Introduction
Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education, written by accomplished and known scholars, highlights the fact that students can acquire effective and useful learning only when educational institutions across the United States focus on transferring knowledge to students, rather than administer instruction with the sole objective of complying with state and donor funding regulations (Kuh et al., 2014). To this end, this paper focuses on the pivotal role of teachers in ensuring that their students are actively engaged in the pursuit of real knowledge that will help them in their career and future studies, as opposed to studying only to meet minimum passing requirements.
Therefore, to ensure a quality education, teachers and institutions need to work collaboratively to ensure that the information being imparted in the curriculum of various courses, as well as the assessment tools used, gauge maturity of thought as a result of new knowledge, and how much of the information is retained and applied. This can only be achieved by employing different faculties around the world, knowledge boards and tools of spreading meaningful knowledge, which will help students realize that learning is not a tedious task anymore. Since ‘quality of education’ is at the core of student experience, the premise of the paper, as well as a major theme in the book, is the role of the teachers. The deteriorating state of education can only be rectified when teachers are encouraged to dedicate more time in designing assessments that evaluate students’ abilities and level of new learning rather than viewing examinations as a necessary evil, the results of which determine their job security and future raises (Kuh et al., 2014).
This book, which is actually a collection of essays, has been divided into three modules to effectively address the current pitfalls of the American higher education system. The sections, each highlight the importance of understanding why it is counterproductive for concerned stakeholders to think of student assessment policies as only a requirement for meeting external compliance regulations of government bodies and accreditation agencies (Kuh et al., 2014).
The first section primarily deals with the requirement of understanding that different subjects require different knowledge assessment tools and the respective strengths and weaknesses of each. The emphasis is on putting the data collected about performance outcomes to effective use, rather than viewing it simply as a documentation requirement to be fulfilled (Kuh et al., 2014).
The second module addresses a crucial yet a very controversial subject in higher education: the question of regulating the level of involvement that external stakeholders have in determining the nature of assessment methods that are being used by a college or university. The section also highlights the fact that the most relevant group who can maximize the efficacy of data collected, about student grades, is the faculty. This is because they can use the compiled statistics from their taught subjects, compare it with student marks in other disciplines and spend time in understanding the reasons and implications of these differences (Kuh et al., 2014).
The final section has been devoted to regulate the volume of responsibilities that teachers are expected to fulfill on an ongoing basis, at all levels of the American educational system (Kuh et al., 2014).
The idea put forth here is that if an already overburdened faculty is expected to spend more of their time in changing and then using a new assessment culture, there is a need for institutional support for them right from the onset. The module concludes by identifying how the changing technological landscape is influencing the educational sector in the country and what this entails for each of the internal and external stakeholders in the education industry.
Implementing Effective Assessment Tools
An important yet complex point that needs to be understood about the educational sector is that examinations in themselves are not the problem. What is contributing towards a generation that may possess all the facts, but lacks the analytical ability to understand their significance in a given context, or interpret their consequences is the nature of these assessments that focuses more on memory than understanding.
The assessments that are being conducted by universities in America at present are failing to reflect on how a student interprets knowledge. These assessments are now more of a ‘standard’ rather than being focused on how students respond to lectures and experiences shared by the faculty of the university. As a result, the so-called course grades are failing to deliver the vital insight that is needed to understand student performance and their learning patterns .
Because the assessments conducted are meeting just the university standards, they are not at all focused towards the students and their progress, as a result, students are now failing to come up to their full potential and either end up dropping courses or repeating courses which wastes time and burden their financial conditions too (Kuh et al., 2014). The same assessment or quizzes given to every student is not a fool proof method of understanding how students respond to a given lecture. There is literally no way of knowing that student 1 is as cooperative as student 2 in one class. Therefore, the method is rather obsolete and meaningless when understanding the difference between two students. While the professor or teacher might be brilliant in delivering a lecture it is not clear whether the entire class understood the meaning of the lecture or whether they got the central idea of the message that was supposed to be delivered.
This issue has been addressed by Alexander W. Astin, as well as several other authors in context to the standard of assessments that are being used by universities in America . With these assessment tests it is often implied that if student 1 understands and student 2 doesn’t, it means that student 2 is a poor learner as compared to student 1 which not only creates confusion and misunderstanding between the students, but also becomes a source of demotivation for student 2. What is even saddening is that the users of these assessments tests tend to disregard students who fail in their courses. Faculties tend to deliver false and invalid judgments on students they think have a mediocre power of retaining information. For many years’ various schools and universities have used these kind of assessments to interpret how a student grasps information and uses it, which is not only impractical and unfair, but also meaningless in understanding students of different socioeconomic backgrounds . This is one of the main reasons why students all over America are beginning to show a decline in degree completion from the beginning to the end of their college journeys.
It is an accepted fact that in order to improve the student experience by keeping them motivated to learning new skills and competencies, there is an urgent need for the student assessment focus to shift from the external environment to an internal one. In practical terms what this implies is that there is a two-fold need for both instructors as well as external stakeholders – such as educational donor agencies – to change their perspective on how they view the entire higher education ecosystem . Traditionally – and this is where the root problem starts – it has mainly been the accreditation requirements that prompted colleges and universities to implement extensive and intensive assessment mechanisms. This is because an accreditation was viewed as a valuable endorsement of the quality of education that a particular institution was administering. Consequently, it also led to higher enrolments and often served as a justification to raise the fee structure.
There is also a positive side to the accreditation story that will positively influence the students as well, and not just their alma maters. Since accreditation reviews mandate that higher education institutions constantly evaluate their systems and policies and identify potential areas of quality improvement, therefore, such checks and balances can help the institute improve its own performance by rectifying errors. I agree with the rationale that the potential benefits of being associated with an internationally recognized educational body will translate into improved education only when schools, colleges and universities, as well as the educators themselves, consider quality compliance regulations as an opportunity, rather than as a hassle involving a lot of paper work that consumes their time but never yields any actual results that can be utilized .
The last part of this module titled “The Bigger Picture: Student Learning Outcomes, Assessment and External Entities”, takes this thought a step further emphasizing the need and effectiveness of faculty assessments, to go hand-in-hand with the culture of student assessments. According to the authors, if teachers are made aware of the fact that their performance appraisals will depend in large part on how their students have been performing, they are more likely to take an active interest in designing courses and quizzes that test for knowledge and not memory .
At this point, it is important for the teachers to realize that good performance in a subject or semester does not entail that the majority of their students score in the highest percentile in their courses. Rather, that actual performance will be measured by real evidence of how much their students have learnt and grasped from the course subject matter. Such an analysis will not only be constructive feedback for students, but for the teacher and the concerned college or university as well. If teachers are made to feel a part of the requirements and nature of assessments, they are less likely to remain aloof from the entire process .
The increased involvement of the faculty will eventually lead to changes in the curriculum that the teachers believe are required to rectify predominantly weak performance areas, as well as changes in the degree programs themselves . Therefore, adopting an internal approach means utilizing the assessment data that is gathered and putting it to effective use in a way that the effort and time spent in collecting and presenting it becomes an exercise pf performance improvement and enhancement.
Regulating the Faculty’s Responsibilities and Expectations
At this point it has been established that faculty driven assessments are key in improving the quality of education that is being imparted to students. In addition to this, there is a growing need for educational institutions to focus less on the requirements that are imposed by accreditation bodies and/or government agencies, and more on the needs of its two key stakeholders: the teachers and students.
It is important to point out here that no research or school of thought is discounting the role of these external stakeholders in the education sector; mainly because they are a source of funding that is badly needed to ensure that the student debt burden, which is already very high, does not prevent merit students from completing their degrees. The recommendation here is that it is important to regulate the faculty member’s responsibilities, if they are expected to devise new ways of teaching, as well as spend time in analyzing student performance to gauge their own effectiveness .
There have been several studies that support the claim made by the authors in this section about the phenomenon that I have termed faculty fatigue. Several research articles have detailed how the expected roles and responsibilities from teachers by students, parents, the institution itself as well as the academic and accreditation boards, was contributing to increasing levels of stress experienced by the faculty while on-the-job and how this was a primary cause of their deteriorating performance . The authors’ argument here is that if teachers are expected to adopt an internal focus that is aimed at helping students gain the maximum benefit from instructional time, then this will only be feasible in the long-run if the burden of other duties is scaled back. The research as well as the authors themselves state that the rising staff-to-student ratios and the extended counselling hours that are prevailing today, will make this a difficult challenge to overcome.
The final chapter of the section titled, “From Compliance Reporting to Effective Communication”, concludes by reiterating that conforming to external regulations remains a beneficial factor for the students and teachers (Kuh et al., 2014). This means that instead of conducting tests at stated intervals, following a pattern that has been in use since years as recommended by academic boards or accreditation associations, it is the duty of the faculty to make these and all other assessments a tool of assessing how knowledgeable their students have become over time.
The argument presented here is that the immediate step that needs to be taken is redefining the assessment system, given the problems that plague it, as have been identified in the initial section of the paper, will be of mutual benefit for the institutions and its donor partners. By sharing the assessment data that is not merely a hasty compilation of performance statistics, and is instead, an informed review by the faculty of the areas in which the students’ progress was most notable and the likely reasons why, as well as the reasons leading to weaker performance in certain subjects . If different constituencies have access to such reports, it will also play an important role in allocating more resources, funds as well as teaching hours, directed towards areas of improvement.
The concluding chapter titled “Making Assessment Matter” is a summary of the current state of educational affairs, which is not a pleasant sight indeed, and a foreword of trends expected for the future. The authors shift their attention towards the varied academic options, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), that students have access to these days, thanks to technology upgrades, in addition to the knowledge they are receiving from the professional degree programs they are enrolled in (Kuh et al., 2014).
Implications for Future Research
The introductory chapter and the three subsequent modules have established the importance of ensuring that the assessment strategies that are in place in higher education institutions across North America have the primary focus on measuring the extent of student learning that is actually taking place . However, despite the fact that the authors have comprehensively covered the issues that are significantly impacting the quality of higher education being administered, I believe there are certain aspects that require further investigation.
The last module concludes on the note that given the technological changes that have allowed students to pursue multiple learning pathways at the same time, the onus of evaluating and recording student performance is slowly transferring from the institution itself to each student. However, in my mind, the issue does not end there. The question arises that if this external to internal shift is actually implemented and colleges and universities modify their teaching and student performance measurement techniques, how will this change be perceived by those it will impact directly: the students themselves . There is no question that there has been an increase in certifications and training programs that students enroll in while pursuing their degrees. But if educational institutions allow these external credentials to become an important factor in determining performance quality, then will this not be the same as allowing funding considerations to govern the frequency and nature of tests and examinations?
That is a question that I believe has not been completely addressed by the authors in "Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education". There are several noteworthy discrepancies that have been highlighted that require rectification if American students are to compete effectively with other international students. This does not negate the need for future research to be directed towards determining quality standards for the external teaching tools that students are becoming a part of as well as in deciding the extent to which external players are allowed to influence institutional policy: the premise of the publication.
Conclusion
While several universities in America are failing to meet the challenges of sharing experiences and spreading meaningful knowledge, students are losing the drive to learn more of what would need to when they end up facing different challenges as competition gets tougher and tougher every year. Nowadays the focus has shifted from being attentive towards the reaction of students, towards complying with various rules and regulations that have little or no benefit to students . With politics and different policies plaguing educational institutions around the world, hardly any attention is being paid on factors that would actually help students learn and take interest in educating themselves. The unending exhaustion of coming up to unrealistic expectations is leaving students fatigued and unclear of their long term goals, which is why many brilliant students are either dropping out or considering educating themselves through online universities . Failure to acquire rich assessment data as well as a weary faculty overburdened with unrealistic expectations from their profession is also playing a major role in universities not being able to promote productivity in their campuses, as a result student either end up being rebellious towards the faculty or lose the will to learn. The universities in America are failing to provide a good learning averment for the students in terms of cohesive and impactful education, which amplifies racial discrimination as well.
The universities need to find a way to use rules they are forced to comply with for the benefit of not only the students, but the faculty as well, by balancing the amount of tasks expected from both the parties. A cohesive understanding between the students and faculty will help bridge the gap that has formed between the two that suppresses the desire to learn. This can be done by making substantial changes in the curriculum that will make things easier to manage for the students and the faculty so neither are forced to deliver on a strict timeline . Flexibility and restructuring in both the curriculum and task allotment needs to change to help students grasp what is needed and the faculty understands the patterns of helping students learn quicker. Weekly or monthly progress as well as behavioral assessments for students can help the faculty understand their students better which will help them communicate easier. By modifying the teaching methodology, the faculty will be able to effectively measure what they need to do in order to help students retain information that lasts a lifetime.
References
Astin, A. W. (2013, September 3). The Promise and Peril of Outcomes Assessment. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 1-5.
George D. Kuh, S. O. (2014). Using Evidence Of Student Learning To Improve Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kuh, G. (2005). Assessing Conditions to Enhance Educational Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Reisz, M. (2011, April 14). Why Academics Suffer Burnout. Times Higher Education, pp. 1-4. Retrieved from Inside Higher Ed.
