| Session Title: Organizational Learning in the Context of Higher Education Institutions |
| Expert Lecture Session 589 to be held in Schaefer Room on Friday, November 9, 11:15 AM to 12:00 PM |
| Sponsored by the Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building TIG and the Assessment in Higher Education TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Denise Seigart, Mansfield University, dseigart@mansfield.edu |
| Presenter(s): |
| Susan Boser, Indiana University Pennsylvania, sboser@iup.edu |
| Discussant(s): |
| William Rickards, Alverno College, william.rickards@alverno.edu |
| Abstract: Tensions currently exist regarding over the role assessment will play in higher education. Regional accreditation bodies urge the use assessment for organizational learning at the institutional level. The federal government seeks to require standardized, comparative assessment across institutions, linking funding to results. At stake here is who will determine what the curricular should be, with what standards, measured how, and how findings will be used. This comes to the heart of academic freedom. Yet faculty often resist movement toward assessment at all, despite the potential negative consequences and, curiously, despite the higher ed mission regarding learning and research. This paper will 1) examine the characteristics of the higher education context that resist and those that enable using evaluation for learning, 2) explore how our learning about evaluation capacity-building and organizational learning might inform the current conflict, and 3) propose how this conflict might advance theory and practice of organizational learning. |