Five Questions for Institutions/Organizations

23Feb/102

Five Questions for Institutions/Organizations

Jon focused us on these 5 questions in the context of higher ed:

1. Who do we serve? What do they do?

Students, employers, society, ourselves/board (perpetuate institution)
Student prepare for future life, define direction; learns, obtains skills, experiences, connections,
Employ students, influence objectives/curriculum/shape outcomes
Society sets standards, expectations, provides pathways that accommodate successful students
Provides experiences that satisfy other stakeholders in order to perpetuate
***
Social Life of Info: a lot of people in the technology industry reduce: knowledge > info > data > bits
***

2. What do we provide them that they can't get anywhere else?

info + social context
credential, degree
mentoring, apprenticeships
network connections to peers and professionals
personal development: maturity, self-discipline, work ethic

3. How can we tell we're doing a good job?

job placement
job success
student evals
alumni contributions (demonstrate student success and pleasurable memories of experience)

Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology
students evaluate, teachers evaluate, employer evaluates - Harvesting Gradebook brings prospective employers in

Northface Neumont University; board are senior VPs; draft curriculum, give it to them

4. What is the best way to provide it?
(open for discussion!)

5. What is the best way to organize?
we could do things better if we were organized differently--the challenge to always self assess

Tagged as: academia, byu2sigma, education, institutions, ipt692, questions Leave a comment

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Nils Peterson
February 24th, 2010 - 18:15

Thanks for posting your notes

How can we tell if we are doing a good job? job placement, job success, student evals, alumni contributions. Those measures are indirect and a lot of other things may be boiled into them. They also are not very useful to tell us how to change if we don’t like the results.

Need a direct measurement:
First, what is the actual thing we want students to know/do that would demonstrate our desired learning outcome? For example, Develop a piece of software; market a new restaurant, etc, that is, solve a real problem.

Then, directly assess how well the students did it. And let the community assess how well they did it too. And while we are at it, ask the community if the criteria we are using are the right criteria. http://wsuctlt.wordpress.com/harvesting_gradebook/
Anne M. Makin
March 2nd, 2010 - 11:08

Jared, thank you so much for taking notes! You are GREAT!