BY JOHN SCHLUETER As I was writing my recent article for Academe, “In Search of What We Do,” my college was in the throes of reaccreditation, and faculty were tasked with standardizing their assessments of student work based on outcomes revised with the help of Bloom’s Taxonomy. However, for me—and I would venture to guess…
BY MARK HULSETHER Guest blogger, Mark Hulsether, a professor in the department of religious studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, originally published this essay on his blog, MBE: Mark’s Blogging Experiment, on March 4. We are posting it here with his permission. The first post in this series of two blog posts is available here. I…
BY MARK HULSETHER Guest blogger, Mark Hulsether, a professor in the department of religious studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, originally published this essay on his blog, MBE: Mark’s Blogging Experiment, on February 26. We are posting it here with his permission. Yesterday I read this piece in the New York Times by Molly Worthen. Then I made the mistake…
BY AARON BARLOW Underlying the mania for “assessment” and “accountability” in higher education is an elitist sensibility that, having gone unexamined for too long, has undermined real efforts at providing useful education for everyone, no matter what college or what level. Not only is it creating a two-tiered model of education, but it is changing…
BY AARON BARLOW Christine Emba, editor of In Theory, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on July 28, 2017 calling the current mania for ‘outcomes’ a “familiar trap.” She was focusing on politics, particularly on the failure of health care ‘repeal and replace’ but her thoughts apply to education as well. They apply,…
I have never been a fan of student evaluations, even when I have received perfect scores, whatever that means, and I have never, ever, ever, given any incentives for students to complete their “student evaluations.” No, this will not be a revelation on how I was born-again and now my teaching life focuses immaturely on…
The 2011 volume of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom contained two articles—by John Champagne and John Powell—critical of “the relentlessly expanding assessment movement.” In response, Berea College professor Dave Porter describes his own extensive experience with assessment, arguing that assessment is about creating a culture of evidence that is much more than merely collecting…
The following guest post is by Craig Vasey, professor of philosophy at the University of Mary Washington and a member of the AAUP’s national Council. Signs of a coming disaster for American higher education are all around us. That’s why the AAUP Council, of which I am a member, endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement…
On November 23, the United States Government Accountability Office released a report titled “Experiences of Undercover Students Enrolled in Online Classes at Selected Colleges.” It’s a behind-the-scenes look at a few for-profit schools, and the lengths to which they will go to keep students enrolled. This week, I’m going to explain the context for the…