Welcome to the online version of the Presidents' Forum of Excelsior College.

The topic of this forum is "Outcomes Assessment in an Online Learning Environment."

Possible areas of discussion to include:

Identifying service and support issues of distributed learners

Defining criteria for setting priorities

Imagining future enhancements to the state-of-the-art

Finance and investment sources

Measures of success/tracking accountability


Please feel free to start your own discussion topic or poll by clicking on the "New" link above and then choosing "Discussion" or "Poll."

To reply to a message, click on the "Reply" link above.

This roundtable discussion originally facilitated by:
Dr. Julie E. Porosky Hamlin
Executive Director, Maryland Online
Past Sr. Vice President for Global Outreach,
University of MD University College

Co-Facilitator:
Dr. Laura E. Saret
Professor of Computer Technology & Information Systems
Oakton Community College (IL)
ACE Fellow

Hello, All--
I look forward to seeing you this week-end. I'd like to think that the heart of assessment has to do with three questions:
1. What should students know?
2. Do they know it?
3. How do we know they know it?
Just about everything else in assessment seems to me to be secondary to these questions. These things may be embedded in the listed sub-topics, but I don't see them very clearly. Reactions?

Dr. Johnstone,

Thanks for posting our first substantive material in the assessment topic section of this online forum! I like how you are getting right to it. Some might say that the three questions you posed, elegant in their simplicity, are the relevant questions for a sub-category of assessment, namely the assessment of learning outcomes ("ALO" or "LAO"). There are other aspects of institutional effectiveness that can be assessed, and one of the things our group will want to decide at the outset is whether to focus solely on learning outcomes or consider other targets of assessment relevant to online learning. I am interested to hear opinions from others who may be reading the forum posts this week.

Julie

Hi all,

I am looking forward to meeting you this weekend and having an in-depth discussion about both assessment and online learning.

I am an ACE Fellow this year and have learned a tremendous amount from my experiences. I expect this weekend will be another wonderful opportunity to meet terrific leaders, have meaningful dialog, and learn more about assessment.

I would like to respond to thank Dr. Johnstone for continuing the dialog that Julie began. I really appreciated Dr. Johnstone's posting to get us thinking about the issues we will discuss this weekend. I agree with Julie that it is important for us to decide what direction we want to take since we will not have a lot of time together.

One of the things I know (from personal experience) is that our accrediting agencies want us to "close the feedback loop." That is, they want us to use the results of whatever assessment tools we employ to change our practice. So, I would like to add a 4th question to Dr. Johnstone's list: How do we close the feedback loop?

I wish you all safe travels and look forward to seeing you on Friday.

Laura