Industry Survey Reveals a Disconnect in the Way Assessment is Implemented in Higher Ed
Montreal, QC (PRWEB) October 24, 2016 -- eXplorance, the leading provider of Learning Experience Management (LEM) solutions, announces today that the results of Inside Higher Ed’s 2016 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology, released this morning confirm eXplorance’s market perception that a growing disconnect exists with regards to current assessment effectiveness in the higher education market.
"These survey results point to a key challenge facing higher education today," said Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed. "Assessment process is now required by accreditors, state leaders and others to measure student learning. The real question now is whether this can be done in ways that help faculty members in teaching and students in learning,” he continued.
Survey results indicate that university stakeholders realize assessment and accountability are important, but do not necessarily think that faculty members are sufficiently involved in the process or that the data collected is being used to its full potential.
Nearly two thirds of faculty members surveyed believe that assessments are geared primarily towards satisfying external stakeholders, from politicians to accreditors. In addition, there is no concrete evidence that the obtained assessment results aid in the improvement of teaching excellence or graduation rates. All the while, technology administrators in the university or college setting perceive that significant discussions on how to use the assessment data do occur.
eXplorance’s all-in-one assessment system, Blue, helps bridge this gap. A Blue implementation encourages a cross-campus iterative process, while deploying a cascaded course evaluation framework and taking into account teaching and learning priorities at every institutional level. This also ensures that sufficient control is retained at the administrator level.
By considering specific learning contexts and cycling back to stakeholders for regular feedback, the solution provides university decision makers with access to a global yet detailed and current view of their institution. Since the assessment is a cascaded implementation process, it prevents a common pitfall in the implementation of course evaluations, where the process is either too centralized at the institutional level or too decentralized at the instructor level.
“The implementation of the Blue assessment system and the evalUT framework has already proven to be a viable solution to eliminate this disconnect in several universities,” said Samer Saab, CEO of eXplorance. “In the coming months, we look forward to working with other higher education institutions to ensure their assessment goals and results are in sync, so that they can focus on continuous improvement while keeping all stakeholders satisfied,” he added.
For details on how your educational institution can improve assessment implementation for better accreditation, while enhancing teaching excellence and increasing student graduation rates, read about the Blue All-In-One Assessment System and the evalUT course evaluation framework.
About eXplorance
eXplorance, a Learning Experience Management (LEM) solutions provider, empowers organizations in making the right decisions with fact-based learning analytics. eXplorance’s offerings, Blue® and Bluepulse®, help instill a culture of continuous improvement by assessing, analyzing, and improving stakeholder needs, expectations, skills, knowledge, and competencies.
Founded in 2003, eXplorance is a privately held corporation based in Montreal, Canada with offices in APAC, Europe, and Latin America. With employees working across the globe, eXplorance is renowned for its strong company culture and is deemed one of the Best Workplaces in Canada by the Great Places to Work Institute®, having won this title for three consecutive years. Recognized for its growth, technical innovation, and entrepreneurship, eXplorance is listed in Deloitte’s North American Technology Fast 500™.
eXplorance’s clients include academic institutions such as the University of Melbourne, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, Zayed University, Del Mar College, Bowdoin College, Northwestern University, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, University of California, Berkeley, and Liverpool John Moores University and organizations including Aramco, National Bank of Canada, and NASA.
Gil Gruber, Direct Objective Consulting, http://www.directobjective.ca, +1 (514) 238-7766, [email protected]
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