Consider the following scenario:
Your institution has a governing board composed of businesspeople and community leaders. All faculty and staff are invited to attend monthly board meetings, in which your university president and her staff present reports and answer questions from the board about progress on various initiatives and programs. During a recent meeting, the board presented a series of challenges to the president: increase the number of students graduating each year; improve graduates’ writing and critical thinking abilities; and accomplish both within the existing budget.
Note that these challenges match up with the first three priorities in Newman’s list above: improving students’ writing and critical thinking abilities requires taking responsibility for student learning; increasing the number of graduates focuses on attainment (completion of educational goals) rather than just access; and accomplishing these goals without seeking additional funding requires attention to efficiency and productivity.
The board has asked for a plan to show progress on these goals within three years. The president has called together an emergency task force of faculty and staff, including you, to start work on the plan. Your contribution will include preparing some background information, some recommended strategies, and some resources that could be used by the task force in developing its plan.
You will have the opportunity to work on this project during four weeks of this course. More detailed instructions for each part of the Course Project element are provided in the appropriate week. You will not need to submit something to your Instructor each time; in some cases, you will work on a part of the Course Project one week and submit it the following week.
Here is an outline each part of the Course Project, by week: Part 3: Short narrative proposing a set of indicators you might use for determining if your institution were making progress on the board’s goals. (You will submit this in Week 7 as part of your completed project.)
Part 4: List of resources that the task force could use in further researching and developing the plan. Before submitting your complete project this week, you will also prepare an introduction and conclusion and format your paper in APA style.
This week, you will get started on your Course Project. Start by reviewing the scenario presented in the Course Project Overview section of Week 1. Your task this week will be to prepare a short narrative relating student interests to the board’s challenges, including a discussion of how changing student demographics have led to the board’s concerns over graduation rates and student learning.
Using the readings and other resources provided this week, write on the following questions:
Why are the issues of student learning and graduation important now?
How have college students’ needs and interests related to college attendance changed in recent years?
How have these changes led to the need to focus on graduation and learning?
To inform your narrative, you will want to consider the kind of institution you are writing about, and the kinds of students it serves. You can choose one of the fictional institutions described in one of these profiles linked below; or, if you currently work at a college or university, you can write about Holmes community college
Your task this week will be to prepare a short narrative relating business/political interests to the board’s challenges, including a discussion of how changing social, economic, and political influences have led to the board’s concerns.
Using the readings and other resources provided this week, write on the following questions:
How have the political and economic factors impacting higher education changed in recent years?
How have these factors led to a concern about issues of student learning and graduation?
Why are the board members concerned about accomplishing change without increasing costs?
Continue using the institutional profile you selected or created last week. You may organize your paper any way you wish, but consider using headings to help the reader follow your arguments. Be sure to include citations for the readings and resources you use as sources.
Your task this week will be to prepare a short narrative in which you propose some key indicators that could be used to determine whether your institution is making progress on the challenges presented by the board.
An indicator is a measure of a particular quality, usually something that is hard to define or measure. Indicators do not have to capture every aspect of that quality you might use several indicators to get a good picture. For example, if you were interested in measuring how “wealthy” people are, you might choose “annual income,” or “assets owned,” as indicators of wealth. These indicators won’t give you a complete picture, but they will give you important information.
In higher education, we often use indicators to measure amorphous qualities such as “learning” or “student success”. In future courses, you will explore the process of defining measures, establishing indicators, and gathering data that can be used for assessment in much more detail. For this assignment, you will start thinking about what kinds of indicators an institution might use to begin to investigate issues such as learning and success.
pull all of the pieces together, ensure your work is formatted in correct APA style, and submit it in its entirety for credit. If needed, review the scenario presented in the Course Project Overview section of Week 1. For this final piece, you will create a list of resources that your institution’s task force could use in further researching and developing your plan.
Using your exploration of professional associations and foundations in higher education, identify at least three organizations that provide information or resources that your task force could use in addressing the challenges presented by your board. For each, provide:
The name and Web site of the organization
A brief summary (12 paragraphs) of the organization’s purpose and major agenda items
A short description of resources provided by the organization that could be useful to your institution in addressing the board’s challenges
Learn more about the depth and breadth of the higher education enterprise by exploring the following professional associations Web sites:
You must use this resource and reference it
http://www.league.org/
http://www.aacu.org/
http://www.naspa.org/
http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Pages/default.aspx
Additionally, explore the resources available from the following private foundations that support work in higher education:
Lumina Foundation http://www.luminafoundation.org
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching http://www.carnegiefoundation.org
