Recently, I was privileged to see the recommendations of William (Bill) Tierney on the top education blogs. (Tierney is the Co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.) He (among others) writes the blog, 21st scholar. The blogs are actually the recommendation of his research assistant Daniel Almeida. These [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Minimum rule?
May 16, 2013 By
Ever wonder where the 0.05 probability level number was derived? Ever wonder if that is the best number? How many of you were taught in your introduction to statistics course that 0.05 is the probability level necessary for rejecting the null hypothesis of no difference? This confidence may be spurious. As Paul Bakker indicates in [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Making a difference
May 10, 2013 By
Recently, I came across a blog post by Daniel Green, who is the head of strategic media partnerships at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He coauthored this post with Mayur Patel, vice president of strategy and assessment at the Knight Foundation. I mention this because those two foundations have contributed $3.25 million in seed [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: April update on making a difference
May 2, 2013 By
We are four months into 2013 and I keep asking the question “Is this blog making a difference?” I’ve asked for an analytic report to give me some answers. I’ve asked you readers for your stories. Let’s hear it for SEOs and how they pick up that title–I credit that with the number of comments [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Blogging (or NOT)
April 23, 2013 By
Harold Jarche says in his April 21 post, “What I’ve learned about blogging is that you have to do it for yourself. Most of my posts are just thoughts that I want to capture.” What an interesting way to look at blogging. Yes, there is content; yes, there is substance. What there is most are [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: What is a rubric?
April 18, 2013 By
A rubric is a way to make criteria (or standards) explicit and it does that in writing so that there can be no misunderstanding. It is found in many evaluative activities especially assessment of classroom work. (Misunderstanding is still possible because the English language is often not clear–something I won’t get into today; suffice it [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Vernal Equinox
March 21, 2013 By
Today is the first full day of spring…this morning when I biked to the office it rained (not unlike winter…) and it was cold (also, not unlike winter)…although I just looked out the window and it is sunny so maybe spring is really here. Certainly the foliage tells us it is spring–forsythia, flowering quince, ornamental [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Professional development and knowledge
March 20, 2013 By
Harold Jarche shared in his blog a comment by a participant in one of his presentations. The comment is: Knowledge is evolving faster than can be codified in formal systems and is depreciating in value over time. This is really important for those of us who love the printed work (me) and teach (me and [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: Data Visualization
March 13, 2013 By
Today’s post is longer than I usually post. I think it is important because it captures an aspect of data analysis and evaluation use that many of us skip right over: How to present findings using the tools that are available. Let me know if this works for you. Ann Emery blogs at Emery [...]
Evaluation is an Everyday Activity: One more thought this week…
March 13, 2013 By
Just spent the last 40 minutes reading comments that people have made to my posts. Some were interesting; some were advertising (aka marketing) their own sites; one suggested I might revisit the “about” feature of my blog and express why I blog (other than it is part of my work). So I revisited my “about” [...]