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Opinion
The Drive to Learning Outcomes Management
3/1/2007
Emerging institutional model for learning outcomesAdministrators and faculty at colleges and universities are beginning to address learning outcomes at several levels and are framing the outputs for both "internal" and "external" stakeholders. Eduventures believes that institutions are striving to capture outcomes at three levels--student, programmatic, and institutional--and identify the most relevant measures.
- Institutional Outcomes place emphasis on colleges and universities' need to develop a culture of evidence for student learning and educational impact. While learning outcomes information and data is often driven by accreditation requirements or governmental stakeholders, it is also used by institutional research to incorporate best practices into the teaching and learning environment. Typically, both quantitative and qualitative data that demonstrate student achievement are used, including standardized tests, completion rates and outcomes of licensing examinations.
- Programmatic/Curricular Outcomes, demonstrate the performance of academic programs across large numbers of students, often using the department or academic major as the unit of measurement. These initiatives manage and record students' learning outcomes over time, identifying the effectiveness of the pedagogy across the curriculum. Vendors seeking to support institutional needs in this category including learning management system (LMS) and services suppliers such as Angel Learning, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and eCollege, and competency-based assessments solutions such as ETS' Information and Communication Technology test.
- Student/Course Outcomes incorporate those measurements that highlight the individual student experience (e.g., course grades, transfer rates, fulfillment of graduation criteria), including the performance of a student against established metrics, and students' evaluations of the course delivery experience. Solution providers in this space include:
- Content providers such as textbook publishers incorporating test banks with their curriculum materials;
- Platform assessment businesses, including e-Portfolio suppliers including Questionmark;
- Angel Learning's ePortfolio, Blackboard's ePortfolio, and Nuventive; and
- Classroom assessment technologies, including "clickers."
At each level, information access is aligned to reporting needs for key stakeholders and provides increased transparency into key, relevant metrics. Moreover, Eduventures believes that the market will evolve as part of a larger outcomes value chain, and while initial institutional efforts may focus on internal stakeholders (e.g., administrators, faculty, students), colleges and universities will increasingly need to illustrate publicly performance vis-à-vis established benchmarks.
About the author: Catherine Burdt is a Senior Analyst within Eduventures' research practice, focusing on educational technology. She is responsible for providing market analysis and insight that will support the development and execution of corporate strategy for many of Eduventures' K-12, postsecondary, and corporate clients. Catherine brings to Eduventures her in-depth knowledge of building technology, developed through her experience working for such technology innovators as Analog Devices and Wang Laboratories. Catherine's expertise includes product and brand management and implementation of initiatives to deliver hardware and software products internationally. She holds an Ed. M. in educational media and technology from Boston University's Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in journalism from Kent State University. Catherine can be reached at cburdt@eduventures.com. For more information on Eduventures, visit www.eduventures.com.
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