Toward Improving Student Learning: Policy issues and design structures in course-level outcomes assessment

Conscientious instructors at all levels are constantly making decisions about how to improve their teaching. This is a natural, intuitive part of being a good instructor, but even faculty who value student learning and work hard to improve their teaching can fail to make the connection between what they do in the classroom and the continuous improvement philosophy of outcomes assessment. The connection can be missed because understanding course-level outcomes assessment requires understanding evaluation policies and structures that differ markedly from those employed for unit-level program accreditation. The purposes of this paper are two-fold: first, to address policy issues that impede adoption of systematic, course-level outcomes assessment for improving student learning; and second, to describe a design structure for applying outcomes assessment that addresses factors under control of the instructor that affect students' learning. The paper concludes with observations on the crossed purposes of collecting information for judging faculty merit in the annual review process as opposed to collecting information for course improvement in the outcomes assessment process.     

MULTIPLE PROCESSING STRATEGIES AND THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF VERBAL REASONING TESTS

This study examines the influence of processing strategies, and the associated metacomponents that determine when to apply them, on the construct validity of a verbal reasoning test. Three strategies for solving verbal analogy items were examined: a rule-oriented strategy, an association strategy, and a partial rule strategy. Construct validity was studied in two separate stages: construct representation and nomothetic span. For construct representation, evidence was obtained that all three strategies, and their related metacomponents, are associated with performance on analogy items. For nomothetic span, the current study found that all three strategies contribute to individual differences in verbal reasoning and to the predictive validity of the test. The results of this study also point to the utility of metacomponents as constructs for describing and understanding test performance. Implications of the results for test development and theories of aptitude are elaborated.     

THE INFLUENCE OF A DESIRABILITY HALO EFFECT ON RATINGS OF INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

A rationale is provided for hypothesizing that a counterpart of the social desirability variable influences environmental ratings based on student perceptions, and a test is made of the hypothesis. The High School Characteristics Index was administered to 2819 high school seniors from 11 high schools. Social desirability scale values for the 300 items and 30 scale scores of the HSCI were obtained from 85 students in Education, and these values were correlated with the endorsement percentages and average scale scores for the students in each of the 11 high schools. Results indicated an appreciable "desirability halo" effect for some student bodies, with wide differences among student bodies with respect to the strength and direction of that effect. The results are interpreted as a serious challenge to the validity and discriminative capability of environmental assessment techniques based on student perceptions.     

Silver to Gold: The Alchemy,Potential, and Maturing of ACES and CES

Exponential changes in Western and international society and in American and international education afford promise, opportunity, and challenges for tomorrow's counselor. Roles of counselors, counselor supervisors, and counselor educators must reflect and shape the needs and growth of populations in specific countries and throughout the world to afford timely and appropriate responses and intelligent and sensitive proactivity. Leadership in services, teaching, research, credentialing, policy, and law all seem to be areas of potential contribution and growth for the counselors, counselor educators, and counseling supervisors of tomorrow.     

Mirrors,Reflections and Refractions: The contribution of microteaching to reflective practice

This paper considers a range of strategies that can be used to promote reflection. We focus on microteaching as a vehicle for enabling students to become aware of their values, attitudes and assumptions about learning as these are enacted within microteaching. The subsequent feedback becomes a dialogue between student, peer, teacher fellow and tutor that provides different refractions of this practice and contributes to the development of reflection which we characterise in terms of pre-critical, internalised and hypothetical thresholds. At the pre-critical threshold a practitioner concentrates on their technical competence, using trial and error or survival strategies to manage time, resources and pupils. Practitioners apply more mentally rehearsed operations to address new situations within the internalised threshold. A practitioner operating on hypothetical issues works within the hypothetical threshold and may not have experiences of events to inform hypothetical situations, but is in a position to manage uncertainty. R´ESUMÉ Cet article prend en conside´ration une gamme de strate´gies qu'on puisse utiliser afin d'e´ncourager la re´flexion chez les e´tudiants. On fixe notre regard sur Microteaching (la pratique où un e´tudiant donne une lec¸on à une petite groupe d'e´lèves dans l'Unive´rsite´) comme moyen de leur permettre de prendre conscience de leurs valeurs, dispositions et suppositions concernant le savoir. Le feedback re´sultant devient un dialogue entre l'e´tudiant, ses semblables, professeurs et directeurs(trices) d'e´tudes qui fournisse de diffe´rentes re´fractions de cette pratique, et contribue au de´veloppement de la re´flexion. Un developpement qu'on caracte´rise en trois seuils: pre´-critique, interne et hypothe´thique. Au seuil pre-critique, le pratitien se concentre sur la compe´tence technique par tatonnements ou en utilisant des strate´gies de survie afin de se de´brouiller à propos de son temps, ses ressources et ses e´le ¤ ves. À travers le seuil interne, le pratitien mets en pratique des ope´rations plus mentalement re´pe´te´es en s'attaquant à desnouvelles situations. Le pratitien qui fonctionne à travers le seuil hypothe´tique n'aura pas ne´cessairement les expe´riences d'e´ve´nements pour informer les situations hypothe´tiques, mais il est en mesure de faire face a ¤ l'incertitude.     

A pilot survey of user satisfaction with the online search service in South West Thames Regional libraries

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EFFECTS OF VIOLATING ITEM CONSTRUCTION PRINCIPLES1

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