This one could be most challenging to measure. I think that as long as we are choosing the best practices that make the most sense for our student population and other partners then the adoption of such processes, procedures, programming, and services would automatically lend themselves to avenues for measurement. Measuring the overall goal of creating the culture might be a little harder to put into quanitative results, although the feel of the college's environmental shift would reflect our successes here.
Progress toward this priority is impossible to measure as stated. Who is defining "best practices"? How do we know if one approach is better than the other? Does ICCB, NCA, or the Chronicle of Higher Education have a recipe for a successful culture? How do we know if best practices in one curriculum area doesn't interfere in another curriculum area or in "services," whatever that means.
I agree that this one is hard to measure as written. What does "best practices" mean?? Maybe it could be worded something like: "Promote student success through outstanding teaching and support services."
Then, we could use the following measures: 1) Fall-to-Spring retention 2) Fall-to-Fall retention 3) Successful course completion rates
A culture of best practices also implies the atmosphere in which teachers are able to interact with students. The college should foster a healty, tension-free environment so that when instructors walk into a class full of students that they do the best job for their students' learning. So, the follow-up questions could be: how do we do this with healthy cooperation, open communications, fairness, mutual respect? Best practices should not be one size fits all approach, because what would be best practices in one class with the same instructor may not apply to his/her next class. Best practices should be at a high level so that the individuality can still be retained in the classroom.
Pre and post surveys are helpful for all classes. You can use subjective and objective measures - meaning asking students what types of instruction modalities introduced by the "Best Practices" definition that was described above worked best for them.
This one could be most challenging to measure. I think that as long as we are choosing the best practices that make the most sense for our student population and other partners then the adoption of such processes, procedures, programming, and services would automatically lend themselves to avenues for measurement. Measuring the overall goal of creating the culture might be a little harder to put into quanitative results, although the feel of the college's environmental shift would reflect our successes here.
ReplyDeleteProgress toward this priority is impossible to measure as stated. Who is defining "best practices"? How do we know if one approach is better than the other? Does ICCB, NCA, or the Chronicle of Higher Education have a recipe for a successful culture? How do we know if best practices in one curriculum area doesn't interfere in another curriculum area or in "services," whatever that means.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this one is hard to measure as written. What does "best practices" mean?? Maybe it could be worded something like: "Promote student success through outstanding teaching and support services."
ReplyDeleteThen, we could use the following measures:
1) Fall-to-Spring retention
2) Fall-to-Fall retention
3) Successful course completion rates
We also need program completion rates, and successful placement of graduates of career/technical programs
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of a measure. Maybe one small part could be the number of presentations we make to show off our "best practices"?
ReplyDeleteA culture of best practices also implies the atmosphere in which teachers are able to interact with students. The college should foster a healty, tension-free environment so that when instructors walk into a class full of students that they do the best job for their students' learning. So, the follow-up questions could be: how do we do this with healthy cooperation, open communications, fairness, mutual respect?
ReplyDeleteBest practices should not be one size fits all approach, because what would be best practices in one class with the same instructor may not apply to his/her next class. Best practices should be at a high level so that the individuality can still be retained in the classroom.
Pre and post surveys are helpful for all classes. You can use subjective and objective measures - meaning asking students what types of instruction modalities introduced by the "Best Practices" definition that was described above worked best for them.
ReplyDelete