Informing Adult Learners with Data - the College Choices for Adults Model

Presenter(s)
Cali Morrison (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, US)
Session Information
November 9, 2011 - 12:00pm
Track: 
Learning Effectiveness
Areas of Special Interest: 
Practical Application
Institutional Level: 
Universities and Four Year Institutions
Audience Level: 
All
Session Type: 
Information Session
Location: 
Northern Hemisphere E1
Session Duration: 
35 Minutes
Concurrent Session: 
1
Abstract

Earlier this year, Transparency by Design, which powers the College Choices for Adults website, released metrics for reporting learner progress at institutions which serve adult students at a distance. Come learn how this metric as well as program-level learning outcome reporting are informing adult learners and improving institutional processes.

Extended Abstract

As the higher education landscape changes, it will become ever more important for colleges to express publicly what they expect their students to learn in a given program, how they will measure that and how well recent students have performed on those measures. Equally important will be showing how learners progress and complete at the institutional level. The Transparency by Design initiative which publishes the College Choices for Adults website, has created a framework for institutions who join to publish this information. In this session we'll explain the rationale behind the framework as well as discuss the improvements partner institutions have made to their internal processes to streamline the collection and reporting of this data. Provosts, VP for Institutional Effectiveness, Assessment or others involved in the assessment and planning of program learning outcomes will benefit from attending this session. This session will address the reporting of program learning outcomes, measures for assessing those program learning outcomes and how well recent students have performed on those measures of program learning outcomes. It will also address the internal processes at partner institutions for gathering this data and preparing it for reporting on the College Choices for Adults website. It will also discuss how the learner progress metric developed by the initiative improves on metrics currently available to measure completion and retention. We will also include the role of reporting on College Choices for Adults in the changing landscape of distance higher education. The learning goals of this session will be to inform participants of the internal and external benefits of gathering these data. We expect participants to leave this session with a clear idea on how they could implement this type of data gathering at their institution as well as with an assertion of why their institution would benefit from membership in Transparency by Design and reporting on the College Choices for Adults website. After brief presentation of the data elements, we will moderate a discussion on how these elements currently work at partner and audience institutions and how that could change using the Transparency by Design College Choices for Adults data framework. The Transparency by Design initiative began in 2008 as a project of the Presidents Forum. In 2008, the initiative approached the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) to serve as the third party quality review as well as project management. In November 2008, WCET and its parent organization, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), were awarded a grant by Lumina Foundation for Education to fully implement the Transparency by Design initiative and develop the College Choices for Adults website. The data were released on the initial launch of the College Choices for Adults website on August 4, 2009. During the following year, development of the data set and other resources for potential adult learners continued and the site was relaunched August 4, 2010 with a renewed look and feel. The site continues to grow, with several new data items coming online in April 2011, including institutional level results on the Priorities Survey for Online Learners and the ETS proficiency profile, for institutions who have implemented these assessments.

Lead Presenter

Cali Morrison serves as the manager, major grants at the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET). She has been working with the Transparency by Design initiative and the College Choices for Adults website since December 2008. Cali holds a bachelor of arts in public relations from Western Kentucky University and a master of education in Adult and Higher Education from Montana State University. In December 2008 she was awarded a graduate certificate in women’s studies which she completed fully online through Western Kentucky University.

Presenter 1 Email: 
cmorrison@wiche.edu