ELI Web Seminar, September 15, 2006 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT); runs one hour

Assessing What Students Learn in Technology-Based Learning Environments

Special Guest

Peggy L. Maki
Higher Education Consultant and Former Senior Scholar & Director of Assessment, American Association for Higher Educationt

Peggy L. Maki is a consultant who specializes in assisting undergraduate and graduate programs, higher education boards, and disciplinary organizations to integrate assessment of student learning into educational practices, processes, and structures. She consults with consortia of colleges and universities across the United States that have been awarded national or regional grants focused on assessing student learning. Formerly senior scholar and director of assessment at the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), Maki served as associate director of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, New England’s regional accrediting body. She also served as vice president, academic dean, dean of faculty, and professor of English at Bradford College and as associate professor of English, dean of continuing education, and chair of English, theatre arts, and communication at Arcadia University.

Maki has conducted more than 370 workshops and keynote addresses on assessment. Her articles on assessing student learning have appeared in numerous higher education journals and books. She recently wrote a handbook and just completed coediting a book on assessment to be published in October 2006. Maki also serves on the board of contributors of About Campus; serves as Stylus Publishing’s assessment field editor; teaches in AAC&U’s General Education and Assessment Institute; and teaches graduate-level seminars on assessment. She is a recipient of a national teaching award, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Summary

EDUCAUSE Vice President Diana Oblinger will moderate Peggy L. Maki’s Web Seminar:

Virtual simulations, role-playing in games, discussion boards, and shared spaces are among the growing kinds of options educators are using to foster student learning. Aside from the efficiency of delivery and students’ generally positive response to technology-based instruction, how can we learn about the efficacy of teaching and learning through technology?

This Web seminar offers principles of assessing technology-based student learning grounded in questions we ask about pedagogy, curricular design, instructional design, and other educational practices. It begins with a focus on assessment as a process of inquiry into the efficacy of your educational practices through the wide range of technology-based “texts” (for example, actions, decisions, dialogue, collaborative projects, visual representations) that students produce—direct evidence of how they construct meaning. Overall, a well-anchored approach to assessing student learning provides robust results that enable us to identify patterns of student strength and weakness through the various texts they produce. These patterns prompt us to examine and self-reflect on the efficacy of technology-based teaching and learning.

Related EDUCAUSE Resources

• Joni E. Spurlin, Technology and Learning: Defining What You Want to Assess, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, July 2006.
• "Supporting Learning with Technology: Assessment's Role," ELI 2006 Fall Focus Session, Suggested Readings
• ELI Successful Learning Web Page
• EDUCAUSE Connect resources on Asssessment and Evaluation

Additional Resources

• Peggy Maki, Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution