Connecting Completion and Quality for Student Success

Illinois Performance Funding Steering CommitteeChicago, IL

November 13, 2013

Carol Geary Schneider

Overview

Connecting Completion and Quality –

The Challenge and the Opportunity

Making Quality a Priority– the Resources in Hand

High Impact Practices and Student Success

Completion and Quality

Metrics for Completion – the Credit Hour

Needed Metrics for Quality – “Emerging”

What We Need: A New Framework for Quality Assurance That Integrates Quality with Completion

Making Quality a Priority…

…Key Elements in a 21st Century Vision for High-

Quality Learning

Consensus on Aims and Learning Outcomes

Practices that Foster Achievement AND Completion

Evidence on “What Works” for Underserved Students

Assessments that Deepen—and Demonstrate—the Level of Students’ Learning

Consensus Aims and Outcomes

There is very broad agreement across all parts of higher education – 2 year, 4

year, public and private – on the learning and skills students need most

(See handouts)

See Learning and Assessment: Trends in Undergraduate Education—A Survey Among Members of the Association of

American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U and Hart Research Associates,

2009) for more information.

www.aacu.org/leap

Employers Strongly Endorse the Aims and Outcomes

Educators Prize

And They Urge New Effort to Help All Students Achieve Them

(See handouts)

See Raising the Bar: Employers’ Views on College Learning in the Wake of the

Economic Downturn (AAC&U and Hart Research Associates, 2010) and It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success (AAC&U and Hart Research Associates,

2013) for more information.

www.aacu.org/leap

Educator and Employer Views Reflect Trends in the Economy

Employer Views Reflect Economic Trends

Source: Dancing with Robots: Human Skills for Computerized Work, by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane. Third Way, 2013.

What Economists Say

“Human work will increasingly shift toward two kinds of tasks: solving problems for which standard operating procedures do not currently exist, and working with new information—acquiring it, making sense of it, communicating it to others….today, work that consists of following clearly specified directions is increasingly being carried out by computers and workers in lower-wage countries. The remaining jobs that pay enough to support families require a deeper level of knowledge and the skills to apply it.”

Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, “Dancing with Robots” (2013)

The LEAP Outcomes Build Knowledge and Capacities

Necessary to an Innovation-Fueled Economy—and to the

Global Commons as Well

If These Are the Goals, How Are Students Doing?

The Preponderance of the Evidence Shows That

Students Are Underachieving on Essential Learning

Outcomes

The Quality Challenge

As We Know from Earlier Hart Research Surveys and Myriad Other

Studies, Many Employers Report that Too Many Graduates Fall Short

on Key Learning Outcomes, such as…

Critical ThinkingWritingTeamwork and CollaborationGlobal KnowledgeSTEM Knowledge

How Do We Help Students Achieve the Expected

Learning?

The Key Elements in a 21st Century Vision for High-

Quality Learning

The Consensus on Aims and Learning Outcomes

Practices that Foster Achievement AND Completion

Evidence on “What Works” for Underserved Students

Assessments that Deepen—and Demonstrate—the Level of Learning

Practices That Foster Achievement AND

Completion, Especially for Underserved Students

The Central Role of High Impact Practices (HIPs)

First-Year Seminars and Experiences Common Intellectual Experiences Learning Communities Writing-Intensive Courses Collaborative Assignments and Projects Undergraduate Research Diversity/Global Learning Service Learning, Community-Based Learning Internships Capstone Courses and Projects

High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter, by George D. Kuh (AAC&U, 2008)

Ensuring Quality & Taking High-Impact Practices to Scale, by George D. Kuh and Ken O’Donnell (AAC&U, 2013)

When Students are Engaged in High Impact

Practices, They Are

More likely to complete

More likely to achieve intended outcomes

With particular benefit for underserved students

What the HIPs Evidence Also Shows -

The Students Who Could Benefit Most Are Least Likely to Participate in HIPs

How Campuses Are Using the HIPs Evidence

They’re Mapping High Impact Practices Across the Required

Curriculum

The Key Elements in a 21st Century Vision for High-

Quality Learning

The Consensus on Aims and Learning Outcomes

Practices that Foster Achievement AND Completion

Evidence on “What Works” for Underserved Students

Assessments that Deepen—and Demonstrate—the Level of Learning

Authentic Assessments

Students’ Actual Work is the Most Important Evidence We Have About Whether They Can Integrate and Apply Their Knowledge to

New ChallengesHIPs Reveal What Students Can Really Do

This is the Core Point in the LEAP VALUE

Approach to Quality

Purposeful, Guided Practice is the Key to Persistence, Learning,

and Assessment

Implications for Policy

Ask Campuses to Track and Report Student Participation in HIPs;

Disaggregate the Data to Assess Equity

in HIPs Participation

Implications for Policy

Student Work Produced in HIPs Can Be Assessed for Evidence of Key Learning Outcomes

Watch AAC&U”s VALUE Initiative for Quality Assurance Practices and Protocols That Any State or Campus Can Use