Download - 2011A New Way to Count the Beans
A New Way to Count the Beans
Learner Progress, Transparency by Design and the College Choices for
Adults website
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A New Way to Count the Beans
Learner Progress, Transparency by Design and the College Choices for Adults website
Cali Morrison, Manager, Major Grants, WCET & Project Director, Transparency by Design
Shirley Adams, Provost, Charter Oak State College
Pam Shay, Vice President for Accreditation and Institutional Effectiveness, Franklin University
College Choices for Adults• Seeks to
• assist adult learners in becoming informed consumers of distance higher education and
• promote greater transparency and accountability among regionally-accredited institutions of higher education serving adult learners at a distance.
• Is powered by • the Transparency by Design initiative, a consortium of
regionally-accredited, adult-serving, distance education institutions leading change in higher education transparency and accountability.
College Choices for Adults
• To reach these goals the College Choices for Adults website contains:– Institutional level data including demographics, student
satisfaction, student engagement, core learning achievement and alumni satisfaction data
– Program-level data including learning outcomes, measures and results of recent students performance on learning outcomes
– Support information for adults looking to return to school regarding the processes, procedures, technology and skills necessary to succeed
College Choices for Adults
• Key Differentiator: Program- Level Learning Outcomes, Assessments and Recent Results of those Assessments.• Every program published on College Choices for Adults
MUST provide this data or it will not be published.• These data are not standardized. Institutions still maintain
the autonomy of determining their own program-level learning outcomes, assessments and how to report the results. WCET provides a quality assurance review – looking for measures of learning rather than or in addition to satisfaction ratings.
College Choices for Adults
• Key Differentiator: Third-party Quality Assurance review by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies
New Data Item: Learner Progress
• Launched in August 2011– Learner Progress is an improved measure of
retention and completion that accounts for a greater number of adult students by including transfer-in and part-time students.
– The purpose of reporting Learner Progress data is, with the expanded cohort, it should be more reflective of the experience of adult learners who tend to be part-time and come to an institution with previously earned credits.
Learner ProgressInstitutions have the opportunity to report at the degree level or for those who are not able to report at the degree level, they may report at the institution-wide level.
Learner Retention data is a one-year retention rate that includes part-time and transfer-in students.
Learner Progress
• Completion data follow the guidelines of the IPEDS GRS for cohort development but expand the definition of the students who should be counted to include part-time and transfer-in students (non-first-time, full-time students). • Completion data is reported at 150% and 200% of ‘normal time’ (as defined by the IPEDS GRS).• Institutions who can report at the degree level but for those who are unable, they may report at the institution-wide level.
Charter Oak State College• Helped us become more transparent with our
data • Helped us look at how we were defining data
elements • Helped us think about how we talk about our
college • Provided us with data for internal decision
making and for accreditation
Charter Oak State College
60%65%70%75%80%85%90%95%
100%
Charter Oak and TbD Colleges' NSSE Comparison
AverageCharter Oak State College
Charter Oak State College
Franklin University
• Philosophical change to comparison to others• To use measures we had not used before• To clarify definitions of students, online,
terms, etc.• To present data targeted to external
audiences• Much progress, with more to come
Questions?
Contact Information• Cali Morrison, Project Director, WCET:
– [email protected] 303.541.0234• Shirley Adams, Provost, Charter Oak State
College:– [email protected] 860.832.3836
• Pam Shay, Vice President for Accreditation and Institutional Effectiveness, Franklin University:– [email protected] 614.947.6135
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
