Learning outcomes: Going along with useless, baseless bullshit, wasting time and money, with no end in sight

By Gayle Greene 

The Terrible Tedium of “Learning Outcomes” 

(Chronicle of Higher Ed, 1-4-23)

Accreditors’ box-checking and baroque language have taken over the university. 

Every six years, the accountability police swoop down on my campus in the form of WASC, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The West Coast accreditation organization comes to Scripps, as it comes to all colleges in our region, to do our reaccreditation. The process used to take a couple of months, generating a flurry of meetings, self-studies, reports to demonstrate we’re measuring up. We’d write a WASC report — “wasp,” we called it, for the way it buzzed around making a pest of itself. 

The WASC committee would come to campus, stirring up much hoopla and more meetings. They’d write up a report on our report, and after their visit, we’d write a report responding to their report on our report; the reports would be circulated, and more meetings would take place. Then it was over, and we could get back to work. It’s fairly pro forma with us; Scripps College runs a tight ship. 

At least that’s how it used to be, just one of those annoying things to be got through, like taxes. Now that the reaccreditation process has become snarled in proliferating state and federal demands, it’s morphed from a wasp into Godzilla, a much bigger deal — more meetings, reports, interim reports, committees sprouting like mold on a basement wall. WASC demands that we come up with “appropriate student-outcome measures to demonstrate evidence of student learning and success,” then develop tools to monitor our progress and track changes we’ve made in response to the last assessment. 

There are pre-WASC preps and post-WASC post mortems, a flurry of further meetings to make sure we’re carrying out assessment plans, updating our progress, and updating those updates. Every professor and administrator is involved, and every course and program is brought into the review. The air is abuzz with words like models and measures, performance metrics, rubrics, assessment standards, accountability, algorithms, benchmarks, and best practices. Hyphenated words have a special pizzazz — value-added, capacity-building, performance-based, high-performance — especially when one of the words is data: data-driven, data-based, benchmarked-data. The air is thick with this polysyllabic pestilence, a high-wire hum like a plague of locusts. Lots of shiny new boilerplate is mandated for syllabi, spelling out the specifics of style and content, and the penalties for infringements, down to the last detail. 

. . . 

Then the boxes with “comments, results, and summaries” are to be incorporated into an Educational Effectiveness Review Report. “By applying the rubric to last year’s senior theses enables you to evaluate both the rubric and your results to help fine-tune the assessment of this year’s theses.” (That sentence is why some of us still care about dangling participles.) This is all written in a language so abstract and bloodless that it’s hard to believe it came from a human being. But that is the point, phasing out the erring human being and replacing the professor with a system that’s “objective.” It’s lunacy to think you can do this with teaching, or that anyone would want to. 

. . . 

Do not think I am singling out Scripps College for special criticism. From what I’ve heard, it’s as bad or worse elsewhere. I think most of our faculty see our dean and president as indefatigable women who work for and not against us and genuinely respect the liberal arts. This outcomes-assessment rigmarole has been foisted on all colleges, adding a whole new layer of bureaucratic make-work. Reports and meetings bleed into one another like endless war. Forests die for the paperwork, brain cells die, spirits too — as precious time and energy are sucked into this black hole. And this is to make us more … efficient? Only in an Orwellian universe. This is to establish a “culture of evidence,” we’re told. Evidence of what? Evidence of compliance, I’m afraid. 

. . . 

Outcomes are “what a student must be able to do at the conclusion of the course,” explains an online source, and in order to assure these, it is best to use verbs that are measurable, that avoid misinterpretation. Verbs like write, recite, identify, sort, solve, build, contract, prioritize, arrange, implement, summarize, estimate are good because they are open to fewer interpretations than verbs like know, understand, appreciate, grasp the significance of, enjoy, comprehend, feel, learn, appreciate. This latter set of verbs is weak because the words are less measurable, more open to interpretation.

 . . . 

“Academics are grown-up people who do not need the language police to instruct them about what kind of verbs to use,” wrote Frank Furedi in a blistering denunciation of “learning outcomes” in Times Higher Education in 2012. Warning faculty against using words like know, understand, appreciate because “they’re not subject to unambiguous test” is fostering “a climate that inhibits the capacity of students and teachers to deal with uncertainty.” Dealing with ambiguity is one of the most important things the liberal arts can teach. 

. . . 

We in the humanities try to teach students to think, question, analyze, evaluate, weigh alternatives, tolerate ambiguity. Now we are being forced to cram these complex processes into crude, reductive slots, to wedge learning into narrowly prescribed goal outcomes, to say to our students, “here is the outcome, here is how you demonstrate you’ve attained it, no thought or imagination allowed.” 

Find the whole article HERE

* * *

• The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’, NYT,  Feb. 23, 2018 

...All this assessing requires a lot of labor, time and cash. Yet even its proponents have struggled to produce much evidence — beyond occasional anecdotes — that it improves student learning. “I think assessment practices are ripe for re-examining,” said David Eubanks, assistant vice president for assessment and institutional effectiveness at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who has worked in assessment for years and now speaks out about its problems. “It has forced academic departments to use data that’s not very good,” he added. “And the process of getting this data that’s not very good can be very painful.”....

• Learning Outcomes Are Corrosive, by Frank Furedi, January 2013
• DISSENT! Contra anti-intellectualism (DtB, April 18, 2015) 
• Fall of the house of Beno (DtB, December 10, 2015) 
• Part 2: the fall of the house of Beno (obscuring the deeper issue) (DtB, December 23, 2015) 

...Essentially, the ACCJC adopted MSLOs [measurable student learning outcomes] as the overarching basis for accrediting community colleges based on their faith in the theoretical treatises of a movement.... After repeated requests for research showing that such use of MSLOs is effective, none has been forthcoming from the ACCJC [accreditors]. Prior to large scale imposition of such a requirement at all institutions, research should be provided to establish that continuous monitoring of MSLOs has resulted in measurable improvements in student success at a given institution. No such research is forthcoming because there is none….

If Bobby Hatfield were a very talented little Norwegian girl

 

Hatfield, 1965

The historical John Eastman

After Jan. 6, John Eastman has earned his spot in the history books 

(OC Register) 

Column: January 6 Committee paints Chapman University's former law dean's theories as 'insane,' 'crazy,' 'nutty." They also might have ended Democracy as we know it. 

     ...“Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” the report says, quoting another Orange County legal mind, Federal Judge David O. Carter, who had to figure out whether Eastman’s emails were protected by attorney-client privilege or could be turned over to the J6 Committee. “Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower – it was a coup in search of a legal theory. The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.”

     The J6 Committee heartily agrees.... [continue reading]

Remembering the Lockerbie bombing and Liz Marek, 34 years later

 

Solstice. December 21st. The shortest day of a long year. The longest night. We begin to turn back to the sun today. The days grow longer.  34 years ago, Lockerbie, Scotland, Pan Am 103, Clipper Maid of the Seas. The long memory.

A few days ago, this news: 

The U.S. has taken custody of the alleged bomb maker in the 1988 Lockerbie attack

From 2013: 

Rebel Girl is a party girl and even though she does not ascribe to any particular faith, she enjoys this season of celebration with its stories of miracles and lights, pilgrimages and stars shining bright. She likes the solstice best and feels a sense of accomplishment on living through that day, the shortest one of the year. When she was a child learning of such things in a public elementary school classroom, Rebel Girl once imagined she could hear the gentle crack of the earth's axis as it tilted, once more, back toward the sun, toward light.

The past 25 years have usually found Rebel Girl and her family hurtling south to Mexico on the Solstice. This year, they will be a little late. But every year on the Solstice, they remember that first year they drove south for the season: 1988. She first wrote about on the blog five years ago.

from December 22, 2008
It was 20 Years Ago Today:
Twenty years ago, Rebel Girl and Red Emma first headed south into Baja, borrowing a friend's car and another friend's travel guide (what friends!). They fell in love with a part of Mexico that many find unlovable (the desert! The Sea of Cortez!) and have returned every year except for this one. This year finds them at home, unnerved by the brutal violence along the border, unwilling to be Americans who drive past other people's tragedies on their way to their own good time.

They usually leave on Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Rebel Girl can't remember if that was true for that first trip twenty years ago. She expects it might be. All she knows is that when they left, they knew about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

So they left on or shortly after December 21, 1988 and returned sometime after the new year, covered in dust and sunburnt. They hadn't followed the news very much, hadn't thought about the bombing except in the way that you do about such events, a distant awareness of someone else's heartbreak. So when they returned and found out that Liz Marek, fellow activist and friend had been on board the flight, there was shock. Liz was an activist of some standing in the LA area, a veteran of the so-called Great Peace March across that country and of many Nevada Test Site actions, a charismatic lead singer in a lesbian rock band and general all-round good person. Liz, working for a non-profit housing agency, had been instrumental in helping Red and Reb and their roommates obtain an apartment after their eviction from their home (long story).

Liz had once complimented Rebel Girl on her design of a banner for a Test Site demonstration even though Rebel Girl now understands that Liz was only being kind. Rebel Girl was on her knees painting it in the sanctuary of the Church in Ocean Park (some church!). Liz had stopped by on her way to a meeting. The banner was wincingly raw and earnest and the memory of it still possesses the power to embarrass Rebel Girl: "The Patriarchy Stops Here," it read, with an angry pregnant woman, her womb filled with a mushroom cloud, pushing back at the lettering.

Rebel Girl still remembers how Liz could belt out her band's version of "Devil in a Blue Dress" (she sang it as "Big Dyke in a Blue Dress"). Back then, she admired the courage, humor and vision of activists like Liz – they had fun at the same time they did good works. She wanted to be like them: gutsy, justice-loving good people.

Liz had been sitting in seat 36 C of the Pan Am flight, traveling with a friend, having got cheap seats for a holiday trip to England. She was 30 years old. The obituaries all identified her as an actress and peace activist.


Later, when Liz's memorial was held at the Church in Ocean Park, Rebel Girl couldn't look into the faces of Liz's family, of her mother; their grief was too stark. She concentrated instead on repairing the cake which had suffered some damage in transit. It was white frosting with blue cursive lettering spelling out Liz's name and some other message Rebel Girl can no longer remember, just as she can no longer remember the witty name of Liz's band.

So, while people gave eulogies and sang songs, told stories and wept, Rebel Girl repaired the sky blue letters, rejoining the links, restoring the integrity of the final loops of the lowercase "k." She smoothed the frosting, white as a cloud.

*

The original post inspired a few comments from other friends of Liz who found it via the web:

Anonymous said...
I was on the great peace march and searched out Liz's name today in memory of her great funny human self. I think [her] band was the Diet Cherry Cokes.

Anonymous said...
I knew Liz on the GPM and deeply appreciated her intelligence, wit and humanity. Thanks for your remembrance of her.

Dear Rebel,
I was at the memorial for Liz at Ocean Park and I visited the Pan Am Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery every year until I left DC in late 1999.

Her family was very kind to me at a time when they were grieving and I'll never forget how gracious they were/are. Especially when I told them about the couple of times I'd be so darned frustrated with knocking on the porta pottie doors and hoping folks would knock back so I could feel the vibration and not accidentally open the door and expose them. When Liz was around and saw me she'd grab my hand and pull me down the line of porta potties and would knock and knock until she found an empty porta potty for me. Her actions saved me a lot of time and she needn't've done it but did because she "got it" that I'm deaf and sometimes a helping hand helps just that much to make one's day a bit brighter. Just for this not so little kindness she's aces in my book.

Just so you know, I was shown kindness by every Marcher while I was on the 9-month walk. This made a huge impact on me. Huge. It still does to this day.

Jules
Peace Marcher

Twenty-five years is a long time.

Liz's mother still lives in Brookfield, Connecticut.

Rebel Girl found an article from Tuesday August 29, 1989: "Mother Makes Somber Visit to Lockerbie" which is exactly what its title suggests. The online version of the article features a tiny black and white headshot of Liz; it is not the best photo and the online scan of it fragments it even more but there's something there still in Liz's eyes that Reb likes to see. Her direct gaze. It's Liz all right. The article appeared in the Connecticut newspaper The Day.

Immediately to the right is another article: "Black, white African leaders meet: Kaunda, de Klerk talk in Zambia" and a larger photo of de Klerk, Botha (remember him?) and a skeptical Kaunda who is described as "a relentless critic of apartheid."

*

2021 update:

Others continue to find this story and share their own:

In 2015, Jonathan K Cohen said…
I sang at the funeral of a college classmate who perished in Pan Am 103. I was pretty numb, but I got through it. It had been arranged by my college, and the mourners thought I was much closer to Andrew than was actually the case, but I was filled with horror. Someone whom I liked and had had conversations with had been blown up and scattered over Scotland. It got to me in a way that not even 9/11 did.
9:29 AM, December 20, 2015 

In 2017 Zippy said…
Liz was my babysitter back in brookfield. I have fond memories of the Mareks, their home, and their kids. Liz was sweet and kind to me.

And, finally, Liz's mother Adelaide passed away in 2016 at the age of 86 on October 27, days before the election. Her obituary recommends: "In lieu of flowers, VOTE."

Et voilà!

The curious Gregory Anderson saga continues

     Back in April of 2018 we reported the following: 

     A reliable colleague and faculty leader has offered us the following picture of our sister college to the south right now. Early yesterday morning, he or she or it says, [College President Gregory] Anderson was roughly ushered off campus, leaving the college in the hands of someone still wearing his newbie name tag and wielding a temp parking sticker. Our source seems to think that administrative leadership at Saddleback is experiencing collapse or failure. 

     Gosh, the guy had just been hired seven months earlier (October). 

     We also reported: 

     Early this afternoon, there was a buzz on the top floor of Liberal Arts at IVC. People were saying that the President of Saddleback College [Gregory Anderson] had been “fired.” 

     I looked at the email that was the apparent source of this alleged factoid: 

Dear Saddleback Community, 

     After discussions with district leadership, I have submitted my resignation as president of Saddleback College. In these past few months, you have shown me that this is a great institution, with a deep commitment to the students and their communities. Personal circumstances require me to return immediately to my home in the Bay Area, but I will remain forever grateful to all of you for this opportunity to serve. 

—Gregory 

     College and District PR people did nothing to shed light on the situation. Total blackout. 

     The Register eventually reported that “faculty [were] perplexed over [the] sudden departure of school President Gregory Anderson” (4/1//18). 

     Yep. 

     Three months later, we reported: 

     Um, months back, Irvine police caught the Saddleback College Prez, Greg Anderson, with hookers 'n' drugs. So they contacted the IVC PD. Word got to the BOT, and the whole thing got hushed up quick, with Anderson sent packing. 

     That's the story anyway.... 

     Well, we're sticking with that story. We have it on very good authority. 

     I'm serious. 

     Four months later, Anderson managed to be selected President of Riverside City College. 

     “Sheesh,” we thought. "I mean, seriously, SHEESH."

Riverside City College hires veteran educator as 12th president (November 15, 2018) 

The Press-Enterprise (11/15) reported that 

     Riverside City College is getting its 12th president. 

     He is Gregory Anderson, a 52-year-old educator who has managed programs at colleges and universities in California, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Venezuela, Riverside Community College District officials said. 

     Gregory Anderson has been appointed the 12th president of Riverside City College. He is scheduled to begin leading the campus in January. (Photo courtesy of Riverside Community College District)  

     Anderson is set to begin leading the district’s largest campus, which has a fall enrollment of 23,000, on Jan. 1. 

     For the past few months, Anderson served as interim vice president of instruction at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut. Before that, he was president of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo in Orange County, but abruptly left in April after staying there about six months — catching faculty by surprise.  

     His appointment by the Riverside Community College District follows a 2016 candidate search for a Norco College president that led to the naming two finalists who were removed from top posts at colleges in San Francisco and Texas after serving one year, and a year and a half, respectively. The district hired a third finalist, Bryan Reece, who continues to lead that college. The district also operates Moreno Valley College. 

. . . 

     Anderson’s short stint at Saddleback College raised questions during the selection process, said Wolde-Ab Isaac, Riverside Community College District chancellor. 

      “Any time something like that happens of course it raises concerns,” Isaac said. 

      But he said reference and background checks, an interview and Anderson’s experience eliminated those worries.... 

     Hotel. Police. Hookers 'n' drugs. That's what happened. 

* * *

     Guess what? TODAY, Anderson is a finalist for the Presidential gig up at Foothill College up north:

[VIDEO] An Open Forum with Dr Gregory Anderson 

According to Foothill,

     Gregory Anderson is a student-centered and equity-driven leader with 30 years of higher education experience. Most recently, he served as president of Riverside City College, the largest college in the Riverside Community College District, serving 30,000 students annually. Previous roles in higher education include vice president, dean, strategic advisor, instructor, and director in California, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Lesotho, and Venezuela. 

     Oddly, there’s no mention of Anderson’s brief stint at Saddleback College and his curious sudden and unexplained departure.

     An' nothin' about hookers 'n' drugs.

Red Emma Reports from the Picket Line

Red Emma is retired, but of course not the retiring type. Still active with his union. Still likes to teach and, better yet, likes to learn. Still shows up at the peace march, rally, sit-in, or picket line, of course. 

Monday’s thrilling rally and march at UC Irvine was an opportunity for this former Lecturer and UC-AFT member to show solidarity with striking workers of the Student Researchers United-United Auto Workers. Everybody there, in a crowd numbering at least 500 at one point, witnessed some gorgeous, strategic, and politically sophisticated organizing by younger folks who really have their shit together. 

Highly disciplined, colorful, exuberant, they are now in week two of the largest higher ed labor action in U.S. history. So with a need to maintain interest, media attention and momentum, Monday had to be good. And it was. Trade union reps from across the County spoke. Undergrads fed us. Musicians and percussionists accompanied. Senate faculty showed up to offer testimonials, and then hosted a teach-in. The turnout for both the noon rally at the flagpole, and a teach-in following it were impressive, but the success of the afternoon march was quantifiable in traffic stopped, even bigger numbers, volume, and the total cooperation of Irvine P.D., which just gave up, let us take the street, and redirected traffic. 

Campus Drive and feeder streets were stopped for an hour. Supporters waved and displayed signs on the pedestrian overpass to the shopping center. Taco Bell workers walked outside to take in the spectacle. 

Of course, this big, peaceful, symbolic gesture offered the administration a glimpse of what further disruption might look like. And it surely buoyed the spirits of strikers themselves, and their supporters. Friends, shutting down the intersection of Campus Drive at West Peltason for teaches a person something. Sitting in the left turn bay chanting with committed activists is a powerful and empowering gestalt, a shared gesture of bravery and confidence. It’s one which might inspire anybody to imagine how much more and more successful we all could be. And which UC must surely apprehend. Throughout, the messaging was loud and clear, by which I mean in unison at high volume and articulated with precision and drums. “What do we want? Fair contract. When do we want it? Now. And if we don’t get it? Shut it down!” 

That afternoon teach-in was organized, by Associate Professor of English Annie McClanahan, who gave a combo history lesson and empowerment session, with personal accounts and deep analysis. McClanahan reviewed the two traditions of labor organizing and bargaining, one around the expectations of so-called institutional resource sharing where workers negotiate with bosses on how large (small) a slice of the pie they get, and the other around achieving what it actually takes to live. Clearly the student workers of SRU-UAW are both ambitious and realistic. They don’t pretend for a moment to be tricked into arguing about pie, or flattered by the so-called prestige of working at the University of California, or tricked by the bogus expectations of someday being somebody’s boss themselves. 

Over and over we heard testimonials from people who could not afford to pay rent, eat, pay for childcare, or make a car payment. There were stories of insecurity from international student workers, achievement and struggle from first gen student workers and, most thrilling and moving of all, pledges that these student workers are striking to change a system that otherwise will only continue to exploit, even to plan on the systemic exploitation of the next generation. They have seen the future and they mean to change it. 

I was lucky to see that better future, and walk toward it, marching and then sitting down together on the public asphalt in a big circle on a democratic Monday afternoon, our voices echoing through the neighborhood, traffic signals turning quietly green to yellow to red with no cars to direct, the warm sun setting over the San Joaquin Marsh, as mass direct action showed us a path, indeed, in our collective journey to get the goods.

About Student Researchers United-UAW

48,000 Academic Workers are ON STRIKE!