Using Assessment to Further Academic Excellence and Student Success at the University of Northern Iowa

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
John Ophus ◽  
Deirdre Bucher Heistad ◽  
Kristin Moser
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Academic Excellence ◽  
University Of Northern Iowa ◽  
The University

scholarly journals A Project-Centric Curriculum Design

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Dennis Drinka ◽  
Minnie Yi-Miin Yen
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Individual Project ◽  
The University ◽  
And Control ◽  
Small Team

Student success was the motivation for evolving an individual project-based course into a project-centric curriculum. A one semester project was first extended across a sequence of three interrelated courses tied together through their focus on the success of small team projects that spanned those courses. This sequence was then targeted as the core of a redesign of the entire program curriculum focused on project and student success. Currently, the department is in the process of introducing the measurement of project success as a tool for assessment and control of the departments learning objectives. An overview of the design of this curriculum, lessons learned from developing it, and benefits of this type of curriculum in quality of student learning, community engagement, and reputation of the university, will be discussed.

scholarly journals THE EFFECT OF PROJECT 5-100 ON THE UNIVERSITY’S PUBLICATION ACTIVITY

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
D. Yu. Rudenko ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Publication Activity ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Academic Excellence ◽  
University Employees ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
The University ◽  
The Web

The aim of the study is to estimate the effect of the Russian academic excellence project (Project 5-100) on the publication activity of the University of Tyumen, measured by the number of articles published in journals indexed in the Web of Science database. The hypothesis of the research is that there is a positive causal relationship between the number of published articles and the University’s participation in Project 5-100. This impact was estimated empirically for the University of Tyumen while the other university participants (31 universities) were taken as a control group. Counterfactual scenarios are used to find the number of articles that the university employees would have published in the absence of Project 5-100. Thus, it is shown that, despite the failure to meet the goal of entering the top 200 of world universities in the ranking for ecology and agricultural biology, the University of Tyumen benefited from its participation in Project 5-100: its number of publications, especially in journals of the first and second quartile, has been growing faster than in the control group of universities.

Measuring What Matters

2017 ◽  
pp. 268-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Brower ◽  
Sandra Kallio ◽  
Rebecca Karoff ◽  
Mark Mailloux ◽  
David Schejbal
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Strategic Management ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Academic Goals ◽  
Competency Based Education ◽  
Direct Assessment ◽  
Management Of Resources ◽  
Competency Based ◽  
The University ◽  
What Matters

This chapter demonstrates that competency-based education requires a different set of student success metrics, and introduces the metrics framework developed by and for the University of Wisconsin's UW Flexible Option (UW Flex). UW Flex is a direct assessment competency-based self-paced model for earning degrees and certificates from institutions in the UW System. It was supported by a grant from Lumina Foundation to develop a competency-based education blueprint for success and includes a set of student-centric metrics meaningful to the model, the curriculum, and the students who are being served in Flex programs. The framework defines student success as students moving through programs at their own pace, demonstrating mastery of subject matter, and meeting academic goals. Program-level metrics aggregate each of these three student-level metrics to provide useful information about the success of a program. The authors also build the case that strategic management of resources is required to overcome challenges inherent in implementing the UW Flexible Option metrics framework.

scholarly journals Delivering Information Literacy via Facebook: Here Comes the Spinach!

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
A. F. Tyson ◽  
Anton Angelo ◽  
Brian McElwaine ◽  
Kiera Tauro
Keyword(s):  
Student Engagement ◽  
Student Success ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Undergraduate Student ◽  
Additional Method ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Student Clubs ◽  
The University ◽  
Library Marketing

Abstract Objective – Information literacy (IL) skills are critical to undergraduate student success and yet not all students receive equal amounts of curriculum-integrated IL instruction. This study investigated whether Facebook could be employed by libraries as an additional method of delivering IL content to students. To test whether students would engage with IL content provided via a library Facebook page, this study compared the engagement (measured by Facebook’s reach and engagement metrics) with IL content to the library’s normal marketing content.  Methods – We ran a two-part intervention using the University of Canterbury Library’s Facebook page. We created content to help students find, interpret, and reference resources, and measured their reception using Facebook’s metrics. Our first intervention focused on specific courses and mentioned courses by name through hashtagging, while our second intervention targeted peak assessment times during the semester. Statistics on each post’s reach and engagement were collected from Facebook’s analytics. Results – Students chose to engage with posts on the library Facebook page that contain IL content more than the normal library marketing-related content. Including course-specific identifiers (hashtags) and tagging student clubs and societies in the post further increased engagement. Reach was increased when student clubs and societies shared our content with their followers.  Conclusion – This intervention found that students engaged more with IL content than with general library posts on Facebook. Course-targeted interventions were more successful in engaging students than generic IL content, with timeliness, specificity, and community being important factors in building student engagement. This demonstrates that academic libraries can use Facebook for more than just promotional purposes and offers a potential new channel for delivering IL content.

scholarly journals Knowing when to cry uncle: Balancing instructional initiatives

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Angie Cox ◽  
Jim Kelly ◽  
Chris Neuhaus
Keyword(s):  
Information Literacy ◽  
University Of Northern Iowa ◽  
Literacy Course ◽  
The University

About five years ago, the University of Northern Iowa Rod Library began building a credit-bearing information literacy course from scratch. Envisioned to be something more than simply “how to use the library,” the course was also designed to focus on Google resources and the trends and issues associated with the online world of information. We named the course Beyond Google. From the start, we aimed to teach students how to be more effective and thoughtful Google users, and more skeptical consumers of information.

Scholarly Communication in a Digital Environment: Populating the Institutional Repository of the University of Botswana

Libri ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olugbade Oladokun
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Academic Excellence ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
University Of Botswana ◽  
The World ◽  
The University

AbstractThis paper examines the numerous benefits of digital scholarly communication made visible through institutional repositories (IRs) that have become trendy in institutions of higher learning in developed countries of the world. In line with its vision to be a leading centre of academic excellence in Africa and the world, the University of Botswana (UB) established its own IR known as the UB Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA). This paper discusses the challenges of profiling digital scholarly communication on UBRISA, a technology brimming with potential but which UB staff has largely ignored. The consequences of this neglect are seen in the paltry submissions to it during its four years of existence. The paper explains the implementation policy, and the involvement and functions of a tripartite team that drives UBRISA. The paper notes that the problem of tardiness experienced in populating the digital repositories of other institutions is also deeply rooted in UB. It shares some failed efforts made to populate UBRISA through the instrument of the performance management system – an annual contract which the academic staff members sign at the beginning of the year. The paper then analyses the efforts of the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) that worked with UB in training its staff regarding the operation of the IR, and also established a workflow process for vetting, describing and uploading content to the IR so that UB scholarship could become more visible to the world. Some recommendations are also offered.

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