F-LIGHT

E-Newsletter for the Flashlight Program

• Examples of formative evaluation: Flashlight surveys for improving distance and distributed learning
• Improving Student Evaluation of Courses and Faculty: Invitation to Join a FIPSE-funded Project
• Upcoming Assessment-related Online Workshops and Conferences
• Integrating Assessment and Faculty Development - A New TLT Group Service
• Ehrmann's Web Log ('Blog)  
• New subscribing institutions
• Learning More About Flashlight( free demo accounts), The TLT Group and F-LIGHT

Examples of Formative Evaluation: Flashlight Surveys for Improving Distance and Distributed Learning

Too many people still assume that evaluation is, by definition, summative - it's about grading courses, projects, and faculty (usually pass/fail). It's about power (someone else's). It's about threat. And so on.  F-LIGHT is dedicated to demonstrating that formative evaluation can be a time-saving way of making courses, programs, projects and faculty more successful.

This web page describes five complementary strategies for using data to improve distance and distributed learning courses. Sample Flashlight Online surveys are attached for the first four.

1. Tracking key teaching/learning activities over time and/or across courses (key = activities most likely to foster important outcomes)
2. Asking for user judgment about the strengths and weaknesses of technology when used for those activities
3. Identifying barriers that may be preventing some students from participating in those activities
4. Classroom research techniques - quick feedback for quick improvements
5. Analyzing how time and money are being spent, so that stress on both can be reduced.

Improving Student Evaluation of Courses and Faculty: Invitation to Join a FIPSE-funded Project

Are you about to buy, change, or redesign, or build a system for collecting and analyzing student feedback about courses and faculty?  If so, this invitation might enable your institution to get a system tailored to your needs, and at much lower cost.

Last year, The TLT Group, Washington State University, and six of our interested TLT/Flashlight subscribers received a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for a project that to rethink the whole process of course evaluation.  We're now opening the project to four additional participants. Northern Arizona University has already been accepted, so three slots remain. For more information, see http://www.tltgroup.org/Beta/Invitation.htm.

Upcoming Assessment-Related Online Workshops and Conferences

Information Literacy and Assessment (Online workshop: Feb 5-19, 2004)

A sequence of three synchronous Webcasts will introduce four important activities and/or documents relevant to assessment of information literacy programs. These include:

This online workshop is co-presented by ACRL and The TLT Group. Discounts are available to staff at institutions that are members of ACRL or subscribers to The TLT Group. For more information from ACRL, click here.    To register, click here.

Flashlight Online training - Subscribers Only!

We'll continue to webcast periodic training sessions for Flashlight Online users, administrators, and trainers. E-mail will be sent to subscribing institutions about times and how to log on. The next session is Feb. 2 at 3 pm Eastern Time.  Click here for more information.   If you're not sure if your institution is a current subscriber, click here.

For details on this and other Flashlight and TLT Group events, both face to face and online, keep an eye on The TLT Group calendar. 

Integrating Assessment & Technology Use into a Sustained Process of Faculty Development

How do faculty support units at your institution help faculty use technology to improve courses?  Is assessment treated as a separate topic from ideas for better teaching? Are there only isolated, voluntary workshops with little continuity and some one-to-one help from a professional? Do you

Through our work with the Center for 21^st Century Teaching and Learning at the University of South Florida, The TLT Group has developed another strategy for helping to create increasing improvement in a growing number of courses.

Here are a few of the key elements:

1. TLT Group and local staff help a cohort of faculty improve one or more of their own courses during an academic year through a summer institute and a series of monthly online events, while also
2. helping them learn to do evaluative studies in order to modify/improve those changes, and
3. preparing each faculty member to help one or more colleagues (e.g., through online workshops; departmental workshops; coaching).
4. This initial cohort of faculty can also play a leadership role in assisting the second, perhaps larger cohort the following year.

There's a lot more to it than this, as you can glimpse in this web page:
http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/Sustained_Faculty_Support.htm

The TLT Group intends to work with no more than five institutions in 2004-2005, starting with a summer institute for the participating faculty. If you'd like to discuss the possibilities, take a look at the web page above and contact us as soon as possible. Capacity is limited!

TLT/Flashlight Subscription Programs and New Materials

• The TLT/Flashlight Basic Collection includes site licenses to dozens of program development and assessment tools and resources, while the 
• The Comprehensive Collection also includes unlimited institutional use of Flashlight Online, our powerful, web-based survey system that includes validated items and peer-reviewed templates for typical educational studies. 
• Network membership includes both the Comprehensive Collection as well as benefits with two free days of consulting and sharply reduced rates for additional days: useful for training, grant-funded studies, accreditation self-studies, and a variety of other purposes. 

All three subscription levels include some consulting/training time, free subscriber-only webcasts, the option to submit assessment materials for peer review and publication, discounts to TLT Group events, and other benefits. There are now approximately 120 institutional subscribers.

New and upgraded materials are added frequently to the Collection. Each subscribing institution gets free access to all of these materials, along with the rest of the Collection, for its entire faculty, staff and student body.This web page links to recent notices we've sent to subscribers about updates and additions.

Over 120 institutions, systems, boards of regents, and multi-institution projects now subscribe. Is yours one of them? Check our list of participating institutions. Among institutions subscribing, or resubscribing, since November are

• Choate Rosemary Hall Secondary School,

• Colgate University,

• Georgetown University,

• Johnson C. Smith University,

• Miami University of Ohio,

• New Mexico State University,

• Saint Edward’s University,

• Saint Peter's College,

• Samford University,

• University of Hawaii at Manoa,

• University of Hong Kong (China),

• University of Massachusetts, Lowell,

• University of Montana, Missoula,

• University of Nebraska, Lincoln,

• University of Technology, Sydney (Australia),

• Wayne County Community College District, and

• York University (Canada)

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Ehrmann's Web Log ('Blog)

I'm glad the holiday season is here, because I can use the rest!

In early November, I attended EDUCAUSE.  I heard about the SAKAI Project for the first time there. The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate their open source tools. They intend to develop an open source learning management system that should interoperate with a growing number of other systems. Different institutions are working on different components. For example, Indiana University and Stanford are working on Navigo, the component of the system for assessment and survey creation.  I was especially interested because Washington State University is working with Flashlight on developing the software for our BETA project on student evaluation of courses and faculty. It would be great if we could somehow build on this effort so that it would be easier to integrate evaluative processes with other academic and administrative systems.

I've done a couple of introductory Flashlight workshops for our Network members, one for the University of the District of Columbia and a second for Bethune-Cookman College. I did the second one with Frank Parker. Frank did a great job but it was partly, I'll admit, because Bethune-Cookman was able to attract a group of faculty who were willing to take part in a workshop that ran almost 5 hours long (and we're then going to follow up with an online session in January).  The central paradox of building a culture of assessment is this:

• Most faculty and administrators are skeptical of the value of inquiry, when that inquiry is directed at educational issues, perhaps because they have seen few examples of such studies proving to be useful (which is why we do F-LIGHT). So it's difficult to run long workshops - they're reluctant to commit that much time from busy schedules. BUT

• It takes a long time to get good at framing useful topics and analyzing data. It usually takes a long time in a workshop to even go through the motions (from beginning to end) of designing a survey, collecting data, and interpreting it.

We're continually trying out new workshop designs and new web resources to try to resolve that conflict. The page on formative evaluation and distance learning mentioned above is one such resource.

The Flashlight Program for the Study and Improvement of Educational Uses of Technology is part of the non-profit TLT Group, Inc. Flashlight was created by Annenberg/CPB in 1993. The TLT Group is headquartered in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington DC, with additional staff in Texas, Richmond VA, and Pittsburgh; and Senior Associates around the world. Our thanks to Washington State University for their many ways of supporting Flashlight, including developing and administering Flashlight Online and providing the listproc for distribution of F-LIGHT notices.  We are also grateful to St. Edward's University for extensive support for Flashlight; to the corporate sponsors of The TLT Group; and to funders whose dedication to higher education has aided the TLT Group's work, including Annenberg/CPB,  Atlantic Philanthropic Service, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), and the National Science Foundation.

If your institution needs to get a better look at Flashlight Online, the best way is for someone at your institution to request a temporary, free demonstration account.  Send e-mail to Flashlight@tltgroup.org with the header "Free Demo Account" to ask for details. One account per institution, please.

If you know someone else who would like to be alerted to new issues of F-LIGHT, please suggest that they send e-mail to LISTPROC@LISTPROC.WSU.EDU with the one line message
   SUBSCRIBE F-LIGHT (the subscriber's first and last name)

Do the same for yourself if you have changed e-mail addresses.

To stop receiving the bulletin about F-LIGHT, please send e-mail to LISTPROC@LISTPROC.WSU.EDU with the one line message
   SIGNOFF F-LIGHT

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