Director's Blog

The benefits of "helicopter parents"

Charles Blaich — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:31:35 +0000

From an Inside Higher Ed article about a study presented at the annual NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education conference . . .

Essential qualities for helping institutions

Charles Blaich — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:09:00 +0000

From a London Evening Standard interview with Apple head designer Jonathan Ive—

Q: What makes a great designer?

A: It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important - that is really terribly important. It's about contradictions you have to navigate.

These are the same qualities that are essential for helping institutions use evidence to improve.

What is assessment?

Charles Blaich — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:56:00 +0000

"It is unfortunate that assessment became analogous to judgment and, in the mind of many students, criticism and punishment . . ."

Education does little to mitigate bias

Charles Blaich — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:36:00 +0000

In June 2010, Daniel B. Klein wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal outlining his research on whether liberals or conservatives better understood basic principles of economics. The editorial's title "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" posed a question to which Klein answered, "Not if you are a liberal."

Counting what counts

Charles Blaich — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:07:43 +0000

A good argument from HEDS representative Mark Salisbury on the Department of Education diversity reporting requirements: "As a result of the new federal rules, we currently have race/ethnicity data for two groups of students (freshmen/sophomores who entered after the new rules were implemented and juniors/seniors who entered under the old rules) that reflect two different conceptions of race/ethnicity . . ."

Grit, talent, and success

Charles Blaich — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:23:00 +0000

"Academically Adrift" has raised the question of whether colleges and universities are doing enough to promote critical thinking. The development of critical thinking has been the aim of liberal education for some time. . . . Yet I wonder if we focus too much on helping students develop their talent for thinking and too little on developing their will to think, especially for their work outside of the soft confines of our classrooms.

The price of public higher education

Charles Blaich — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:48:43 +0000

A tale of three graphs about the price of public higher education, from Postsecondary Education OPPORTUNITY, Issue #230, August 2011.

Nerd-a-palooza

Charles Blaich — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:52:29 +0000

I recently came across these gently tongue-in-check interviews of participants at a Royal Statistical Society meeting on an episode of Peter Curran’s BBC Tribes of Science series.

There's a certain kind of academic that comes to assessment and can't survive

Charles Blaich — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:51:20 +0000

From an article in The Atlantic on outgoing chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee: "There’s a certain kind of academic that comes to Washington and can’t survive," Goolsbee said. . . .

Lecture versus active teaching redux

Charles Blaich — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Our conversations with faculty about teaching often turn to the effectiveness of lectures. Although most faculty know about and employ active approaches to teaching, we still hear about “master lecturers” who, throwing new-fangled engaging pedagogies aside, are more effective than their colleagues who use these more engaging techniques.