The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published the following article–it makes me wonder whether some of the discussion could spill over into the program assessment arena.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Research, July 18, 2011
Humanities Scholars Discuss Their ‘Shared Mental Map’ for a New Age of Digital Communication
By Jennifer Howard, Charlottesville, Va.
I come across these articles from time to time on rethinking an approach, and subsequent reward structure, for scholars. I couldn’t agree more with the idea, but I’ve watched it play out extremely slow over the years. It took nearly a decade of faculty creating interesting, scholarly software for some colleges to give *any* reward for that type of activity…and even now, the reward doesn’t come close to equaling a publication in a journal (that only a handful of people might read vs. thousands of people using the software created).
In terms of program assessment, I certainly think this shares some similarities. Some of the *ideas* presented in each program’s assessment plan are great, very innovative. But they are still trying to assess these ideas in old, 5 point likert-scale methods that don’t really tell us much.