Source: wikipedia.org

Formative assessment or diagnostic testing is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures employed by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focus on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.

Summative assessment (or summative evaluation) refers to the assessment of participants, and summarizes their development at a particular time. In contrast to formative assessment, the focus is on the outcome of a program. Summative assessment is characterized as assessment of learning and is contrasted with formative assessment, which is assessment for learning. This is taught in many educational programs in the United States. Scriven claims that while all assessment technique can be summative, only some are formative.

Establishing colleges at a university is not easy and requires several stages including building staff, faculty and students to start the class. I remember when I participated in establishing an architecture engineering college at Qassim University; it was not easy to create and adopt the name of the college curriculum. At that time, we had been communicating with some U.S. universities and we compared academic plans to visit a number of university professors.  Professors from various American universities visited and we benefited from their experience in establishing colleges. After the adoption of many of the basic requirements, it became important to get quality output and obtain the dependence of associations and professional institutes, such as getting accreditation and evaluation after every five years to recognize the quality of the curriculum and output. These efforts look to the future to build a knowledge appealing to students and community.

From: http://www.scholarlyintegrity.org/blog.aspx?id=2162

Establishing a policy for implementing Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) is an important way to educate academic researchers about the standards with which we expect them to comply in their scholarly research endeavors. The convention and norms of the research community, as established by the NSF, NIH and other entities alike, typically entrust a Principal Investigator (PI) as the trustee and executor of a funded research project.

Aside from the off-chance that a funding agency becomes aware of unethical research procedures, inappropriate research expenditures and/or illegal research activities that constitute an evidential violation of the normative RCR practice, the PI is free to administer the research project and allocate the financial resources of the research grant with modifications. Post-award modifications could range from minor tweaks to major changes, as permitted by the funding agencies. Short of engaging in the aforementioned research misconduct, what could possibly constitute an untenable behavior – one that seemingly leaves the otherwise well-intentioned institutional research administrators powerless or ill-equipped to rectify? A hypothetical scenario, falling outside of the normative practice of RCR, is provided below.

Let’s assume that a grant proposal was submitted to a federal agency, seeking the opportunity to establish a “center of excellence” in a specific research discipline. The center grant application contained two components: (1) a proposal that details the organizational and administrative structure of the center, which includes the center’s mission (e.g., advancing innovative research), activities (e.g., program coordination and outreach), personnel (e.g., internal and external advisory committees), etc., and (2) two original research proposals that justify the creation and contributions of the center as a research entity.

The PI, selected by an existing Research Center on a university campus, was responsible for preparing the proposal that describes the center’s organizational and administrative structure. A team of researchers was invited by the Research Center and divided into two groups to generate two separate original research proposals. The presumed center-PI, who was in charge of submitting the complete set of application materials, entered his/her name as the PI for one of the original research proposals (written by a tenured faculty and a clinical researcher from the presumed center-PI’s home institution) and registered himself/herself as a co-investigator for the other original research proposal (written by an externally affiliated research institution). The center grant proposals successfully competed for funding.

Subsequent to receiving the center-grant funding, the center-PI began to systematically devalue the contributions of the two co-PI’s from the home institution; these two co-PI’s wrote the original research proposal but were stripped of the opportunity to serve as the project-PI, when the center PI self-designated as the project-PI at the time of proposal submission. The center-PI (and the self-designated project-PI) also declined to honor these two co-PIs’ time and efforts, as they appeared in the project budget. One of the co-investigators on the same project quickly dropped out of the project and later resigned from the university, after his/her role was greatly diminished by the center/project PI. This co-investigator was the individual who engineered the relations between the proposed center and other existing research, academic, and administrative units of the applicant institution for collaboration on sampling, data collection and outcome evaluation.

It should be noted that the center-PI provided annual reports to the funding agency as per usual, even though the center-PI diverted a large amount of grant funding for other uses. In light of this unfortunate circumstance, one of the co-PI’s (the tenured faculty), raised the concern associated with the lack of compensation for time and efforts (but not the diversion of research funds) with the relevant administrators at the university. This faculty co-PI received two types of responses. One entailed the answer “it is the PI’s prerogative to determine how the grant funding will be dispensed.” The other lambasted the faculty co-PI’s story as being defamatory. In sum, during the five-year period when the center grant was funded, the center-PI systematically stole the intellectual property right of the two co-PI’s, failed to properly compensate their time and efforts, and ultimately excluded them from accessing the research data at the conclusion of the project period.

The hypothetical scenario of “stealing authorship credit” provided above is nothing new, although combined with a twist related to the PI’s failure to compensate the authors’ time and efforts. If a situation like this one occurred at your institution, what would you have done or what could have been done? Should your institution intervene in this case on behalf of the two co-PI’s by demanding that the PI cease the predatory behavior and compensate the co-PI’s for their time and efforts accordingly? What advice would your institution provide for the PI and the co-PI’s regarding how to move forward with their research project? How could your institution prevent the PI from reducing or removing the co-PIs’ involvement with the project in the future? Should the PI receive some kind of reprimand or penalty? If so, what might the reprimand or penalty be and who should implement such remedies? Moreover, what policies or guidelines for monitoring grant administration, if any, should be developed to guard against this type of research misconduct?

Above and beyond the potential actions that the university officials could adopt to remedy this hypothetical scenario, should the funding agency also bear some of the responsibility in reviewing and evaluating the annual reports submitted by the PI more carefully? Would it be a good idea for the major grant program officer(s) from the funding agency to interview the key research personnel, in addition to the PI periodically, to validate the progress reports and compliance with responsible research conduct? This scenario presents many complex questions about the roles and responsibilities of various individuals and institutions. I welcome perspectives from inside and outside the graduate school on this important issue.

Carolyn Lin
Associate Dean of the Graduate School
University of Connecticut

From: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/breaking-news/georgia-tech-professor-accused-taking-20k-students/nd734/

Georgia Tech has begun the process of dismissing an associate professor accused of taking more than $20,000 of funds intended for student stipends, the Institute said Friday.

Jochen Teizer, an associate professor of construction engineering and director of Tech’s construction safety and technology laboratory, has been the subject on an internal investigation since October, when allegations were reported, Phillip Hurd, chief audit executive, told the campus in a memo.

Between six and 10 students and former students accused Teizer of forcing them to pay him several hundred dollars a month, Hurd said in the memo detailing the findings, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Interviews of the currently supported students indicated that several had paid large sums of cash to Dr. Teizer,” the memo states. “Internal Auditing notes that one student admitted to paying over $10,000 in cash to Dr. Teizer in 2011.”

Georgia Tech will reimburse the students for any improper payments made to Teizer.

A spokeswoman for State Attorney General’s Office said Friday the case had been referred for further investigation.

Moving from a traditional lecture hall setting to an online digital classroom is a phenomenon that those in higher education are consistently debating.

Massive Open Online Courses, the latest trend of online higher education, embody the idea of fostering large-scale participation and education through open access on the Internet. While the idealistic program has good intentions, the presence of online programs such as MOOCs cause confusion about the traditional higher-education degree. MOOCs promise a free education to anyone who signs up for the course, but are online students learning as much as they would in a traditional classroom setting?

MOOCs are a relatively new trend in higher education, and according to a 2013 Survey of Online Learning Report from the Babson Survey Research Group only a small portion of higher education institutions are experimenting with MOOCs and a large number of those are in the planning stages. MOOCs are different from regular online course instruction because those who can enroll in a MOOC do not have to be registered students at a school. Secondly, open online courses have the capability for unlimited participation and there is no cost. Thirdly, no credit is given to those who finish a MOOC.

The number of higher education institutions offering MOOCs grew slightly from 2.6 percent in 2012 to 5 percent in 2013. Fifty three percent of higher education institutions report that they are undecided about MOOCs and only 23 percent of academic leaders believe MOOCs are a sustainable method of online education, which decreased from 28 percent in 2012. Perhaps the most important result of this report is that 64 percent of academic leaders are concerned that the credentials for completing a MOOC will cause confusion about higher education degrees. This number is up from 55 percent in 2012. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is part of the 5 percent of academic institutions offering MOOCs and is currently in phase two of the MOOC integration process.

“MOOCs are a means to increase the range of ways we can offer education to learners,” former Chancellor David Ward said in a statement Feb. 20, 2013. “The future of learning is connecting with people where they are at—increasingly, those places are online. We fully recognize the necessity for direct personal communication in higher education, but we must also experiment and explore the potentialities of online technologies.” Additionally, Provost Paul DeLuca said MOOCs will not only provide an alternative means of education for students but also for the university. “Students will benefit from having additional options in their education, and we will learn much from these courses that will help us in our future educational efforts,” DeLuca said in the February statement.

Creating alternative education models to “meet people where they are at” is one of the most important aspects of MOOCs and other forms of online education. For that reason, I commend the idealistic characteristics of innovative online education. But the problem lies in that for the course to be successful, the students enrolled in MOOCs need to have the personal initiative to complete the class, which is difficult to track. Accountability measures are lacking in MOOCs. Are the resources spent investing in MOOCs worth it if students are not finishing the classes or are not gaining as much as they would in a traditional classroom setting?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports there is movement toward credentialing MOOCs. “Badges” are the latest method utilized by the free online education group called the Khan Academy. These “badges” are used to show students have mastered certain skills learned through an online program. Another method the article references is the idea of certificates.

But these methods still pose confusion over the value of a college degree. What does a certificate or “badge” in a MOOC look like to a potential employer? And how does that differ from what a college degree looks like on a resume?

MOOC credentialing still remains confusing to academic leaders, as exemplified by the 9 percent increase in survey takers who believe credentials for MOOC completion will cause confusion about higher education degrees. As MOOCs progress, there will be many questions to answer. There’s always the financial question of how to keep online programs from becoming a drain on a university. Additionally, there’s the quality aspect to consider. Do MOOCs provide as successful of an education as a traditional classroom setting? MOOCs are beneficial in that they open education to a massive online audience at no cost. But whether they will contribute positively in a sustainable way to the higher education environment remains to be seen. As MOOCs continue to become more common within universities, it would be wise to weigh whether or not this form of online education is a worthwhile investment.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/action-project-moocs-remain-a-debated-form-of-college-education/article_a3cba3bc-b897-11e3-a48a-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz2xYd3eiAl

This video explain what is Massive open online course ( MOOC ):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B81Xp4WO7w8

Competency-Based Education Goes Mainstream in Wisconsin:

(By Scott Carlson)

Twenty years ago, Aaron Apel headed off to the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, where he spent too little time studying and too much time goofing off. He left the university, eventually earning an associate degree in information technology at a community college.

Now, as a longtime staff member in the registrar’s office at Wisconsin’s Madison campus, he has advanced as far as his education will let him. “I have aspirations to climb the ladder in administration, but the opportunity isn’t there without a four-year degree,” he says.

Spending months in a classroom is out of the question: In addition to his full-time job, he helps his wife run an accounting business, shuttles three kids to activities, and oversees an amateur volleyball league. Now he may have another option. Later this year Wisconsin’s extension system will start a competency-based learning program, called the Flexible Option, in which students with professional experience and training in certain skills might be able to test out of whole courses on their way to getting a degree.

Read More at:http://chronicle.com/article/Competency-Based-Education/141871/

 Change about higher education

 I believing changing the system should be a central goal of higher education; for example, we should give more effort to connect our students with real-life problems and practices. This could happen by using simulation as a major learning tool in classes to give them better understanding of the subjects and give them hands-on learning on projects. I believe educators should choose topics that are more related to students’ work after graduation. For example, professors should implement existing case studies, which will provide them with needed IT programs and videos to practice the real projects process.  This will allow them to discover the unexpected problems by themselves, while learning how to solve these problems. Moreover, they should choose models that explain the topic and clarify the learning goals.

I will use an innovative teaching philosophy that connects the modern teaching pedagogies that I learned at Virginia Tech with my existing learning experiences that I have gained during the past years such as diversity, technology use, transparency in personal relations with students and grading policies, industry connection, simulation learning, and improving the students’ communication skills. Bottom-line, I will choose a learner-centered syllabus for each one of my classes that gives my students the base of life-long learning tools and enables them to educate themselves with a minor intervention from me; usually, my role in the class will be a facilitator.

Establishing colleges at a university is not easy and requires several stages including building staff, faculty and students to start the class. I remember when I participated in establishing an architecture engineering college at Qassim University; it was not easy to create and adopt the name of the college curriculum. At that time, we had been communicating with some U.S. universities and we compared academic plans to visit a number of university professors.  Professors from various American universities visited and we benefited from their experience in establishing colleges. After the adoption of many of the basic requirements, it became important to get quality output and obtain the dependence of associations and professional institutes, such as getting accreditation and evaluation after every five years to recognize the quality of the curriculum and output. These efforts look to the future to build a knowledge appealing to students and community.