This book is a step-by-step guide for improving student learning in higher education. The authors argue that a fundamental obstacle to improvement is that higher educators, administrators, and assessment professionals do not know how to improve student learning at scale. By this they mean improvement efforts that span an entire program, affecting all affiliated students. The authors found that faculty and administrators particularly struggle to conceptualize and implement multi-section, multi-course improvement efforts. It is unsurprising that ambitious, wide-reaching improvement efforts like these would pose difficulty in their organization and implementation. This is precisely the problem the authors address. The book provides practical strategies for learning improvement, enabling faculty to collaborate, and integrating leadership, social dynamics, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and faculty development. In Chapter 2, the authors tell a program-level improvement story from the perspective of a faculty member. Chapter 3 inverts Chapter 2. Beginning from the re-assess stage, the authors work their way back to the individual faculty member first pondering whether she can do something to impact students’ skills. They peel back each layer of the process and imagine how learning improvement efforts might be thwarted at each stage. Chapters 4 through 9 dig deeper into the learning improvement steps introduced in Chapters 2 and 3. Each chapter provides strategies to help higher educators climb each step successfully. Chapter 10 paints a picture of what higher education could look like in 2041 if learning improvement were embraced. And, finally, Chapter 11 describes what you can do to support the movement.
Keston H. Fulcher is the executive director of the Center for Assessment and Research Studies and professor in graduate psychology at James Madison University (JMU). JMU has received an unprecedented 14 national recognitions related to student learning outcomes assessment. Fulcher’s research focuses on structuring higher education for learning improvement. He serves on the advisory panel to the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), collaborates extensively with the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, and is one of the founders of the Learning Improvement Community. Caroline Prendergast is completing her PhD in Assessment and Measurement at James Madison University. She has six years of experience in educational assessment, ranging from international large-scale assessment to work with small student affairs programs in higher education. Her current work involves providing assessment-related training and resources to faculty and staff across JMU’s campus and beyond and partnering with academic programs to pursue large-scale learning improvement projects. Her research primarily concerns the role of assessment in promoting the improvement of student learning. Stephen Hundley, Ph.D., is Senior Advisor to the Chancellor for Planning and Institutional Improvement at IUPUI, an urban-serving institution with 30,000 students. He is also Professor of Organizational Leadership within the Department of Technology Leadership and Communication in IUPUI’s School of Engineering and Technology. Stephen chairs the annual national-level Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, the nation’s oldest and largest higher education event focused on assessment and improvement. He is host of Leading Improvements in Higher Education, a podcast profiling people, initiatives, institutions, and organizations improving conditions in higher education. Stephen is also executive editor of Assessment Update, an award-winning bimonthly periodical from Wiley with a nat
