Measuring Up on College- Level Learning on College-Level Learning on College-Level Learning Sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts Margaret Miller, Project.

Measuring Up on Measuring Up on College-Level College-Level

LearningLearning

on College-Level Learning on College-Level Learning

Sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts

Margaret Miller, Project DirectorSHEEO meeting, August 2002

Measuring Up 2000

Measuring Up 2000

Learning in the States: Incomplete

National Attention to Student Learning from

within the Academy• AAHE’s Assessment Forum,• Pew’s Quality of Undergraduate Education

and writing assessment projects,• National Survey of Student Engagement,• Collegiate Results Inventory/Survey,• Rand /Council on Aid to Education

assessment of undergraduate learning,• American Association of Colleges and

Universities’ general education assessment project,

• Accreditors’ requirement of evidence regarding institutional effectiveness, and

• Council on Higher Education Accreditation’s project on institutional effectiveness

National Attention to Student Learning from

Outside

• National Postsecondary Education Cooperative’s common language project

• Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) skills

• National Skills Standards Board• Equipped for the Future• The National Education Goals

National Goal 6

“By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights

and responsibilities of citizenship”

Objective for Collegiate Education

“The proportion of college graduates who demonstrate an

advanced ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and solve

problems, will increase substantially.”

What Do We Want to Know?

• How well do individual students perform?• How well do institutions in the state

individually promote learning?• How well do institutions in the state

collectively promote learning?• What are the intellectual skills of the

college-educated in each state?

Implications for Measurement and Policy

• Individual students

– measure each one

– education policy

• Individual institutions

– an institution-level representative sample

– education policy

• Institutions collectively

– a state-level representative sample

– education policy

• Educational capital

– A representative sample of the state’s residents

– Education, adult-literacy, and/or economic-development policy

on College-Level Learningon College-Level Learning

Key Questions:

What do all the state’s college-educated citizens know and what can they do that contributes to the social good? What kind of educational capital do they represent?

and/or

Key Questions (2)

How well do the state’s public and private colleges and universities collectively contribute to that educational capital? What do those whom they educate know, and what can they do?

Measuring College-Level Learning

• Measuring Up 2002: Kentucky pilot

• Measuring Up 2004: six-state trial

• Measuring Up 2002: grade states

Direct Measures

• Collect existing information from pre-professional and licensing exams

• National Assessment of Adult Literacy

• Work Keys• New instrument

Indirect Measures

• Process measure: National Survey of Student Engagement

• Product measure: Collegiate Results Survey

• Is this the time to assess college-level learning in a way that enables state-by-state comparisons? If so,

• What question(s) are we trying to answer? • How close can we come to getting the

desired information with existing measures? What new instruments should be developed, and how?

• What support, both financial and political, is necessary—and from whom?

• How can this effort be made so as to do no harm to students, institutions, and existing assessment efforts?

URLs

• Measuring Up http://measuringup2000.highereducation.

org/

• The National Forum on College-Level Learninghttp://www.people.virginia.edu/~mam5mc

nationalforum.html