HTLM exercise D R A F T

Are you Web savvy? Or for all you know, do you think HTML might be a short-order cook's abbreviation for a ham sandwich with letuce and tomato? Here's an exercise designed to give you a taste of HTML. (OK, OK, you read the assigned chapter, and you already know HTML stands for hypertext markup language. Right?) Anyway, today we'll give you a taste of HTML on The Mackerelwrapper blog, taking advantage of a feature of Blogger that lets you use simple HTML tags in the comments field.

HTML tags come in pairs. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but 99 percent of the time you have to use them in pairs. The first consists of angle brackets -- the "less than" (<) and "greater than" (>) signs you remember from math class -- around a code. And the second consists of a "less than" angle bracket and a slash -- which looks like </ -- and a "more than" angle bracket around the same code. It tells the computer to stop doing whatever the first tag told it to do. For example, the first sentence of this paragaph would look like this in HTML: <b>HTML tags come in pairs.</b> The first tag tells the computer to start setting in boldface type, and the second tag tells it to stop.

OK, let's get started. What I want you to do is to choose something to write a brief paragraph about, and post it as a comment to this blog post. Something you won't be embarrassed to publish to the World Wide Web. Cats, dogs, ferrets, the Cubs, the Cardinals, quadratic equations, dumb in-class assignments, whatever. For demonstration purposes, I'll choose butterflies.

1. Start by writing a headline. To make the type big, enclose your headline in these tags: <h1> at the beginning and </h1> at the end. In HTML it will look something like this: <h1>Flutter by, butterfly.</h1>

2. Next, write something about your subject. It doesn't matter what. But here's what does matter: I want you to find a website that explains something about your subject, and create a hypertext link to that website. Here's how it might work: As I surf the Web looking for stuff on butterflies, I come across the legend of the Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou (or Zhuangzi), who once dreamed he was a butterfly. But, according to the legend, when he woke up "he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou." Great story, huh? Really gets you thinking. I found it in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, so I'll create a hypertext link to it.

The HTML tag for a hypertext link starts with <a href=" and the address or URL (which stands for Uniform Resource Locater, right?) followed by "> ... so I highlight the Wikipedia page's address and copy it, then paste it into the tags so it looks like this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi"> ... then I'll write a few words that I want in the link and I close it with </agt; (see how it picks up the "a" from the opening tag)? Here's what my text might look like: The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi">once dreamed he was a butterfly.</agt; When he woke up ...

Flutter by, butterfly

Butterflies don't make butter, but they do fly. And sometimes they make philosophy. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up ...

See how the words "once dreamed he was a butterfly" are converted by the HTML tag into hypertext? There are quite a few other tags to learn in HTML (although most of us get started by pasting them in from a list of tags we find through a Google search). But this <a href=" hypertext tag is the basic building block of the World Wide Web.

Now it's your turn. Think of something to write about. Find a Web page about it. And post a hypertext link to it. You may post as a comment to this blog post.


Why don't you start by writing a headline.

Jan Morris: pendulum swing on U.S. "swagger"?

Jan Morris, British travel writer and author of a provocative book on Lincoln, has a piece in today's Guardian with any number of provocative insights on the "idea of America" -- and an evident love of Broadway show tunes.

For myself, I responded to them all too sentimentally. Like Walt Whitman before me, I heard America sing! I relished the hackneyed old lyrics - Mine eyes have seen the glory, Thy word our law, Thy paths our chosen way, Oe'r the land of the free and the home of the brave, God bless America, land that I love ... Most of the words were flaccid, many of the tunes were vulgar, but as I heard them I saw always in my mind's eye, as Whitman did, all the glorious space, grandeur and opportunity that was America, Manhattan to LA. Sea, in fact, to shining sea.

In those days we did not think of American evangelists as prophets of political extremism - they seemed more akin to the homely convictions of plantation or village chapel than to the machinations of neocons. We bridled rather at the American assumption that the US of A had been the only true victor of the second world war, but most of us did not very deeply resent the happy swagger of the legend and danced gratefully enough to the American rhythms of the time. We thought it all seemed essentially innocent.

Innocent! Dear God! Half a century, and nobody thinks that now. Far from being the most beloved country on earth, today the US is the most thoroughly detested. ...

A lot of it is standard (although I don't think Morris mentions President Bush by name), what what's evident is Morris' essential affection for Americans of 50 years ago:

A generation or two ago, most of us, wherever we lived, loved the generous self-satisfaction of it, if not in the general, at least in the particular. The GI was not then a sort of goggled monster in padded armour, but a cheerful fellow chatting up the girls and distributing candy not as a matter of policy, but out of plain goodwill - everyone's friendly guy next door. To millions of radio listeners around the world, the Voice of America was a voice of decency, and one could watch the lachrymose patriotic rituals of America - the hand on heart, the misty-eyed salute to the flag - with more affection than irony.

Morris says he hopes a new president, an artist no less, will come out of the 2008 elections, and restore what used to be:

All it needs is someone with a key to unlock that Idea again, and I hope it will be that next president, whoever it is, even now gearing up for the election. Please God, may it be a poetic president. Inspiration has been the true engine of American success, and all its greatest presidents have been people with a divine spark. The dullards may have been efficient, respected or influential, but the Jeffersons and the Roosevelts, the Lincolns and the Kennedys have all been, in their different ways, artists.

So may it be a president with the key of original inspiration who can release the Idea from its occlusion. All the ingredients are still there, after all - the kindness, the imagination, the merriment, the will, the talent, the energy, the goddam orneriness, the plain goodness - all there waiting to burst out once more and bring us back our America, blessed and blessing too.

"Give our regards to old Broadway", sang Cohan, "And say that I'll be there ere long." So will we, so will we, just as soon as America comes home.

Good high-school journalism course

An excellent-looking distance learning high school journalism course from Oregon, part of the COOLSchool website ... accredited by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools.

A table of contents, with comments from Sue and Dean Barr, of Eugene, who copyrighted the curriculum:

Lesson 1. An Introduction. You'll be introduced to journalism through this first lesson when you write up a get-to-know-you profile as you learn the first rules of journalistic style.

Lesson 2. History of Journalism. Where we've been is important to knowing where we are going. The same is true for journalism. Journalism history will show us why we live with some of the protocols and constraints that we have today.

Lesson 3. Functions of Mass Media. In this unit you'll learn the qualities of a successful journalist and the functions of mass media in our society and its influence on our lives.

Lesson 4. Newswriting Qualities & Elements. It is important to be able to understand how a news article differs from other forms of writing, and how to distinguish between fact and opinion.

Lesson 5. Journalistic Style. If a news article is to be professional and consistent in its approach to titles, capitalization and abbreviations, it is extremely important that journalists learn and apply the rules of journalistic style.

Lesson 6. Interviewing & Gathering Information. You cannot write a complete article unless you know how to interview news sources and gather information from written sources and from the Internet.

Lesson 7. "Lead" Writing. Perhaps the most important part of the news story is the opening, called the "lead," which tells the reader what has happened. You must be able to evaluate information, select what needs to be included, and write a clear, concise lead.

Lesson 8. Newswriting. It is time to get to the real purpose of this course: to learn to write complete news articles. You'll be writing a number of different stories that will help you become a proficient journalist.

Link here to Iraqi blogs

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting overview of blogs being written from Iraq -- or, in the case of refugees -- about Iraq by Iraqis. The headline tells the story:

BAGHDAD BLOGGING
Bloggers in the war zone write both about the devastating effects of the conflict and about the events, relationships and frustrations that occur in their everyday lives

At the bottom of the story are links to Riverbend and other blogs. Riverbend is the best known in the West, perhaps, but they're all complelling because they give us a viewpoint -- a variety of viewpoints, really -- we don't get from our media in the U.S.

Chief Illiniwek 'honored' with racist webpage

American Indians have now been "honored" with a racist webpage. It was on Facebook, and it was called "If They Get Rid of the Chief I'm Becoming a Racist." It contained comments by University of Illinois students -- or people who said they were students -- about the controversy over the U of I's Chief Illiniwek.
And it demonstrated pretty conclusively the kind of trouble that racist sports mascots can lead to.

By far the most detailed and balanced report is in Inside Higher Ed, an online newsletter that covers colleges and universities. The headline, "Ugly Turn in Mascot Dispute," says it all. And the story links to a screen grab from the Facebook site. It was taken down last week after Native American faculty noticed it and grew alarmed because it threatened violence.

According to a Jan. 10 story in the Champaign News-Gazette, the offending comments were posted a month or two ago:

Late in November, according to the UI Native American House and opponents of Chief Illiniwek, one UI student reportedly wrote, "there was never a racist problem before ... but now i hate redskins and hope all those drunk, casino owning bums die." (The punctuation and spelling are as reported by the Native American House.)

About two weeks later, another UI student posted, "that's the worst part! apparently the leader of this (anti-chief) movement is of Sioux descent. Which means what, you ask? the Sioux indians are the ones that killed off the Illini indians, so she's just trying to finish what her ancestors started. I say we throw a tomohawk into her face."

It's hard to tell. Were the kids who posted this stuff being playful? Sounds like maybe they were. But when people threaten violence, you can't be too careful.

It's like a bomb scare. Even if you hear children giggling in the background when they phone the damn thing in, you don't take any chances. You evacuate the building.

So on Jan. 10, the U of I felt there'd been a little too much "honoring." The News-Gazette has the fullest account of the university''s reaction:

In an e-mail to students, faculty and staff Tuesday afternoon, UI Chancellor Richard Herman said he would not tolerate violent threats, and the university "will take all legal and disciplinary actions available in response to the threatening messages."
Herman declined to say if the university has forwarded the threats to any law enforcement agencies.

The chancellor learned of the postings earlier this week and became appalled after reading them, he said. He called the messages racist.
"From my point of view, it (the Web page) clearly promotes divisiveness and singles out people," he said, adding, "I need to make clear this sort of behavior, whether legal or illegal, is unwelcome."

In his e-mail to the UI community, Herman wrote the idea that the debate over Chief Illiniwek "could degenerate to personal attacks that threaten the physical safety and well-being of members of the campus community is something that all of us should find truly abhorrent."

Inside Higher Ed has a few more details, including the fact the website targeted (although not by name) a specific student of Lakota (Sioux) ancestery.

Stephen Kaufman, emeritus biology professor, spoke to Inside Higher Ed of "an atmosphere of intimidation on this campus.” He was concerned for the Lakota student, of course, but he knows something about intimidation himself. Inside Higher Ed reported:

Kaufman became the target of campus protest last fall when a student started an online petition rallying students to get him to resign for sending letters to high school athletes that the university was seeking to recruit.
The petition against Kaufman received over 3,300 signatures.

No doubt they were "honoring" Kaufman.

Since I teach a Native American cultural studies course at a nearby college, I hear a lot about Chief Illiniwek from my students. And I believe them when they say they really don't think anyone intends for the mascot to be racist, and they truly can't understand why others think it is.

Me, I think it's kind of like beauty. Remember the old sayings? Racism is in the eye of the beholder. And here's another that fits even better. Racism is as racism does.

More stuff for COMM 317 syllabus

How to study court cases in class? Here are links to a couple of very helpful webpages by Princeton Review, the test prep company (not affiliated with Princeton University). One is on how to study a casebook and the other is on the Socratic method, which we will use in class -- at least some of the time. The University of Chicago Law School also has several pages and links on Socratic method. Read them and be ready to join in a Socratic discussion in class.

More COMM 317 links

Would voters OK the First Amendment today? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constition says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Read the introduction to the First Amendment by Doug Linder, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, and be ready to answer the questions at the bottom of the webpage.

'To keep the waters pure': Jefferson on media. From a webpage of quotes about the press taken from Thomas Jefferson's writings. On a website called Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Quotations from the Writings of Thomas Jefferson maintained by the University of Virginia.

Here's one: "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491.

And another, more frequently quoted: ""The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57."

The abbreviation "ME," if you're interested in this kind of thing, refers to the location in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

What do the Thomas Jefferson quotes suggest to you about the role of the press in the American Revolution and the early Federalist and Republican periods?

COMM 317 -- common law and Lord Coke

Some more links for the COMM 317 syllabus"

'Stork didn't bring our rights.' Read the essay on "Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States" by Jane E. Kirtley, media ethics professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, explains how judges going all the way back to Merrie Olde England brought us our rights. Also read about Sir Edward Coke, legal scholar and judge of the English courts of Common Pleas and King's Bench in the 1600s. Lord Coke is one of the guys who most influenced our system of law, our way of thinking about legal issues and therefore the rights we enjoy as American citizens.

Wisdom from Lord Coke. Several passages from a collection of quotes by The ... Institutes of the Lawes of England Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), Chief Justice of the King's Bench under King James I:

There be three kinds of unhappie men. 1. Qui scit & non docet, Hee that hath knowledge and teacheth not. 2. Qui docet & non vivit, He that teacheth, and liveth not thereafter. 3. Qui nescit, & non interrogat, He that knoweth not, and doth not enquire to understand. Sect. 232b.

The reason of the law is the life of the law; for though a man can tell the law, yet if he know not the reason thereof, he shall soone forget his superficial knowledge. But when he findeth the right reason of the law, and so bringeth it to his natural reason, that he comprehendeth it as his own, this will not only serve him for the understanding of that particular case, but of many others ... Sect. 183b.

Law temporall ... consisteth in three parts, viz, First, on the common law, expressed in our bookes of law, and judiciall records. Secondly, on statutes contained in acts and records of parliament. And thirdly, on customes grounded upon reason, and used time out of minde; and the construction and determination of these doe belong to the judges of the realme. Sect. 344a.

I like Coke.

COMM 317 -- links

A couple of resources on the World Wide Web that I can use in the first couple of weeks of the mass media law course:

1. How to think like a lawyer: A website called LawNerds.com has a six-part tutorial for law students and pre-law students on how to cultivate a legal frame of mind, legal reasoning and the case method, among other things. Since we will use the case method in COMM 317, read those three sections. If you think you might want to go on to law school (an excellent career choice for communications majors, by the way), take a look at section 4 on what it's like to go to law school, too.

2. Briefing cases. Since we'll be using the case method to study media law, you'll need to learn how to brief a case. It's a special kind of abstract, or summary, that law students learn. And doing it will teach you more about logic than all the liberal arts courses in the world. Start with the basics of "How to Brief a Case" at 4lawschool.com, a website designed, logically enough, for law school students. Follow the links at the bottom to an excellent guide to writing case briefs from the University of Virginia Law School and an even better guide from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.

HUM 221 syllabus paste-in revision

Week 2

 

Myths of origin and of endurance. Read Zimmerman and Molyneaux, "Disposession,"
pp. 20-35. In Here First, we will read Evelina Zuni Lucero, "On the Tip of My Tongue," pp. 247-61, and Luci Tapahonso, "They Moved Over the Mountain," pp. 337-51, along with her poem "In 1864." On the Web, we will look at: (1) the Haudenosaunee
creation myth at http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Culture/?article=creation
; (2) some traditional Cherokee stories on how things came
to be the way they are; and (3) the "First Thanksgiving"
myth, including (a) an overview in The Christian Science Monitor
at http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1127/p13s02-lign.html,
(b) the primary historical sources at http://members.aol.com/calebj/thanksgiving.html,
(c) a newspaper story on at what Alaska Natives eat along with
their turkey at http://www.adn.com/life/taste/story/8435558p-8329710c.html
and (d) an essay by folklorist Esaúl Sánchez at
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/features/1995/112195/abrahams.html
suggesting one thing the myth does for us. Finally, we will read "A Story of how a Wall Stands" and other poetry by Acaoma Pueblo writer Simon Ortiz linked to the Internet Public Library.

HUM 223 -- today's presentations

Class is cancelled today. I can't get an answer when I call SCI, but we're on the Channel 20 list of school closings. Those of you who had presentations scheduled today won't have to give them -- I will just count your grade on the written part of your research project.

I'm posting this message to my blogs and the Message Board linked to my faculty page. If you see other students who are in our class, please let them know. And you'll turn in your final exam papers in the Presidents Room at the regularly schduled time Wednesday morning.

If you have questions, please contact me at pellertsen@sci.edu or my email account at peterellertsen@yahoo.com.

-- Doc

New office -- directions

I'm getting moved into my new office now, so I'm cross-posting directions to my class blogs and the Message Board linked to my faculty page.

I'm in Beata Hall (the old Ursuline convent) across Eastman Street from St. Joe's parish and school. Either Room 31, if you go by the list of room assignments I've been given, or Room 8, if you go by the numbers on the doors. I've also attached my business card to the door.

To get there from Dawson, go out the south entrance and take the walk past Ursuline Academy. You'll go between the buildings, with the old building on the right and the gym on the left. Keep going through the parking lot, and there'll be a porch on the right (women's housing is straight ahead). On the south end of that porch, there's a door with a Christmas decoration. Go in the door, take the stairs just to the left and you'll be on the floor with faculty offices. They're in the hallway to the left at the top of the stairs. It takes a little less time to walk it than it does to give the directions!

Computer and phone are now hooked up ... you can reach me, as before, by phone at 525-1420 ext. 519 and by email at pellertsen@sci.edu. Email is usually better, but the voice mail in my office is working again.

Nov. assessment newsletter -- ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
November 2006
Vol. 7 No. 4
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Over the holidays, I hope to reconnect
the assessment pages to SCI’s website. Until that
time, I am publishing the assessment newsletter by
email to faculty and staff and archiving it on my
personal weblog at
http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/. -- Pete
Ellertsen, assessment chair

Santa has your assessment
questionnaires

A couple of quick reminders to get out in the November
newsletter, with the end of the month and the end of
fall semester classes both coming up this week. Also
an update on ominous developments in Washington, D.C.


Classroom assessment forms

Sometime this week, if the disruption from this
month’s move of faculty offices permits it, I hope to
have Classroom Assessment Questionnaires in the
faculty mailboxes at Dawson Hall.

This semester’s questionnaires will give us important
data that will help us devise ways to assess for the
Common Student Learning Objectives we derived from the
SCI mission statement in 2004, so it’s important for
everyone to fill them out and document any changes in
instructional methods.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please
contact me by email at pellertsen@sci.edu. As my phone
is hooked up and I learn my new office number, I will
post other contact information to the newsletter.

Feds still push standardized tests?

Speculation over mandatory standardized testing on the
order of the federal No Child Left Behind program
refuses to die down. Even though both houses of
Congress are about to change party leadership, it now
appears the U.S. Education Department may push for it
through the process of negotiating federal
regulations.

We’ll know more early in December, but The Chronicle
of Higher Education reported Nov. 24, “Margaret
Spellings, the education secretary, has decided to
focus on accreditors as part of her ‘action plan’ to
begin the most urgent changes proposed by the
commission. … Next week Ms. Spellings will meet here
with a few dozen accreditors, higher-education
officials, and business leaders in what is being
called an Accreditation Forum to discuss ways to make
the measurement of student learning central to
accreditors' oversight of colleges and universities.”

What’s ominous about this, the Chronicle notes, is
“[i]n the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress,
the accrediting system is one of the few vehicles Ms.
Spellings almost totally controls to drive her
agenda.” The Chronicle’s headline sums up the story’s
tone: “Spellings Wants to Use Accreditation as a
Cudgel.”

“Many accreditors and college officials view next
week's one-day gathering with varying degrees of
suspicion, especially since several of them were never
formally invited,” reports Chronicle staff writer
Burton Bollag. “Some fear that in the name of
increased accountability Ms. Spellings will try to use
the forum to promote solutions they think are
simplistic, like comparing institutions on the basis
of a few easily quantifiable indicators.”

That sounds like federally mandated standardized
tests. Perhaps more troubling, at least for those of
us who do assessment, is what appears to be an
assumption on the part of the Bush administration
that, well, we aren’t doing assessment.

The Chronicle’s discussion of the issue is worth
quoting at length:

In particular, the agenda circulated for
next week's meeting has caused an uproar among the
accreditors, who say it contains certain incorrect
assumptions. For example, the day is set to kick off
with "a panel presentation by leading experts who will
build a case for change from inputs to outputs."

Critics say that ignores a major shift in accrediting
standards that has been under way for more than a
decade, as accreditors have moved from examining
elements like curricula and the portion of faculty
members with terminal degrees to looking at indicators
of what students have learned. In 1992, as part of the
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress
required accreditors to take into account student
achievement. In 1998, in another edition of the Higher
Education Act, lawmakers made it the most important
factor for accreditors to consider.

"I'm offended," Steven D. Crow, executive director of
the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools'
Higher Learning Commission, says of the panel on
outputs. "I'm doing that already."

Mr. Crow leads the largest of the six regional
accrediting groups, which together accredit nearly
3,000 institutions. "There is a perception — Secretary
Spellings and [commission] chairman [Charles] Miller
have expressed it in recent speeches — that is over 25
years old, that assumes we're just counting books and
square feet."

It’s hard to figure out what all this may mean for us
at SCI, since, as so often happens, the politicians
are speaking in code words, hints and whispers. But it
all still bears watching.

Reference: Bollag, Burton. “Spellings Wants to Use
Accreditation as a Cudgel.” Chronicle of Higher
Education 24 Nov. 2006.
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i14/14a00101.htm

Email joke gets Bush's number?

Here's a joke that was going around on the internet just before Tuesday's congressional elections. It's a little out of date now, since President Bush announced U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation the morning after the elections, but still worth recording exactly as it came in my email.

> Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning.
>
> He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq. To
> everyone's amazement, all of the color ran from Bush's face, then he
> collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost
whimpering.
> Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, "Just exactly how
many is
> a brazillion?"

Most of the Bush jokes I've seen are too hostile or edgy to be really funny. This one, maybe because of the egregious pun, is cute.

test test

Let's insert an image and see if it appears.

Humanities 223 term paper

HUM 223: Ethnic Music

Springfield College in Illinois

Fall Semester 2006

http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/humanities/hum223syllabus.html

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. -- Charlie Parker

Term Paper – Fall 2006

One of your requirements in Humanities 223 is to write a documented term paper (at least 2,000 words or eight pages in 12pt type) and deliver an oral report on some aspect of cultural and artistic expression in traditional music or a commercial genre derived from traditional music. This handout tells you how to do it. The instructions, and updates, will be posted to my teaching blog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/ -- Pete Ellertsen, instructor

Your overall assignment. Choose a musician, band or group whose work you enjoy or whom you want to know more about, and write a paper about their artistic influences; how their culture, their musical genre and/or artistic vision shaped their life and career; how they dealt with issues of commercial and artistic success; and their place in the history of American popular music. You may choose your own topic. But since this is an interdisciplinary humanities/cultural studies class, you will do best if you choose a historical figure or a contemporary musician who has been influenced by long-term musical genres (e.g. country, gospel, blues, jazz and the Anglo-Irish or African American cultural traditions they grew out of). Be sure to clear your topic with me before you begin your research. Your opinions and your response to the artist’s music are an important part of the paper, but you need to research your artists’ careers and respond to their music in order to support your opinion. You may use either MLA or APA style. A “Citation Machine” to help you with correct MLA or APA form is available on my faculty website at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/facultypage.html .

How to approach your paper. In researching and writing your paper, you’ll want to address the following points. Not all of them will be appropriate for every paper you write (for example you don’t need to spell out for me that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson wasn’t a drug addict), but you’ll want to touch these bases in your research:

1. Some biography of your artist or band members, including musical influences, artistic vision (i.e. anything they said about music, like the quote from jazz saxophone player Charlie “Bird” Parker above), and how they made a living from their music. How did they handle the stresses of a musical career, including drug use, road trips, etc.? What compromises, if any, did they make between their artistic vision and commercial success? How successful were they, both artistically and commercially?
2. How were your artists received in their time? By later generations? By the public? By other musicians? How do you, personally respond to their music? Choose a song, or piece of instrumental music, and ask yourself: (a) What about this music stands out in my mind? (b) What in my cultural background, values, taste and interests makes me react to it that way? (c) What specifically about the music makes me feel that way? Consult my handout on literary reader [or listener] response papers and the sample essay on Kinky Friedman at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/rosenblatt.html.
3. What does your artist’s career tell you about music and the arts, the communications media, the entertainment industry and/or marketing economics in American society? What does it tell you about American popular culture? How well does their music transcend the limitations of its particular genre or cultural background?
   

In researching the paper, you should both read up on the musicians and listen to some of their music. You will find some sources in the library, others on the Internet. If you have trouble tracking down recordings or sound files, see me and I’ll help out.

Robert M. Seiler of the University of Calgary suggests when his students write around music, they actively listen for the sound of vocals or instrumentals, and the “dynamics or the intensity of the sound, in terms of loudness, uniformity, and change.” He also suggests they listen for:

a. the movement of the piece, i.e., concentrate on its rhythm, meter, and tempo,

b. the pitch, i.e., in terms of its order and melody, and

c. the structure of the piece, i.e., its logic, design, and texture.

Seiler’s tip sheet is available at http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/music.htm -- his examples are from classical music, but his suggestions work for blues or rock, too. They’re excellent.

Writing about music is a lot like writing about a poem or a play in English classes. In other ways, it's different. Here's what Dartmouth University has to say about one type of music paper:

In a review, you should focus on the form of the music. What sounds make up the music? How does the composer or performer fuse together these different sound elements? How do the different movements work together to create the music's overall effect? Remember to stay away from comments beginning with "I" that reflect only how the music affected you. Instead, question the music using criteria by which we judge excellence, and provide insight into those elements of excellence.

Dartmouth's tip sheet is available on line at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/music.shtml. I recommend it highly.

Who to write about? Any of the artists we have talked about in class are fair game. You can find plenty of information on historical figures like Stephen A. Foster, the Fisk Jubilee Singers or Scott Joplin. Blues and/or jazz vocalists like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday would be good subjects, as would jazz musicians like Louie Armstrong, Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. You can write about gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson, Thomas A. Dorsey (who also sang blues as “Georgia Tom”) or more recent evangelists like Kirk Franklin who mix the music of today with roots music. As you read “Deep Blues” by Robert Palmer, you will learn a lot about Delta and Chicago bluesmen Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, as well as the rock artists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan or the Rolling Stones who emulated their music, and you can use Palmer's book as a starting point for your research. You will get other ideas as we watch “Feel Like Going Home” and other DVDs from Martin Scorese’s PBS series “The Blues” during the remainder of the semester. Just be sure to clear your topic with me first.

What are your deadlines? There are three. You will give me a two-page typewritten proposal by Friday, Nov. 3, in which you tell me which performer(s) you will research and what your tentative thesis is; and list, in MLA or APA format, three to five specific sources you have consulted. Your papers will be due by the week of Thanksgiving, which is the week of Nov. 20-21, but I will schedule your oral presentation, on a first-come-first-served basis, when you turn in your paper. So you are allowed to turn it in early. The presentations will be three to five minutes long, and they will be given during the week after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask me. The quickest way to get hold of me is to email me at pellertsen@sci.edu.

october assessment newsletter ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
October 2006
Vol. 7 No. 3
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Until I am able to post to SCI's assessment website again, I am publishing the newsletter by email and archiving it in the interim on my personal weblog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/. -- Pete Ellertsen, assessment chair

Of CATs, Professorenzetteln and assessment

Assessment and government intrusion into the classroom are nothing new. In fact, a recent book by historian William Clark makes a good case they have changed the way we think in Western society over the centuries. The book is “Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University,” and it is reviewed in the current issue of The New Yorker.

The review, by Anthony Grafton, makes me want to read the book. It also makes me think his students – and faculty colleagues – at Princteon are a lot like ours at Springfield College and Benedictine.

“Anyone who has ever taught at a college or university must have had this experience,” Grafton begins. He continues by describing the experience:

You’re in the middle of something that you do every day: standing at a lectern in a dusty room, for example, lecturing to a roomful of teen-agers above whom hang almost visible clouds of hormones; or running a seminar, hoping to find the question that will make people talk even though it’s spring and no one has done the reading … Suddenly, you find yourself wondering … [w]hy, in the age of the World Wide Web, do professors still stand at podiums and blather for fifty minutes at unruly mobs of students, their lowered baseball caps imperfectly concealing the sleep buds that rim their eyes? Why do professors and students put on polyester gowns and funny hats and march, once a year, in the uncertain glory of the late spring? … These activities seem both bizarre and disconnected, from one another and from modern life, and it’s no wonder that they often provoke irritation, not only in professional pundits but also in parents, potential donors, and academic administrators.

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve certainly had that experience. And I know what it’s like to try to describe what we do, and why we do it, to outside stakeholders.

Clark’s thesis is that American research universities evolved out academic traditions in 19th-century Germany, and they in turn evolved out of – get this! – bureaucratic policies and procedures in the petty electorates and principalities of the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries. As Grafton paraphrases him, Clark notes:

Gradually, the bureaucrats devised ways to insure that the academics were fulfilling their obligations. In Vienna, Clark notes, “a 1556 decree provided for paying two individuals to keep daily notes on lecturers and professors”; in Marburg, from 1564 on, the university beadle kept a list of skipped lectures and gave it, quarterly, to the rector, who imposed fines. Others demanded that professors fill in Professorenzetteln, slips of paper that gave a record of their teaching activities. Professorial responses to such bureaucratic intrusions seem to have varied as much then as they do now. Clark reproduces two Professorenzetteln from 1607 side by side. Michael Mästlin, an astronomer and mathematician who taught Kepler and was an early adopter of the Copernican view of the universe, gives an energetic full-page outline of his teaching. Meanwhile, Andreas Osiander, a theologian whose grandfather had been an important ally of Luther, writes one scornful sentence: “In explicating Luke I have reached chapter nine.”

The upshot, according to Clark, was universities evolved ways of measuring learning that satisfied the bureaucrats, when they pushed for “results that looked rational: results that they could codify, sort, and explain to their masters.” During the Middle Ages, testing was largely done in debates known as academic disputations. They came to be replaced by printed dissertations and formal examinations, “exercises that were carefully graded and recorded by those who administered them.” In the language of our own historical era, we might say the new exams and dissertations offered greater transparency to outside stakeholders.

So when we fill out our Classroom Assessment Technique questionnaires at the end of the semester or ask our SCI sophomores to take a fill-in-the-bubble standardized test in the spring, we’re taking part in a government ritual that goes back to the Professorenzetteln of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
There’s a lot more in Grafton’s article than assessment. For example Mark Twain’s description of the time a thousand students “rose and shouted and stamped and clapped, and banged the beer-mugs” when a historian named Theodor Mommsen walked into a Berlin banquet hall in 1892. Or Clark’s new take on the old story of Abelard and Heloise, and its implications for the way we think today. Or what a doctoral exam was like at the University of Göttingen in 1787. Trivia? Sure. But fascinating trivia. And in the end, it helps us answer Grafton’s question – why do we pontificate in front of classrooms, dress up in caps and gowns and, in general, do the things we do in academic life.

Grafton’s article, headlined “The Nutty Professors,” was in the Oct. 10 issue of The New Yorker. It’s fascinating, and it’s still available on line at http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/061023crbo_books

Assessment committee empaneled

Members of this year’s Assessment Committee are Bob Blankenberger, Brian Carrigan, Dave Holland, Barb Tanzyus and Pete Ellertsen (chair). Student Affairs Dean Kevin Broeckling and Academic Affairs Dean John Cicero are ex officio. Standing meeting time has been tentatively set for 2 p.m. the second Tuesday of the month in the Brinkerhoff Conference Room.

No commission left behind?

The Spellings Commission, named for President Bush’s education secretary Margaret Spellings, has issued its final report. Its recommendations were unchanged from earlier drafts issued in the late summer. Spellings outlined the findings of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education at a Sept. 26 luncheon of the National Press Club and called on Congress to act on a higher ed reform package. The Associated Press and a couple of major metro newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor apparently sent reporters, or assigned them to work the phone a minute or two and get a story. Local reaction stories ran in media markets like Austin, Tex., and Roanoke, Va. And several student publications, including The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia and The Daily Star at Northern Illinois University, also ran stories.

But other than that, the commission’s report was greeted by an almost total lack of coverage. It may be significant that during the week of Spellings’ speech a major congressional sex scandal broke out, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned his office and Congress recessed until after the November elections.

Inside Higher Ed had a good summary of the report Sept. 27, the day after it was issued. On line at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/26/spellings

Miller lets fly at private colleges

Charles Miller, who chaired U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education, took a >roundhouse swing at private colleges and universities in a "private" cover letter when he submitted the commission's report. The letter, which "was not part of the official document posted on the Education Department’s Web site," was obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education and quoted today in the Chronicle's News Blog:

In the letter, Mr. Miller shares what he calls “strictly personal observations,” calling the system of financing higher education “dysfunctional.” He writes that “in addition to the lack of transparency regarding pricing, which severely limits the price signals found in a market-based system, there is a lack of the incentives necessary to affect institutional behavior so as to reward innovation and improvement in productivity. Financial systems of higher education instead focus on and reward increasing revenues—a top line structure with no real bottom line.”

In keeping with previous comments he has made, Mr. Miller singled out private colleges for the most criticism, writing that they resist being held accountable, as shown by their opposition to a unit-record system to track students. “What elevates this concern,” he writes, “is the fact that so-called ‘private’ colleges and universities receive a large amount of support from the public, that is, the taxpayer.”

Overall, the report's final version was little changed from the draft approved and released to the public in August. An article headed "Plan would hold colleges accountable for students' learning" in the Sept. 27 Detroit Free-Press by William Douglas of the McClatchy newspaper group details the implications for assessment a little better than most of the press coverage. Douglas writes:

WASHINGTON -- Looking to extend its education policies into colleges and universities, the Bush administration outlined proposals Tuesday that some higher-education officials fear will lead to standardized testing and trample on students' privacy.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said sweeping changes were needed to make higher education more affordable and accountable to people who spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to pursue college degrees.

In a speech at the National Press Club, she laid out proposals developed by the Commission on the Future of U.S. Higher Education, which she appointed a year ago. They'd extend to colleges the principles from the No Child Left Behind program, which seeks greater accountability from elementary schools by requiring them to give standardized tests and publicize the results.

"It seems to me there is an encroachment here to substitute the judgment on higher-education matters that ought to be made by presidents and faculty rather than legislators and commissions," said David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "There is an ever-increasing reach into the academy."

Warren's concern about the tone of the Miller commission report, by the way, has been consistent. It may help explain Miller's blast at private colleges and universities.

Spellings touts NCLB for higher ed?

Nothing on the Google News site about the U.S. Education Department's hearings on using the Department's rule-making authority to force changes in higher education. Figures. The commercial media have shied away from the issue almost a year now. But an article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a speech and school visit by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings hints at a higher ed version of No Child Left Behind.

Here's the lede of a story by the Post-Gazette's Eleanor Chute:

Federal officials are taking the No Child Left Behind Act to the next frontier -- higher education.

In Pittsburgh yesterday, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she will be making a policy speech about higher education at the end of this month.

She noted the federal government pays about one-third of the bill, in the form of grants, and basically puts "the money out and hopes for the best."

She said, "That was fine and dandy when higher education was kind of nice to have as opposed to must have. But that's changing more and more.

"We need to be more strategic, smarter, and make sure higher education is more accessible to more people if we're going to continue to be the world's innovator and the world's leader."

Ms. Spellings made the remarks before the National Conference of Editorial Writers at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel.

So it's back again. The idea was bandied about earlier by Charles Miller, chair of Spellings' blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Then it was backburnered, toned down from a mandate to a suggestion in the final draft of the commission's report. Spellings is expected to release the final report Sept. 26.

While Spellings' prepared remarks to the editorial writers don't detail the commission's higher ed recommendations, she mentioned the subject on a visit she made with a Republican congressman to an elementary school in Findlay, Pa. The Post-Gazette reported:

On higher education, Ms. Spellings acknowledged that the $100 increase in federal Pell grants isn't enough and noted that costs have been rising about 7 percent a year.

"The next part of the debate on higher education is for us to ask why does it cost 7 percent more this year than last year. Is it a better deal to get out of Ohio State in six years or some private college in four?

"All sorts of things that parents want to know and deserve to know and can know and find out about buying a car or going to a restaurant or ordering a book online, you can't find out about on one of the most expensive decisions and one of the most important decisions that you and your child are going to make. ...

"I think we have to start challenging that."

Last month, the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education recommended standardized tests, federal monitoring of quality and changes in the financial aid system.

Chute, the Post-Gazette's reporter, also paraphrased Spellings as saying "that No Child Left Behind is close to perfect, likening it to Ivory soap."

Well, that's one comparison.

Cultural studies: 'text' and other keywords

A link to cultural studies professor T.V. Reed’s pop culture website at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. It includes, among other things, a link to his American Studies/English 471 course syllabus with a PowerPoint presentation in the first week defining keywords.

Among them: Text: "Any unit of meaning isolated for the purposes of cultural analysis."

Examples include "a single image in one commercial" ranging up to "a whole day of television programs."

Says Reed, "Texts can include words, images, sounds, even touch, in various combinations."

Other definitions include: Myth, ideology, encoding/decoding, subculture, hegemony, gender, race. Looks useful

Nuts & Bolts Sept. 2006 ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
September 2006
Vol. 7 No. 2
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Since I am still unable to post to
SCI's assessment website, I am publishing the
newsletter by email and archiving it in interim on my
personal weblog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/ ... if
representatives of the North Central Association, the
Illinois Board of Higher Education or other outside
stakeholders wish to see SCI's annual Assessment
Report for 2005-2006 or other current information
regarding our assessment program, please direct them
to my personal blog. -- Pete Ellertsen, assessment
chair

* * *

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT WORKSHOP

September's issue of Nuts & Bolts is coming out a day
early (Aug. 31) to catch faculty members before the
last minute leading up to the Labor Day weekend. (OK,
OK, it's the *next* to last minute.) That's to give
you more time to plan on attending one of the workshop
sessions on Classroom Assessment Techniques we'll
conduct in the next couple of weeks.

The workshop, in the Resource Center on the
lower level of SCI's Becker Library, will be offered
at three times:

(1) Thursday, Sept. 7, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.;
(2) Monday, Sept. 11, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.; and
(3) Tuesday, Sept. 12, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Attendance is voluntary, and all interested SCI and
Benedictine University faculty are welcome. We'll talk
about how to find assessment techniques that are
appropriate to the learning goals and objectives in
our syllabi, and I'll show interested instructors some
aids on the World Wide Web that I've found helpful. I
expect the sessions will be small and informal.

The workshop would be especially valuable for new
instructors who may not have experience with CATs (as
classroom assessment techniques are called), but
seasoned instructors are welcome to exchange ideas and
share their experience and insights as well.

MORE POLITICS

In a move that surprised many, U.S. Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings has announced four
hearings nationwide on whether recommendations of the
federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education
"can be put in place through federal regulation"
through a procedure known as the negotiated
rule-making process. One area up for review, according
to an Aug. 18 announcement in the Federal Register, is
accreditation.

No one in higher education is able to say exactly what
the Department wants to do about accreditation,
according to Doug Lederman of the online newsletter
Inside Higher Ed:

"The Spellings commission’s report takes broad shots
at the perceived ineffectiveness and dysfunction of
the system of voluntary regional and national
accreditation, but offers relatively few firm
proposals for transforming it. So while there are no
obvious changes in accreditation that might emerge
from regulatory negotiations, the department could see
itself as having broad latitude to impose new
requirements on accreditors and, in turn, on colleges,
some observers speculate."

While staff-written working papers presented to the
commission in the spring and early drafts of its
report were quite acrimonious about accreditation,
along with other perceived failures in higher ed, the
hostile tone had largely dropped out of the final
draft, which was approved early in August. With the
hostility, most references to accreditation were also
backburnered.

In an article in the current issue of The Chronicle of
Higher Education, Kelly Field catches the uncertainty
that has greeted the commission's latest regulatory
tack. Field also ties the issue to President Bush's
larger political agenda:

"... some college lobbyists still wondered why an
administration that had shown little interest in
higher education during its first term was suddenly so
concerned with its future. Some speculated that the
administration was trying to divert attention from its
unpopular No Child Left Behind Act, the 2002 law that
imposed testing on the nation's elementary and
secondary schools; others suspected that it was
seeking to extend that law's reach into the college
classroom.

"To the suspicious, the secretary's choice of a
commission chairman seemed proof of a plot to
institute standardized testing at colleges. Charles
Miller, a millionaire investor and close friend of
both Ms. Spellings and President Bush, was best known
for devising a Texas public-school accountability
system that became the model for No Child Left Behind.
He was also associated with accountability testing at
the University of Texas System, where he led the Board
of Regents from 2001 to 2004."

Field adds:

"The swiftness of the secretary's response took some
college lobbyists by surprise. They said the
administration's announcement, which appeared in the
August 18 edition of the Federal Register, signaled
that the secretary did not want to lose any momentum
for change created by the commission's deliberations.

"So far, the administration has given few clues about
which recommendations it might consider as part of the
negotiated rule making — a process by which federal
agencies work with affected parties as regulations are
drafted."

All of this may well affect us at SCI and Benedictine,
because assessment is a politically driven process and
its political underpinnings may be changing.

Hearings will be held in California, Florida,
Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The Chicago hearing
will be Oct. 19 at Loyola University.

Works Cited

Field, Kelly. "Uncertainty Greets Report on Colleges
by U.S. Panel." Chronicle of Higher Education Sept. 1,
2006. http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i02/02a00101.htm

Lederman, Doug. "Regulatory Activism?" Inside Higher
Ed Aug. 21, 2006.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/21/regs

Nassirian, Barmak. "U.S. Department of Education
Formally Plans for 'Negotiated Rulemaking'." AACRAO
Transcript [American Association of Collegeate
Registrars and Admissions Officers] Aug. 30, 2006. http://www.aacrao.org/transcript/index.cfm?fuseaction=show_view&doc_id=3294

Nuts & Bolts Aug. 2006 ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
August 2006
Vol. 7 No. 1
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Until I can get access to SCI's new
assessment website, I will publish the
newsletter by email and archive current issues on an
interim basis on my personal weblog at
http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/ ... SCI’s
Common Student Learning Objectives and instructors’
guide "Classroom Assessment for Continuous
Improvement" are linked to SCI’s homepage at
http://www.sci.edu. [One change has been made in the archived copy since the original was emailed Aug. 14, to reflect a change in schedule. The third workshop will now be from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12.]

* * *

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT WORKSHOPS IN SEPTEMBER

Next month new (and not-so-new) instructors are
invited to a workshop at which I will briefly explain
how SCI’s Common Student Learning Objectives (SLOs)
were derived from our mission statement; and how
Course Based SLOs relate to daily lessons and
assignments. I will assist instructors in choosing
Classroom Assessment Techniques appropriate to the
SCI and/or Benedictine University mission statement
and the goals, objectives and outcomes in the courses
you teach. The workshop, in the Resource Center on the
lower level of SCI's Becker Library, will be offered
at three times:
(1) Thursday, Sept. 7, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.;
(2) Monday, Sept. 11, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.; and
(3) Tuesday, Sept. 12, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Attendance is voluntary, and all interested SCI and
Benedictine University faculty are welcome to
participate.

Here's a four-point summary of SCI’s philosophy of
assessment, prepared for a recent meeting of teachers
in the “Triple A” or adult accelerated associate’s
degree program. That’s 10 fewer points than Edwards
Deming, the management guru whose theories are
reflected in our learning outcomes assessment program
at SCI. But assessment isn’t rocket science – I want
to keep it simple.

1. Assessment is externally mandated, but it can be a
valuable part of what we do in the classroom. Let’s be
blunt about it. In higher ed no less than in the
public schools, we are mandated by outside
stakeholders – mostly the state and federal
governments – to do assessment. It’s part of the
political demand for “accountability” that gave us the
No Child Left Behind Act at the K-12 level, and this
summer some of us are nervously watching a blue-ribbon
federal commission as it debates ways of politicizing
higher ed as well. But assessment isn’t rocket science
– I define it as nothing more than using several
different ways of finding out what our students learn.
Some are embedded in work they do for grades; others
aren’t. But they can all help us teach better. At SCI,
we have designed an assessment program that addresses
accountability to outside stakeholders mostly at the
institutional level, by requiring standardized tests
of our sophomores and making sure our course offerings
and objectives square with the statewide Illinois
Articulation Initiative. That leaves our classroom
teachers free to assess student learning outcomes
(which basically means what the students learn) to
improve our teaching over the course of the semester –
when there’s still time to plug the assessment results
back into our planning processes.

2. Classroom assessment at SCI is “formative,” which
means we use the results immediately to improve our
teaching. There are several highly effective classroom
assessment techniques (known as CATs for short). One
that many of us like is the “one-minute paper.” At the
end of class, we’ll have the students write briefly on
two questions designed to get at what they learned:
(1) What was the clearest point in tonight’s class?
(2) What was the most confusing point? I think it’s
very useful. It’s humbling when I realize I led my
students off on a tangent when some off-the-cuff
remark keeps showing up as the clearest point, but
it’s good to know so I can get us all back on track
the following week. And I know to clear up the most
confusing point while I’m at it. This approach is what
educators call “formative assessment.” Carol Boston of
the University of Maryland defines it as the
“diagnostic use of assessment to provide feedback to
teachers and students over the course of instruction.”
It’s what we stress at SCI.

3. Classroom assessment is not rocket science, but it
is grounded in the scientific method of testing and
refining our data. Most of our classes are too small
for us to attempt statistical analysis with any rigor.
So classroom assessment, at least at SCI, is more an
art than a science. There’s a quote I like from Peter
Ewell, one of the pioneers in learning outcomes
assessment, on the Southern Illinois at Edwardsville
classroom assessment website: “Why do we insist on
measuring it with a micrometer when we mark it with
chalk and cut it with an axe?" My answer: We don’t
try, but we do learn how to heft an axe. That SIUE
website, by the way, is one of the best places to
start learning about CATs, and I recommend it highly.
I also recommend our instructors’ guide, Classroom
Assessment for Continuous Improvement, available as a
PDF document on the SCI website. I like it partly
because I wrote it. But it shares some good ideas from
other SCI instructors, and I think it explains the
philosophy behind assessment at SCI. It’s called
planning for continuous improvement, and it boils down
to a four-step process: (1) Plan something, a lesson
or a course; (2) Do it, at least get it started and
measure its interim success; (3) Study the data from
those measurements; and (4) Act or adjust your
procedures in light of your analysis of the data. The
idea is borrowed from industrial management, where
it’s known as a PDSA cycle, but behind it is nothing
more complicated than the scientific method. Most
important, it works in the classroom as well as it
does on the shop floor.

4. Our organizational culture at SCI is receptive to
assessment, and you can find plenty of help. Just ask
us. Your syllabi, for example, are full of numbers and
letters that relate the goals and objectives of
individual courses to the SCI mission statement. They
may be puzzling at first! It’s a new system, and we’re
still working out kinks. But most of us are adapting
to it. So we’ll be able to help you figure out what
all the letters and numbers mean, and how they relate
to what you do in the classroom. But we’ll also be
very sympathetic. We’ve been puzzled ourselves.
Sometimes I still get confused! But I take comfort in
point No. 3 above: Assessment isn’t rocket science, it
involves a continuous learning process and it takes
time to master. Ask your division chairs for help. Or
please feel free to contact me. I’m easiest to reach
by email … at pellertsen!@sci.edu.

FEDERAL TESTING MANDATE?

A federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education
that threatens to change the way we do assessment at
SCI, and everywhere else in higher ed, appears to have
backed off on its most extreme proposals for a “one
size fits all” federally mandated standardized testing
program. The commission, chaired by Bush
administration insider Charles Miller of Texas,
adopted its final report this month. An Associated
Press story sums it up like this:

“A national commission charged with
plotting the future of American higher education
approved its final recommendations Thursday, calling
on the government to provide more aid based on
financial need, while telling colleges to be more
accountable for what students learn.

A commission member representing nonprofit colleges
declined to sign on, however, saying the report
reflected too much of a "top down" approach to reform.

The report, which will be delivered to Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings in final form next month,
recommends that the federal government consolidate its
more than 20 financial aid programs and ensure that
Pell Grants - the main aid program for low-income
students - cover at least 70 percent of in-state
tuition costs. In 2004-2005, the grants covered less
than half.

But it says that colleges should do more to hold down
costs, and to better measure what students learn.
The 19-member commission, created by Spellings, has no
direct power, but has been closely watched by
policy-makers. Because of its diverse membership -
industry, government and for-profit and traditional
colleges are represented - any recommendations all
members agreed on would carry substantial weight as
Congress, the White House and state governments
consider education measures in the future.
(Pope)

The vote was 18-1. David Ward, president of the
American Council on Education, was the dissenting
member. Associated Press education reporter Justin
Pope noted that Ward “was the primary voice of
traditional colleges on the commission, and his
refusal to sign on could dilute the report's
influence.”

In the meantime, a snippet tucked into a report in
the online newsletter Higher Ed Today suggests a
partial retreat from commission chair Charles Miller's
insistence on a uniform national standarized testing
regimen. It also suggests testing will be one of the
footballs the politicans plan to kick around. The
snippet reads as follows:

Speaking to reporters after the vote,
Miller said his preference would be for “the academy
[itself] to address” the changes called for in the
report, and as evidence of his desire not to impose
mandates on higher education, he noted that the report
the commission approved Thursday had dropped language
(which was in last week’s draft) that called for
states to require public institutions to measure
student learning using a set of tests and other
measures. (The new language, which college leaders
pushed hard for in the last few days, just says that
“higher education institutions should measure student
learning using....")

If higher education is “not responsive to change” and
“doesn’t have a strategic vision,” Miller predicted,
then “things are going to be mandated.”
(Lederman)

I want to see the final draft before I try to read too
much into this. But I think it may be a hopeful sign
whatever new testing regimen emerges from all this
won't be too intrusive. A fuller discussion is posted
to my "teaching b/log" at
http://teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/

-- Pete Ellertsen, editor, Nuts & Bolts

Works Cited

Boston, Carol. “The concept of formative assessment.”
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 8.9
(2002). 7 Aug. 2006.
http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=8&n=9

Classroom Assessment for Continuous Improvement: A
Guide for Instructors. SCI. 2005. 7 Aug. 2006. PDF
file linked to http://www.sci.edu/assessment-site.htm

“Classroom Assessment Techniques.” University of
Southern Illinois at Edwardsville. n.d. 7 Aug. 2006.
http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/catmain.html

Lederman, Doug. “18 Yesses, 1 Major No.” Inside Higher
Ed 11 Aug. 2006. 14 Aug. 2006.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/11/commission

Pope, Justin. “Higher Education Report Gets OK.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10 Aug. 2006. 14 Aug. 2006.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Higher_Education_Commission.html

Miller panel backs off on testing?

Now that the U.S. Education Department's blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education has approved a draft report, there will be plenty of time to look at its implications for testing and assessment. It goes to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings next month, and then it is expected to be threshed out in a political process involving any number of government, industry and, hopefully, educational stakeholders.

In the meantime, a snippet tucked into a report in the online newsletter Inside Higher Ed suggests a partial retreat from commission chair Charles Miller's insistence on a uniform national standarized testing regimen. It also suggests testing will be one of the footballs the politicans plan to kick around. The snippet reads as follows:

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Miller said his preference would be for “the academy [itself] to address” the changes called for in the report, and as evidence of his desire not to impose mandates on higher education, he noted that the report the commission approved Thursday had dropped language (which was in last week’s draft) that called for states to require public institutions to measure student learning using a set of tests and other measures. (The new language, which college leaders pushed hard for in the last few days, just says that “higher education institutions should measure student learning using....")

If higher education is “not responsive to change” and “doesn’t have a strategic vision,” Miller predicted, then “things are going to be mandated.”

I want to see the final draft before I try to read too much into this. But I think it may be a hopeful sign whatever new testing regimen emerges from all this won't be too intrusive.

SCI annual assessment report / ARCHIVE

ANNUAL ASSESSMENT REPORT
Springfield College in Illinois
Academic Year 2005-2006

* * *

Editor’s Note. Since SCI went over to a new website in
July 2006, I have been unable to access the assessment
portion of the website. Until the remaining technical
bugs can be worked out, I am archiving current
reports, newsletters and other postings relating to
student learning outcomes assessment at SCI on my
personal weblog at
http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/ -- Peter
Ellertsen, chair, Assessment Committee.

* * *

Because SCI was reaccredited during the 2005-2006
academic year, the Assessment Committee’s activities
were heavily influenced by the site visit for
reaccreditation purposes that took place in November
2005. Before the visit, the committee’s focus was on
getting ready for the site visit; afterward, its focus
shifted to the preliminary stages of planning to
maintain and further develop elements of the college’s
Assessment Plan as adopted in 1996, amended in 2001
and implemented during the time intervening between
those dates and the present.

A key part of the plan, and one that received a great
deal of attention as it was initiated over the summer
and fall terms in 2005 was the implementation of a new
syllabus format incorporating the Common Student
Learning Objectives (CSLOs) adopted at a faculty
workshop in December 2004 and derived from SCI’s
stated mission of preparing students for lives of
“learning, leadership and service in a diverse world”
into Course Based Student Learning Objectives (CBSLOs)
and into individual assignments and assessment
activities by individual instructors and as part of
the college’s program and institutional effectiveness
assessment programs. Beginning in the fall semester,
all syllabi submitted to the Office of the Dean of
Academic Affairs from traditional and adult
accelerated associate’s level courses follow the new
format, and workshops were held in the summer and fall
of 2005 to help instructors follow the new format and
choose Classroom Assessment Techniques that will help
them perform both formative assessment during the
course of the semester and summative assessment at
semester’s end in a cycle of continuous improvement of
classroom instruction. In addition, the chair of the
Assessment Committee wrote a 45-page booklet entitled
"Classroom Assessment for Continuous Improvement." It
was given to workshop attendees in summer of 2005 and
posted to the college’s website at www.sci.edu as a
PDF document. Additional workshops for new faculty are
scheduled in September 2006.

During the site visit in November, members of the
Assessment Committee were informed verbally that
members of the site visit team were favorably
impressed with the degree to which SCI has developed
an organizational culture that is receptive to
assessment, and this impression was repeated in the
written report issued in December and formalized in
June 2006 (please see below for details). At the same
time, members of the site visit panel made in clear in
verbal communication that the SCI’s progress to date
is expected to continue as the 1996/2001 Assessment
Plan is fleshed out and further implemented. Along
with the accolade came what members of the Assessment
Committee interpreted as further marching orders.

After the site visit, the Committee’s focus shifted
toward maintenance of ongoing parts of the Assessment
Plan and planning toward expansion of the assessment
program as the Plan is further implemented. Program
assessment continued apace, as members of the
Assessment Committee continued to develop a matrix
showing with CSLOs and CBSLOs are reflected in General
Education courses and worked with outside stakeholders
in the evaluation and improvement of curricula,
particularly with regard to science. Standardized
tests purchased from ACT Inc. were purchased and
administered at the end of March, and efforts began to
study and interpret test results over time since the
reading module has been administered now since 2003
and a math test has been added. The small size of
SCI’s student population makes it imperative that data
accrue over time, and that they be interpreted
carefully since the data pool is only beginning to be
large enough, at least in the case of reading scores,
for valid statistical analysis. Details are reported
below.

Priorities for the coming 2006-2007 academic year will
be set by the committee in its September and October
meetings. It is expected that they will continue to
focus on fuller implementation of the 1996/2001
Assessment Plan, especially with regard to program
assessment, further efforts to reflect specific parts
of the mission statement and CSLOs in classroom
assessment of individual lessons and assignments, and
the completion of feedback loops and other
communication of learning outcomes data throughout the
college so these data can be consciously utilized in
decision-making processes.

Accreditation

After a site visit in November, the Higher Learning
Commission of the North Central Association of
Colleges and Schools formally renewed Springfield
College in Illinois' accreditation for 10 years. The
NCA site visit team's Comprehensive Evaluation report
said its inspection "confirm[ed] the institution's
capacity and responsibility to identify and address
issues," including a good half dozen issues of
long-standing concern to the accrediting body. The
panel noted that SCI's partnership with Benedictine
University was a crucial factor in granting continued
accreditation. After noting "major improvements since
the inception of the partnership," it reported in its
summary of findings:

The faculty and staff are qualified, dedicated, and
hopeful; in addition, recently hired staff are
bringing new perspectives to the institution. It was
clear from discussions with the Benedictine University
President and the Chair of its Board of Trustees, that
Benedictine is fully committed to the partnership.
With the University's leadership and its advantageous
presence in the state capital, Springfield College
should be able to continue to fulfill its mission.
While the team anticipates growing pains in relation
to the partnership, it should be possible to overcome
them. In short, it seems clear that Springfield
College in Illinois, in partnership with Benedictine
Univrsity, is now a viable institution with prospects
for a positive future.

Regarding assessment, the site visit committee
reported, “"It is clear from considerable
documentation and a variety of personal conversations
that SCI has made considerable progress in creating a
culture of assessment on campus, with a specific focus
on classroom-level assessment." The following evidence
was cited:

1. The development of common student learning outcomes
across the curriculum [citation omitted].
2. The requirement that each faculty member declare
the methods of course assessment as part of each
course syllabus.
3. The requirement that each faculty member submit an
end-of-course assessment report to the Dean which
identifies specific classroom assessment techniques
used, the findings from those assessments, and action
taken [citation omitted].
4. Course syllabi in both the traditional two-year
program and the accelerated degree program routinesly
list objectives related to either Common Student
Learning Objectives or Course-Based Learning
Objectives identified by the College and explicitly
related to the College's mission.
5. Testimony from students indicated that faculty use
classroom assessment techniques daily and that these
assessments result in clear changes in classes.
6. Interviews with a number of faculty demonstrate a
high degree of awareness of the assessment effort, and
a desire to use that process to improve
classroom-level instruction.

The site visit committee noted two other aspects of
the assessment plan - an annual review of courses to
"ensure that Illinois Articulation Initiatives are
met," and our program review process. "Following a
review," the panel noted, "the theater program was
placed on indefinite inactive status. Review of the
forensics program to determine the future of the
program has included two external evaluators. These
program reviews indicate the institution is reviewing
the effectiveness of the programs."

In addition, the site visit team noted a long-standing
overall commitment to good teaching and student
learning at SCI. It cited the way faculty members are
"evaluated by department chairs, students, and the
Dean of Academic Affairs," and the "classroom visits
and evaluations are discussed with faculty and affect
tenure decisions," as well as decisions on rehiring
adjunct instructors. Also credited were the LaFata and
Distinguished Teaching Awards and SCI's computer labs
and utilization of "limited rsources to improve
classrooms and maintain the cleanliness of the
grounds, common spaces, and classrooms." Especially
commended was the new Resource Center on the lower
level of Becker Library

Standardized testing

The Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency
(CAAP) tests in reading and math were administered at
the end of March. On the CAAP reading test, SCIr
students who took it (n = 87) scored an average of
59.0; the nationwide reference group of second-year
students in private two-year colleges scored an
average of 60.4. That is slightly less than the
national average. But SCI students in 2005 averaged
61.2 on the reading test, compared to 60.4 nationwide,
and in 2004 SCI students' score was 59.9 compared to
60.3 nationwide. The college’s first math scores were
as follows: Students students averaged 56.5 as
compared to 56.1 nationally. Math scores will not be
statistically significant until the test has been
administered one or two years longer and more data
accrue.

In addition, SCI purchased from ACT Inc. a linkage
report providing a “value added” benchmark for
measuring how much SCI students learned about reading
and math in their college years. ACT Inc., the vendor,
explains: "This report contains an analysis of
performance for students who tested with the ACT
Assessment on entry to college and CAAP after general
education work has been completed. ... Because the
content specifications of some pairs of ACT Assessment
and CAAP tests are similar, it is possible to track
student performance for your cohort." The linkage
results:

· In reading, 18 percent of those SCI students who
took both the ACT test in high school and the CAAP
test this year (n = 60) made lower than expected
progress on the CAAP test as compared to 14 percent of
the nationwide reference group; 75 percent made
expected progress, compared to 75 percent of the
national group; and 7 percent made higher than on CAAP
compared to 11 percent of the national group.

· In math, 10 percent of the SCI students who took
both tests made lower than expected progress on the
CAAP test compared to 12 percent of the reference
group; 82 percent made expected progress, compared to
79 percent nationally; and 8 percent made higher than
expected progress, as compared to 9 percent of the
national group.

Over the summer, a subcommittee was empaneled to take
an exploratory look at all the CAAP test results and
make some preliminary decisions on how they can be
utilized as a planning tool for continuous improvement
of instruction. Serving on it were Academic Affairs
dean John Cicero, Languages and Literature chair Amy
Lakin, and math instructor Barb Tanzyus. Peter
Ellertsen, chair of the assessment committee, convened
the subcommittee. It met in June, and took the
following action:

(1) Ms. Lakin volunteered to suggest a flow chart
whereby student learning outcomes assessment data are
to be transmitted through the Office of the Dean of
Academic Affairs to the Board of Trustees, the chief
operating and fiscal officer and others engaged in
making budgetary decisions, in response to a
suggestion in the NCA site visit committee's report,
that "As the institution advances the Outcomes
Assessment program, it may consider integrating
requests developed as a result of assessment into the
budgeting and planning processes. Many of the
recommendations for change will be for curriculum or
pedagogical changes. However, other recommendations
will require resource allocations which must be
weighed against other budgetary requests. When the
institution gives priority to the assessment generated
resource requests, the result is to create even more
interest in the assessment outcomes." (p. 4). Ms.
Lakin’s recommendation will be submitted to the full
Assessment Committee at the beginning of the 2006-2007
school year.

(2) Ms. Tanzyus volunteered to assign the CAAP test
data to her baccalaureate statistics students for
analysis during the 2006-2007 school year, as a
preliminary step toward analysis of the data received
to date and determination of how these data can be
used as a tool for planning and budgeting for
continuous improvement of teaching and learning at SCI
as well as maximizing student learning outcomes and
institutional effectiveness in the academic domain. This will be an ongoing project.

Gray lady inks higher ed report

Final adoption of a report by the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education got some media play, mostly from an Associated Press story in papers including The Los Angeles Times, Forbes and The Dallas Morning News and a New York Times news service story that ran in the Gray Lady herself and got picked up by papers including The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Register Guard in Portland, Ore., and The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun.

Today's Chicago Trib carried the AP story, with a graf contributed by staff reporter Jodi S. Cohen. It was a quote from a top University of Illinois administrator, and it demonstrates why some educators wonder if the commission didn't get in over its head just a little, especially on testing issues:

Richard Herman, chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the best measure of success is what students do after college.

"I am not opposed to the idea of additional measurements, but . . . using a limited number of metrics to measure the success of a college education is inaccurate," Herman said. "Our mission, I believe, is to prepare tomorrow's leaders. I would argue on those grounds that we have been enormously successful. Tell me what written test measures that."

In spite of the sweeping nature of the blue-ribbon commission's mandate, Sam Dillon's lede in The Times managed to get it all in:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shake-up of American higher education. It calls for public universities to measure learning with standardized tests, federal monitoring of college quality and sweeping changes in financial aid.

The panel also called on policy makers and leaders in higher education to find new ways to control costs, saying college tuition should grow no faster than median family income, although it opposed price controls.

The report recommended bolstering Pell grants, the basic building block of federal student aid, by making the program cover a larger percentage of public college tuition. That proposal could cost billions of dollars.

Didllon's story, like the AP story, noted that David Ward of the American Council on Education refused to sign off on the report and explained his refusal to sign is significant because ACE is "the largest association of colleges and universities [and Ward] was the most powerful representative of the higher education establishment on the commission."

Dillon's story noted that controversial language in earlier drafts of the report was toned down at the last minute. Some of it involved standardized testing:

... in the last six weeks, the commission issued six drafts, watering down passages that had drawn criticism and eliminating one this week, written by Mr. Miller, that had encouraged expanding private loans as a share of student financial aid.

A proposal on standardized tests was also weakened at the last moment. Previous drafts said that “states should require” public universities to use standardized test, but the final version said simply that universities “should measure student learning” with standardized tests.

How that policy recommendation translates into actual mandates, of course, remains to be seen.

The commission was formed in September 2005 to discuss access, accountability and cost issues and to report to U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in a year's time. What happens next is not clear, although commission chair Charles Miller envisions more consultation with corporate and government leaders. He didn't mention educators, but that may be an oversight in the New York Times story. Dillon reported:

The members seemed at odds on how to carry their recommendations forward. Some, like former Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina, called on President Bush to incorporate them in the Congressional agenda.

Mr. Miller said the next step should be more “national dialogue” with governors and corporate leaders. He seemed upset by what he characterized as wrangling with representatives of the status quo.

“You can’t act on the recommendations today because you encounter one set of defenders and then behind them another set of defenders, and you get into all these battles,” he told reporters after the panel voted.

Dillon's story noted that some member organizations represted in ACE have endorsed drafts of the report, including the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the American Association of Community Colleges. Other reaction was more in line with Ward's. Said Dillon:

Other important groups in the council issued withering critiques.

The Association of American Universities, which represents 60 top research universities, noted that the report “deals almost exclusively with undergraduate education.”

Robert M. Berdahl, a former chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is president of the universities association, said, “What is needed is something much richer, with a more nuanced understanding of the educational engagement and how it is undertaken.” said

Another council member, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents 900 private institutions including liberal arts colleges, major research universities and church- and other faith-related colleges, attacked the recommendation to develop a national database to follow individual students’ progress as a way of holding colleges accountable for students’ success.

The association called the proposal a dangerous intrusion on privacy, saying, “Our members find this idea chilling.”

Several groups said the report spent much ink discussing increases in students’ work skills, while slighting the mission of colleges and universities to educate students as citizens.

Higher ed head nixes higher ed report

As expected, the blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education has gotten behind the third draft of a report to U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The Associated Press is moving the story on today's wire and, surprisingly, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other papers are picking it up.

The final draft is toned down considerably from the hostile and abusive language of earlier versions, but David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, refused to sign on, saying, as The AP put it, "the report reflected too much of a 'top down' approach to reform." In a bylined story, AP education writer Justin Pope reported:

In the end, after weeks of negotiations and several drafts, Chairman Charles Miller brought all but one commissioner on board. However the one holdout, David Ward of the American Council on Education, was the primary voice of traditional colleges on the commission, and his refusal to sign on could dilute the report's influence.

Ward said he supported many of the commission's objectives, but opposed "one-size fits all" prescriptions that fail to reflect the differing mission of colleges.

Still, Ward noted several current and past college presidents on the commission signed on to the report at a meeting in Washington, D.C. He said colleges would pay close attention to its calls for reform.

"They now realize if they don't do it to themselves, somebody will do it to them," he said.

One of those "one size fits all" recommendations deals with mandated standardized testing. Others relate to unspecified standard accountability measures that would allow national comparisons of student learning (which may be a way of saying more standardized testing in the pedagese language). We'll see.

But assessment and accountability are not the only, or even the major, focus of the commission. Pope's summary for AP is brief, but accurate:

The report, which will be delivered to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in final form next month, recommends that the federal government consolidate its more than 20 financial aid programs and ensure that Pell Grants - the main aid program for low-income students - cover at least 70 percent of in-state tuition costs. In 2004-2005, the grants covered less than half.

But it says that colleges should do more to hold down costs, and to better measure what students learn.

The 19-member commission, created by Spellings, has no direct power, but has been closely watched by policy-makers. Because of its diverse membership - industry, government and for-profit and traditional colleges are represented - any recommendations all members agreed on would carry substantial weight as Congress, the White House and state governments consider education measures in the future.

All the implications of this panel's recodmmendations are not clear yet. But I'll bet somebody makes a lot of money out of them!