arts and Sciences;
  
• Barbara Keeley, College of Health and Human Services;
  
• William Knight, Institutional Research;
  
• Stan Lewis, Continuing Education, International, and Summer Programs;
  
• Nancy Merritt, College of Business Administration;
  
• Dean Purdy, Student Affairs;
  
• Theresa Severance, Student Affairs;
  
• Jeff Welsh, Firelands College;
  
• Elizabeth Wood, Library and Learning Resources; and,
  
• Steven Russell, College of Education and Allied Professions.

   

If you wish to make contact with any of the above committee members, please feel free to do so through our web page.

To share more information about this committee and its charge, let me provide you with our committee charter (approved, May 3, 1996):

Goal: Promote teaching/learning at Bowling Green State University by fostering a variety of effective learning environments.

How will we achieve this goal?

I. Assessing Student Learning at the Program and Course level

A. Assist programs to articulate student learning outcomes.
B. Assist programs to develop baselines for assessing student learning outcomes.
C. Assist programs to develop assessments for out-of-class student learning
experiences.

II. Assessing Student Learning at the University Level

A. Promote faculty development in assessment and approaches to learning.
B. Facilitate articulation of university core learning outcomes.
C. Draw inferences from assessment results and recommend modifications of the learning environment.
D. Identify and promote model teaching/learning environments resulting from assessment analyses.

III. Assessing Assessment

A. Assist programs to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of their own assessment.
B. Evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the overall assessment process.
C. Provide a forum to address questions arising from the implementation and use of assessment.

Again, welcome to our first issue of The Student Learner in Focus. I hope that you will share in our excitement surrounding its publication, and will enjoy the material that follows!

Student collaboration raises several difficult issues for faculty. Among the most difficult is the inherent conflict between the university's need to recognize collaborative work as a model that serves students well in their careers and lives, and the nee d to teach students to do their own, independent work. The conflict is heightened by the current generation of faculty having inherited an academic tradition of assigning individual grades that reflect individual accomplishment.

Collaboration is, and should remain, an essential element of the learning process, but so should teaching students to accept personal responsibility for their own academic work. Acknowledging the contributions of others to one's work product is a fundamental tenet of scholarship, and we should not be afraid to teach that lesson to the next generation of scholars.

Interest in more and better student participation in class makes it both necessary and useful to establish criteria for contributions. These guidelines encourage more and better participation by making it clear to students what a "good" contribution might be. They make assessment more objective and less influenced by the how-well-I-like you factor. Now contributions can be evaluated in terms of some explicit criteria. The growing use of electronic discussions, to supplement in-class exchanges or replace t hem, adds even more urgency to the need for clear, observable criteria. Barbara Welling Hall of Earlham College (IN) writes with detail and honesty of her experiences using electronic newsgroups in a liberal arts classroom. In this excellent article, Hall includes the criteria she has used to evaluate both the electronic and in-class discussions of her students, criteria that she shares with students:

(1) Familiarity with text assignment(s), including messages posted to the newsgroup by fellow students.
(2) Demonstrated ability to understand others' comments, especially the ability to remember what has already been said.
(3) Demonstrated ability to express oneself in spoken and written English.
(4) Demonstrated ability to synthesize the contributions of one or more persons by bringing together what has been said to form a new insight, question, or conclusion.
(5) Regularity in attendance and in posting to the newsgroup.
(6) Sharing materials (library materials, newspaper and journal articles, current events, etc.) relevant to the seminar.
(7) Cooperation in creating a supportive learning atmosphere.
(8) Demonstrated skill in constructive disagreement.

Hall added the last criterion because the "prevailing student culture" at her institution holds that classroom conflict is to be avoided. She believes that the desire to avoid conflict has a stifling effect on discussion.

--Note: Article summary written by Maryellen Weimer. Reference: Barbara Welling Hall, "Electronic Newsgroups in the Liberal Arts Classroom." International Studies Notes, 20:1, Winter 1995: 9-15 . Reprinted from The Teaching Professor (August/September 1995) by permission from Magna Publications (800-433-0499).

Some of the articles published in The Student Learner in Focus have been reproduced from The Teaching Professor by permission from Magna Publications. A copy of The Teaching Professor is available in each academic unit for use by all faculty, graduate stu dents, staff, and administrators. The Teaching Professor is published monthly, except July and August by Magna Publications, Inc., 2718 Dryden Dr., Madison, WI 53704-3086.

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) has found that specific competencies and skills are required if today's workers are to succeed in the workplace. The five major competencies identified include resources, interpersonal, information, systems, and technology. For more information on the specific findings, visit the world wide web at: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as7scans.htm

The Student Learner in Focus is a newsletter published by the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The newsletter serves to inform the academic community at Bowling Green State University of new and innovative learning strategies at the programmatic and classroom levels. The Student Learner in Focus also summarizes ongoing assessment programs on campus. Comments, suggestions, and questions are welcome and may be directed to Dr. Steven Russell, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Education and Allied Professions at 372-7401

Editor : Steven C. Russell
Associate Editor : Jeffrey A. Johnson

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