LEAP States Summit Overview

1. LEAP States Summit Overview Contexts, Needs, and Summit Goals March 2, 2011 Carol Geary Schneider

2. Overview • LEAP and Its Partners • The Contexts for Systemic Change • Intentional Practice to Strengthen Student Achievement • The Work of the Summit: Priorities and Strategies for Systemic Change

3. LEAP And Its Partners

4. LEAP Partners • Over 300 individual campuses • Partner organizations (e.g. Associated Colleges of the Midwest; COPLAC) • Six state systems • Many other states and networks also have expressed interest in becoming part of the LEAP effort.

5. State Partners, Institutions, and Networks are working on • Local Frameworks for Learning Outcomes • General Education; Gen. Ed. and Majors; Transfer; Assessment • Equity and Student Success, New Curricular Pathways that Leverage HIPs for Completion AND Learning Outcomes • Leadership Development • Public Advocacy

6. State Partners and Networks (cont.) • Everyone is searching for more productive and transparent ways to deepen, assess, and document student learning outcomes.

7. The Contexts for Systemic Change

8. Changing Designs for College Learning The Nineteenth Century College The Twentieth Century University A Common Core Curriculum (All learning is “general and liberal education”) Breadth + Depth (Breadth = General Studies; Depth = Majors; “liberal education” becomes synonymous with “general education”)

9. Changing Designs for College Learning The Twenty-First Century Academy • A Curriculum in Transition: • Rethinking educational purposes and practices to better prepare for • the knowledge explosion • global interdependence • innovation in the workplace • diverse democracy

10. The World Itself is Expecting More

11. Expecting More • Global Interdependence and Its Consequences • The Civic Sphere – Facing Daunting Challenges • A Fast-Changing, Innovation-Fueled Economy

12. Employers are Raising the Bar • 88% of employers agree that “to succeed in their companies, employees need higher levels of learning and knowledge than they did in the past” Source: “Raising the Bar: Employers’ Views on College Learning in the Wake of the Economic Downturn” (Hart Research Associates for AAC&U, 2010)

13. Key Capabilities Open the Door for Career Success and Earnings “Irrespective of college major or institutional selectivity, what matters to career success is students’ development of a broad set of cross-cutting capacities…” Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce

14. The New Themes in College Learning • Defining the Expected “Cross-Cutting Capacities” – Needed for 21st Century Realities • Developing Needed Capacities Over Time • Showing What Students Can Do with Their Knowledge

15. Defining Expected Outcomes • The LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes • AAC&U and Employers • The Lumina Degree Profile • AA Competencies • BA Competencies • MA Competencies • State and Campus Frameworks

16. Across All These Frameworks • Integrative Learning is the Driver, Applied Learning is the Goal, and Students’ Own Work Provides the Best Evidence for: • Levels of Competence • Students’ Capacity to Apply Learning to Real Issues and Problems

17. If These Are the Goals, Where We Are Now? • Numerous studies show that many students and graduatesmake very limited gains in college. • Arum/Roska study: Academically Adrift • Blaich/Wabash Longitudinal Studies • Bok: Our Underachieving Colleges (2006) • ACT/ETS Studies – 10% of seniors are “proficient” in key skills • Employer Reports • Faculty Members’ Own Reports

18. In Tackling Underachievement, Systemic Change and More Intentional Practice areKey

19. New Frameworks Invite Faculty and Staff to Focus on… • Program and Pathway Design • Assignments that Develop Competence • Signature, Milestone Performances that Provide Evidence of Competence and Students’ Ability to Tackle Applied Learning Challenges

20. The New Frontier of Assessment • Anchor Assessments in Students’ Own Work (Research, Projects, Service, Capstones, etc) • Show What Students Can Do With Their Knowledge

21. Performance-Based Assessment • Students—and Faculty—Know What’s Expected • Milestone Performances Are Part of the Courses Students Have to Take • The Assessment Projects “Count” • Faculty Can See What Works—and Not • Work Is Sampled for Public Reporting on Students’ Learning Gains

22. Our Goals for the Summit • Sharing Insights, Working Together, to Advance • Cross-Institutional Strategies for Richer Learning and Documented Achievement • Ground-level and Systemic Leadership for Equity, Inclusion and Essential Learning Outcomes

23. Our Goals for the Summit (cont). • Accelerating the Pace of Much-Needed Change • Especially Equity and Inclusive Excellence • Identifying Ways that Assessment Can Elicit and Document the Learning All Students Really Need

24. What We Hope to Produce • New Clarity about the Most Effective Catalysts for Systemic Change and Higher Levels of Learning • Strategies for Removing Barriers and Creating Better Public Policies • Specific Ways that Shared Involvement in National Movements Can Assist Your Work and Accelerate National Reform as Well