Post on 31-Mar-2015
transcript
What is the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP)?
2012 Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments
July 12, 2012
Carol Geary Schneider
How Does the DQP Relate to AAC&U’s Vision for Liberal – and Liberating – Education?
Why is Lumina Field-Testing the DQP?
To Bring New Currency – and New Transparency –
to the Meaning of U.S. Degrees
To Ensure Student Readiness for 21st Century Challenges –
Economic, Civic, and Personal
The Degree Must be More Than a Collection of Courses and
Credits
We Need to Show What Students Can Do With Their
Learning
Why Did AAC&U Join the DQP Effort?
To Close the Gap Between Aspiration and Actual Student
Achievement
Aspiration: Higher Education Has Already Identified the Key Elements in a
Contemporary Framework for Quality:Consensus Aims and Outcomes
High Impact Practices that Foster Achievement AND Completion
Evidence on “What Works” for Underserved Students
Assessment Practices That Raise – and Reveal – the Level of Learning
Making Progress? What We Know About the Achievement of Liberal
Education Outcomes by Ashley Finley (AAC&U, 2012)
The Preponderance of the Evidence – from Many Sources – Shows That
Far Too Many Students are “Underachieving” on All the
Outcomes Educators Endorse
Achievement
From Making Progress?
“…for six of the eleven learning outcomes measured by the
Wabash study, the majority of students showed either ‘no
growth or a decline’ over four years.” – page 8
The DQP Builds from the LEAP Consensus Aims and
Outcomes – And the Desire to “Make Excellence Inclusive”
The DQP Combines Vision with Strategy – A Strategy For:
Moving Students’ Actual Work – and Faculty Judgment about Their Progress – to the Center of Attention
Fostering Practices that Raise Achievement
Creating Assessments Worthy of Our Mission
The DQP is a Framework for Learning That Focuses on Students’ Demonstrated
Achievement
So What is the DQP?
Integration and Application
The Degree Profile emphasizes “the cumulative integration of learning
from many sources and the application of learning in a variety
of settings…” (DP, p. 2)
What Kinds of Integrative Learning Are Included?
Knowledge – Broad and Specialized – With Intellectual Skills
General Learning With Majors
Field-Based Learning with Academic Learning
Civic Inquiry With Academic and Field-Based Learning
Culminating Accomplishments that Integrate Learning Across Levels and Disciplines
The Degree Profile Shifts Our Collective Attention to What
Students Actually Do: Research, Projects, Papers,
Performances, Creative Work… Applied Learning!
Applications
The DQP Asks Us to Shift from My Work – Each Course is a
Silo – to OUR Work – Intentional Practices that Both
Develop and Demonstrate Students’ Competence
The DQP Invites Faculty and Staff to Focus on…
Intentional Assignments that Develop Competence
Integrative Milestone Performances that Provide Evidence of Competence and of Students’ Ability to Tackle Complex Questions and Problems
Aims/Outcomes/Intentional Practices Mapped Across the
Entire Curriculum
First to Final Year
General Education AND the Departments
Co-Curriculum as Well
Why Did We Call it a “Profile?” And What Do We Expect will Happen?
The U.S. higher education “system” is a lot more diverse than is typical elsewhere and, at least to some extent, we value this diversity.
“Profile” defines the shape and basic parameters of the outcomes statements, but not the portrait itself:
Institutions or consortia of institutions or state higher education systems can add new elements and tailor the content of the DQP statements to match their missions.
We tell them they are Kahlo, Dürer, Van Gogh, Stuart: finish the portrait, but you are confined to the same palette of active, concrete verbs!!!
Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)
What Does It Mean to Be the Artist Who Turns the Profile into a Portrait?
That the DQP, as given, is a prod, a prompt, and not the last word.
Don’t agree with the territories? Change them!
Think the competences miss something? Add what you think they miss!
Don’t agree with the verbs? Change them, but make sure they describe what students are expected to do. Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)
Possible DQP Revisions
Expand the List of Intellectual SkillsEthical ReasoningCollaborative Problem-Solving
Expand and Clarify Three Areas of Applied LearningInquiry-Based ReasoningField-Based LearningCivic Learning
We Welcome Your Feedback and Advice As We Work to Get
the Profile Right!