How Does the DQP Become an Adult?

1. How Does the DQP Become an Adult? Cliff Adelman and Marcus Kolb Oregon Statewide DQP Convening Oct. 26, 2012

2. It’s important to remember, first, where the DQP came from, and why, Part I? • Partly from listening to other nations, which were not happy with the meaning of their credentials, and watching what they tried to do to clarify that meaning. • Partly from trying out what other nations have attempted in establishing reference points for student learning outcomes in specific fields. • And partly from recognizing that something called “accountability” in U.S. higher education means nothing without a comprehensive set of concrete benchmarks for student learning at 3 major degree levels: associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s.

3. Where did the DQP come from and why? Part II • Unlike other countries, we don’t have a central ministry to declare or commit to such efforts---nor do we want one. • But we do have entrepreneurial, visionary authorities that can provide creative leadership to such an effort. • The Lumina Foundation not merely sponsored the major IHEP analyses of the European “Bologna Process” that contain the nuggets of the DQP, but took the conclusions of those analyses and put them into Beta operation in unique U.S. contexts. • Lumina was committed to increasing degree awards, but realized that simply counting pieces of paper says nothing unless we know, very specifically, what those pieces of paper represent. So it undertook a challenge to U.S. higher education and set in motion the processes through which that challenge could be addressed.

4. LUMINA STATEMENTS To increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025

5. Current Lumina-sponsoredDQP Projects • 8 projects, with a couple more coming, involving about 200 IHEs; • Each one comes out of a different corner of the higher education universe; • Accreditation bodies lead on 4 of them (SACS, HLC, WASC, ACCJC), but even there, the projects are very distinct; • Other partners: AAC&U, AASCU, CIC • And, of course, the Oregon system

6. You can see the pitfalls and the promises right away: • Communication between projects, at present, is nearly non-existent; • Overlaps and diagonal pressures on specific issues, e.g. vertical transfer; • No trench work on record-keeping in a competency-based attainment system; • Accrediting procedures and benchmarks; • At best, formulaic encouragement from state authorities. • Critical mass of participation limited.

7. Only one current project has the potential to overcome the pitfalls and deliver the full promise: That’s Oregon, and that’s you!

8. Steps to adolescence and adulthood • Making sure that each project’s response includes examples of assignments that validate the competencies described; some people call this “assessment”; • Through these assignments (and variations in the Specialized Knowledge section of the DQP), reconciling field-specific Tuning with generic degree qualifications; • Through the process of gleaning assignment examples, involvement of a much expanded universe of faculty; • Designing and testing a record-keeping system; • Putting completed consensus “Beta-2”versions of the DQP on the table for all to see.

9. Assessment is why we have active verbs in the DQP • The verbs lead directly to assessment prompts, i.e. if you describe what students should do to demonstrate competence, then • you can bring on stage a range of appropriate assignments (papers, exhibits, laboratories, performances) and/or examination questions that will elicit the demonstration. • You cannot do that with dead-end nouns, such as “awareness,”“appreciation,”“ability,” or “critical thinking.” • And all this takes place within the courses you teach, hence within your field!

10. Indeed, faculty do a lot of this now • Except many have not reflected on why or how to sharpen the assignments, questions, specifications, etc. so that these are strongly connected to stated learning outcomes; • But faculty are treasure troves of the kinds of assignments that make the DQP whole: without examples of those assignments, no one has a DQP or anything like it.

11. Some feedback to date from the road on issues of assessment: • What mechanisms will institutions have to put in place to validate the assignments/assessments against competencies? • What’s to prevent/preclude automatic checks and trade-offs among faculty? • Could institutions assess separately for core degree-required competencies and supplemental competencies? • Is there any way to describe levels of performance within competencies—and, if so, how would that be different from grading? After all, institutions might need more than a binary judgment system. • How would one reconcile existing traditions of assessment with the vision of assessment-as-course-based-assignments in the DQP?

12. Faculty naturally respond to the DQP from the perspective of their disciplines. What do we say on the road to adulthood? • There are 3 major points in the DQP at which, in fact, the discipline becomes the engine of communication: • First, illustrate and elaborate each of the 5 territories of the DQP with discipline-based cases. • Second, in the examples of assignments, for which you solicit a range from faculty; • Third, in the “Specialized Knowledge” section, using broad divisions of curricula to bring in sample templates of knowledge/skills reference points in the disciplines, and modified student learning outcomes to match.

13. That is what is called“Tuning,” something previously going on in Europe and Latin America; entering in the U.S. under Lumina sponsorship in 2009, and now in implementation in Australia, and planning in Japan. What is it? • A ground-up faculty-driven determination of a template of reference points for student learning outcomes in a specific field/discipline. • The process involves consultation with employers and recent alumni who hold degrees in that field. • In a U.S. environment, Lumina recruited 3 state systems (Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah) to try it out. Each picked two disciplines (3 in Indiana). Texas and Kentucky have since joined. • Each, in turn, recruited the flagship state university, other public 4-year colleges, and (unlike the European and Latin American situations) a range of community colleges to designate faculty participants. • Tuning is the 1st cousin of the DQP, the font from which the DQP sprang.

14. Example: the European Business group definition of a firm as a “value chain” results in: • A curriculum content map of that value chain, from procurement to customer service • “Subject specific skills and competences” as learning outcomes to match the map, and set out as core knowledge supporting knowledge communication skills • The statements are not specified, but the distribution is:50% core knowledge, 10 % economics, 5 % each for quantitative methods, law, and IT.Notice: that does not add to 100%---on purpose. • You get “convergence,” not a straight jacket.

15. Get enough of this going, across a bunch of fields, and a bunch of state systems, and. . . • The logical extension moves from the field-specific to the degree-specific. • Faculty working on Tuning their fields, concluding that X was appropriate at the associate’s level and Y was appropriate at the bachelor’s level, would say “Wait a minute! We’re also talking about something more generic to the degree level itself!” • This task proved easiest with Graphic Arts in Minnesota, since the degree is offered at associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. But it also worked in Indiana in chemistry, where 26 of the 36 competencies identified were common to associate’s and bachelor’s levels. • Voila! What the Euros, Australians, South Africans, Canadians, etc. call a “[Credential] Qualifications Framework” emerges.

16. And as the DQP grows up, it has some other issues to confront: • Transfer students: the sending institution does not have a DQP; the receiving institution does. What do you do? • The “ineffables,” i.e. to what extent can personality, values, and attitude change be part of all this? • Sustainability, i.e. what kinds of structures, reinforcements, and mechanics does an institution or system need to keep the DQP going? • Adults returning under legacy assumptions. Could specific competency requirements be waived? • How do we shape the various DQP versions so that we don’t get degree anarchy?

17. One could go on---and on: get ready for a multi-year march! . . .that’s why we have a lot of smart people in Oregon who have endorsed the DQP idea, and have developed a creative and comprehensive project to deal with it all. What you do, others with follow!