October 2007

An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators
By Trudy W. Banta
These are exciting times to be in the field of outcomes assessment in higher education. Thanks to the spotlight that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has placed on collecting and reporting standardized test scores in secondary education, there is a lot of interest in the work my colleagues and I have done to help faculty identify and develop ways to assess student learning and institutional effectiveness and then use assessment findings to improve students’ educational experiences.

Recruitment & Retention - Ocotber, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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How to Take a Fresh Look at Your Learning Community
By Barbara Leigh Smith
Learning communities have become part of the vocabulary of higher education. They come in all shapes and sizes at over 600 campuses. Some are new, while others have been in place for nearly 20 years. Some simply link courses and put students in a cohort; many go considerably beyond that to build a learning environment around core practices known to promote student learning.

Case Study: A New Approach to Assessment for Improvement in a Learning Community
By Barbara Leigh Smith
Too often, program assessment is done too late in a project to improve program performance and there is too little feedback to the participants. We decided to address both of these issues by placing a rich and extensive formative assessment practice at the center of our initiative with the Enduring Legacies Project with Native American students.

Michigan’s “First in the Nation” Automated Scholarship Process
The University of Michigan has a new tool that will aid in recruitment and retention efforts: software that allows the university to instantly match students with scholarships. When a financial aid officer enters a student’s name, the program searches for matches with the scholarships and grants already on file and then creates a list of eligible matches.

Five Things We Should Know About Part-Time Students
By Joan Marques
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ new study, part-time undergraduates are a more complex, fluid group than many may realize. This profile of students in 2003-04 found that only 49 percent of undergraduates were enrolled exclusively full-time, while 35 percent were exclusively part-time and 16 percent moved between the two enrollment groups.