Blog posts are my commentaries about a topic in higher education. Subscribe to the blog to have new posts delivered directly to your email.
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The Midwest First Year Conference is a regional conference for First-Year Experience programs. On Sept. 27, 2019, several FYE faculty and program coordinators from my school attended the conference at Illinois State University and gave presentations. In a previous post, I wrote about the keynote address by John Gardner and Betsy Barefoot. In this post, I
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The Midwest First Year Conference is a regional conference for First-Year Experience programs. The conference began in the Chicago area, and a few FYE professors and coordinators at my university serve on the planning committee. My university previously hosted the conference. This year (on Sept. 27, 2019), the conference was at Illinois State University. Several
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I have been talking about faculty evaluations at my institution, and I thought I would share my thoughts through this blog post. Faculty undergo a number of evaluations, and each type of evaluation is conducted by different audiences and for different purposes. Course Evaluations Course evaluations are mid-semester or end-of-semester surveys students complete to provide
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What are Assessment Plans and Assessment Reports, and how are they different from each other? Both Assessment Plans and Assessment Reports describe how Student Learning Outcomes are assessed, but the two documents provide different information, and they are written at different times in the assessment process. In this two-part blog post, I will describe the
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What are Assessment Plans and Assessment Reports, and how are they different from each other? Both Assessment Plans and Assessment Reports describe how Student Learning Outcomes are assessed, but the two documents provide different information, and they are written at different times in the assessment process. In this two-part blog post, I will describe the
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Exams can provide a useful direct assessment of student learning. There are a variety of question types instructors can use on an exam, and this makes exams a versatile assessment tool for measuring unit-level or course-level student learning outcomes. Exam questions can be very straight-forward and objective, or they can be open-ended and invite a
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In a previous post, I explained how student learning outcomes can be assessed with “direct measures.” Direct measures are assessments of student-produced materials, such as essays, projects, exams, and clinical demonstrations. In this post, I will describe another type of assessment data called “indirect measures.” Indirect measures are assessments of student learning without the use
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In my final post about the 2019 NISOD Conference, I would like to share a few comments about my impression of Austin, TX. This was the first time I went to Texas, and it took a while for Austin to grow on me. A Relaxing, Big “Small Town” I arrived in Austin ready to do
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In this post, I am continuing my description of recent conferences I attended. In May 2019, I attended the NISOD Conference on Teaching & Leadership Excellence in Austin, TX, and I gave a conference presentation about the College Consortium, an online course sharing platform. In a previous post, I described the keynote presentations by John O’Brien of
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The College Consortium is an online course sharing platform. The Consortium facilitates information sharing between colleges so students from one college can take online courses at another college. In previous posts, I have written about how colleges can participate in the Consortium as “Enrolling Institutions” and as “Teaching Institutions.” I also gave a presentation about the
Lirim Neziroski 