by Dr. William G. Spady
Outcome Based Education’s Empowering Essence
Dr. William Spady has just published ‘THE BOOK’ on Transformational OBE! It’s called Outcome Based Education’s Empowering Essence and is readily available for you on Amazon.com in paperback and online formats (click here).
Here’s what four OBE experts say about this definitive book
This is a genuinely awesome book! Every remarkably illuminating chapter carries a coherent message of transformation, hope, and empowerment to parents, educators, and leaders across the world by dramatically expanding our beliefs about learners, learning, and how best to educate. Dr. Spady shows us how to implement the authentic, empowering essence of Transformational OBE more insightfully and powerfully than most people have ever imagined!
Alan Rowe, Vice President, Community College – Institutional
Effectiveness (ret.), Life Coach, Education Consultant, USA
If you think you know what Outcome-Based Education is, or really want to learn about its revolutionary and evolutionary power, you should read this amazingly insightful book. It’s a roadmap for educating our young people for the dynamic future they face, and our outmoded system can’t do that without this book’s significant guidance.
Desmond Collier, Owner, Collier’s Corporate Communications, South Africa
This amazing resource provides impressive examples of successful US and international applications of Transformational OBE. It offers you tangible guidance for using its advanced ideas and practices, and will expand your professional effectiveness!
Dr. Janet Jones, Founder, Millennial Minds, USA
This book should be a ‘MUST-READ’ for every parent, educator, and policy maker in this country because Dr. Spady’s insights about Transformational OBE liberate education from its entrenched, limiting Industrial Age thinking and practices.
Arnold Fege, President, Public Advocacy for Kids, USA
Get a copy today and be fully prepared for OBE 2021!
ABET Accreditation During and After COVID19 – Navigating the Digital Age
Engineering accreditation agencies and governmental educational bodies worldwide require programs to evaluate specific learning outcomes information for attainment of student learning and establish accountability. Ranking and accreditation have resulted in programs adopting shortcut approaches to collate cohort information with minimally acceptable rigor for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). With tens of thousands of engineering programs seeking accreditation, qualifying program evaluations that are based on reliable and accurate cohort outcomes is becoming increasingly complex and is high stakes. Manual data collection processes and vague performance criteria assimilate inaccurate or insufficient learning outcomes information that cannot be used for effective CQI.
Industrial Training Courses: A Challenge during the COVID19 Pandemic
Industrial training courses require students to gain sufficient practical engineering experience that confirms theoretical knowledge by application to field work. The courses expose students to real life engineering activity involving problem solving, design, experimentation and manufacturing. Students get introduced to entrepreneurship, diverse collaborative work environments and quality systems that instill world class safety standards and professional ethics. Preventive measures and lockdowns during prolonged pandemic conditions have severely limited students’ capability for in-person participation of onsite industrial training programs, thereby, adversely affecting the scope of training courses. This paper presents some plausible solutions to challenges faced by both instructors and students in fulfillment of essential outcomes for remote offerings of industrial training courses during the COVID19 pandemic. Essential aspects of an outcome based digital platform used for remote management, assessment and evaluation of industrial training courses are presented. A course template that facilitates virtual engineering roles as viable alternative to students’ in-person participation in industry settings is explained. This study compares two course models offered prior to and during pandemic conditions for fulfillment of course outcomes, makes observations of required skills and knowledge, related deficiencies and some recommendations to help engineering programs enhance student learning in remotely offered industrial training courses.
Impact Evaluations of Engineering Programs Using ABET Student Outcomes
Engineering programs worldwide collect and report student learning outcomes data to conduct program evaluations for quality assurance and accreditation purposes. Accreditation agencies such as ABET typically mandate that at least two years of program evaluation data be provided and for institutions to show how this data has been used for continuous quality improvement. Engineering programs rarely evaluate interventions using multi-term student outcomes information over several years, since this quantitative data generally lacks accuracy and statistical power. The quality of outcomes data is affected by obsolete assessment methods and lack of digital access and technical analysis. In this study, we present essential elements of an authentic outcome based assessment model that used web-based software and embedded assessment technology to collect and report accurate cohort outcomes for credible multi-term evaluations. A non-experimental approach employing regression analyses were used to identify trends in student outcomes and evaluate the impact for three engineering programs. Detailed rubrics provide criteria to accurately classify multi-year student outcomes. The findings of this study present practical steps for engineering programs to effectively collect and report accurate cohort outcomes data and perform credible evaluations of program interventions based on multi-year outcomes data.
Beyond Outcomes Accreditation
Exploring the Power of ‘Real’ OBE Practices: Outcomes Accreditation is not Outcome-Based Education, even thought it represents itself as such. The philosophy, fundamentals, authentic practices, and implications of ‘real’ OBE are carefully spelled out in the first section of the book by Dr. William Spady, who then carefully documents their conspicuous and total absence within OA’s requirements, guidelines, and processes. Dr. Spady’s fifty years of experience as the clarion voice and champion of OBE worldwide speaks for itself, and it speaks loudly for the empowering vision and transformational power that OBE projects for those with the insight and willingness to open their hearts and minds to it.
The wisdom of pursuing OBE is persuasively portrayed in chapters by Dean of Law Joan Largo and Dean of Civil Engineering Dr. Francis Uy. They describe the major benefits for both students and faculty that resulted from their departments’ implementation efforts with authentic OBE thinking and practice. These include a 100% pass rate for Dean Largo’s graduates on the recent Law Bar Examinations in the Philippines, an unrivaled Filipino success story!
Second, Beyond Outcomes Accreditation exposes and pinpoints over a dozen of the most glaring weaknesses in standard Outcomes Accreditation practices; and third, it shows how university departments can move Beyond each of those weaknesses with focused recommendations, correctives, and examples. These two related issues are insightfully and capably handled by Wajid Hussain. His exacting expertise in applying the operational principles of OBE to the challenges posed by Outcomes Accreditation’s many requirements and procedures is unrivaled internationally.
Hence, Beyond Outcomes Accreditation is a gold mine of invaluable insights and knowledge for those wanting to improve the effectiveness of their programs and expand the current and future success of their students – all at the same time!
Connecting the Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes and Outcomes-Based Assessments
Demands for quality at all levels of education are higher than they have ever been. What students must learn is being stressed by Federal and State governments and by professional and national accreditation organizations.
This book is designed to help Higher Education faculty and institutions meet these demands by obtaining, managing,
using, and reporting valid outcome attainment measures at the course level; and mapping outcome attainment from the course level to departmental, degree program, and institutional levels, and beyond. It demonstrates how to communicate clearly what students are supposed to know and be able to do; write assessments that measure the expectations; and produce test scores that are valid for their intended use and interpretation, so that valid inferences can be made about students and programs.
It is a "how-to" manual that is rich with guidelines, model forms, and examples that will lead the reader through the steps to "connect the dots" from outcomes assessment to
outcomes-based reporting.
This new edition includes additional examples, tables, and figures that help clarify and expand the three-level outcomes and assessment.
Endorsements for Connecting the Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes and Outcomes-Based Assessments
“For individual professors, as well as departments or faculties as a whole, this book is an invaluable guide for course and curricular development.”- Ellen S. Pryor, Professor and Associate Dean, UNT Dallas College of Law
“Connecting the Dots is a tremendously useful guide to assist faculty interested in developing course embedded assessments of student learning outcomes. I’ve yet to find a faculty member that did not rave about the value of the question templates when devising test items to monitor the achievement of learning outcomes in their courses.” - Bob Smallwood, Assistant to the Provost for Assessment, Office of Institutional Effectiveness, University of Alabama
“I reviewed several books and found yours to fit our needs best. It is well written, relatively short, gets to the point, and after piloting the use with a group of faculty, well received. This text is meeting my needs and enhancing professional development on our campus” - Paul Force-Emery Mackie, PhD, LISW, Professor, University Assessment Coordinator, Minnesota State University, Mankato
“I would like to thank you for writing such a valuable book where it is going to be instrumental in our course transformation efforts in helping our faculty better align their learning objectives to measurable outcomes.”- Hosi Karzai, Project Director Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) Center for Instructional Excellence, Purdue University
“By far the best resource for faculty and administration that deal with learning outcomes and assessment. Every faculty member at my college has a copy of his text.” - Tommy Thompson, Ph.D., Cedar Valley College-The Dallas County Community College District, Professor of Mathematics & QEP Lead Faculty, Faculty President
“His schema for writing learning objectives is amazingly clear and makes this challenging task much easier for conscientious faculty. I highly recommend this second edition.”- Barbara J. Millis, PhD, Director, Teaching and Learning Center, The University of Texas at San Antonio
“It was very neat to see how learning outcomes are measured and how the educational loop is closed when this model is followed.”- Evaluation and Assessment Coordinator, Ohio University, Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine/Academic Affairs
Connecting The Dots book order links:
Publisher: Stylus Publishing, LLC. Sterling, VA 20166-2102
Stylus Publishing, LLC:
https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620364802/Connecting-the-Dots
Google Books:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Connecting_the_Dots/3ZohDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=overview
Amazon (Kindle Edition):
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Connecting+the+dots+by+Ronald+Carriveau&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss
Curriculum And Instruction Design For Humanizing Education In The 21st Century: Access To Success For All
Self Directing Research For Master's Thesis Or Doctoral Dissertation
The Self-Directing Researcher is a 4-book Researcher’s Guide Series is addressed to students belonging to three academic levels and one to research mentors across levels. The purpose of the series is to guide potential readers on how to approach research from an outcomes-impacts orientation and carry it out in a self-directing manner. With the guidance provided, students can find opportunities to engage and direct themselves successfully through - proposal planning, writing stage, implementation, and completion stage.
Although students are encouraged to use Self-Directing Researcher in ways, they see fit, the series is meant to accomplish two main goals.
1. First, is to help students take responsibility for their research rather than fault the quality of mentoring provided or not provided. It encourages them to assert
their independence and autonomy in pursuit of original ideas.
2. Second, is to turn students away from ‘inputs-outputs’ research orientation to an ‘outcomes-impacts’ one by looking beyond pursuit of research ‘in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the diploma’, publication, salary increase, or promotion.
Embracing outcomes-impacts orientation leads students to engage in meaningful research with a predisposition and determination to harness the power of evidence and develop ideas to confront our human and societal challenges, take inventive steps, find solutions, open new possibilities, and create change. Research mentors, new or experienced, will find essential guideposts and powerful insights in mentoring Self-Directing Researchers appropriately and effectively.
About the Author: Prof. Dr. Elias M. Sampa is a dynamic international speaker and trainer, a professor of research, a publication blind critique and author. He has over fifteen years of research experience covering everything from conducting research needs assessment, research designing, and delivering research capacity building trainings for faculty across the education spectrum. He has also conducted numerous professional trainings in other aspects of educational management and leadership such as faculty capacity building, curriculum designing, instructional designing, syllabus writing, criterion defined formative and summative assessments designing, Outcomes Based Education (OBE), outcomes and impact assessment of education programs with various universities and schools in the Philippines and abroad. He has supervised and mentored MBA project paper writing for Bradford University School of Management, UK. He has similarly worked with students from Philippines and around the globe on the doctorate degree level, master’s degree level, undergraduate degree levels and high school level. He is a registered author with the Philippine tional Book Development Board (NBDB) and has authored and coauthored several textbooks and professional books in the fields of research methods,
education, and social sciences.
Implementing Outcome-Based Education (OBE) Framework: Implications for Assessment of Students'
This paper at first follows the roots of Outcome-Based Instruction (OBE) and presents key concepts at the level of school-wide execution based on Spady (1994). It at that point continues with characterizing what results are and talks about how the definition of results requests worldview move-in evaluation and assessment hones. At long last, the paper handles critical suggestions of carrying out the system for the hone and strategies of evaluation and assessment of understudies” execution in schools. These suggestions coincide with the dialog of the four working standards of OBE.
Bringing Heart and Soul to Education
Bringing Heart and Soul to Education-it’s a possibility for a better future in education. Eleven insightful and caring writers have lent their voices to a volume that cries out to be heard about education policy and reform, leadership, aims and objectives, and teacher resources. These courageous and enlightened teachers and education theory experts offer a broad range of perspectives on the alternatives open to us if we’re willing to confront today’s obsession with standardization and ‘reclaim the heart and soul of education.’ From classroom teachers to renowned scholars and researchers, the authors of its fourteen chapters offer compelling outside-the-box perspectives on what’s both desirable and possible in the name of education.
This book is a wonderful resource for anyone in educational administration or leadership that can redefine the entire philosophy and social aspects of education.
Outcome Based Education: Critical Issues and Answers
Outcome Based Education: Critical Issues and Answers
Outcome-based education (OBE) means clearly focusing and organizing everything in an educational system around what is essential for all students to be able to do successfully at the end of their learning experiences. This book examines the issues critical to understanding and implementing OBE. Chapter 1 addresses a range of issues related to the meaning of the term “outcome-based education.” It defines key terms and concepts and describes the foundations of genuine outcome-based models. The second chapter links current interest in OBE to global socioeconomic changes. Chapter 3 examines some important issues surrounding the meaning of outcomes and how they are derived. Four major trends are identified in the fourth chapter–classroom reform, program alignment, external accountability, and system transformation. Chapter 5 shows how the effects of OBE on students and schools depends on which implementation approach is used. Common misconceptions about OBE are clarified in the sixth chapter. The final chapter discusses future directions of OBE, in particular, how to sustain it over time. OBE appears to have a viable future if democratic processes and strong professional norms prevail in society and education, respectively. Twenty-five figures and a glossary are included. (LMI)
Outcome Based Education - Critical Issues and Answers
What Does Outcome-Based Education Really Mean? Why Is There So Much Interest in Outcome-Based Reforms?What Are Outcomes and How Are They Derived? What Are the Major Trends in Outcome-Based Implementation? How Does Outcome-Based Implementation Affect Schools and Students? Outcome-Based Education and Accreditation for the Making of Globally Competitive Filipino Engineers.
Paradigm Lost - Leading America Beyond Its Fear of Educational Change
In Paradigm Lost, Spady explores the important changes in culture, instruction, school calendars and school agenda that school leaders must make to prepare students for the next millennium despite the fact that the current system of schooling leads to institutional inertia that counters the very changes we most need to make. Spady’s big-picture view refutes the wisdom of adhering to a system of schooling—a paradigm—based on a bureaucratic-age culture, industrial-age delivery system, agricultural-age calendar and feudal-age agenda. Spady then explains how school leaders can overcome this inertia by working with staff and community members to adopt a new paradigm of schooling based on a locally developed vision of the future and what students will need to succeed in that future.
Forging an Authentic Future for All Learners
Have you ever asked yourself, ‘Why do we do this?’ when faced with the day-to-day realities of school, such as report cards, standardized tests, or textbooks? Chances are, if you are like most Americans, you haven’t. William Spady has, however, and in Beyond Counterfeit Reforms he questions the dead-end assumptions of American education. He asserts a set of five ‘research realities’ that should be the foundation of any truly learner-centered system: Human Potential, Human Learning, Domains of Living, Future Conditions, and Life Performance. Not only does Spady thoroughly articulate the bad news about the deep organizational flaws in our schools, but he develops the model of a Total Learning Community―a profoundly compelling description of a possible education and society which makes current reform methods look superficial and misguided in comparison.
Making It Happen
A joint publication of the American Association of School Administrators and the Far West Laboratory, presents the “Nine Reports” of creating excellence in our schools. What goes around comes around and these classic ideas of 1980’s reform are back and ready to be revisited.
Several major reports on the status of education in the United States have been presented to the public and to educators and government bodies in recent years. Nine of these reports provide the source material for this document on the state of the search for educational excellence: Adler’s “Paideia Proposal,””A Nation at Risk,””Making the Grade,” the College Board’s “Academic Preparation for College,””Action for Excellence,” Sizer’s “Horace’s Compromise”; Goodlad’s “A Place Called School,””Educating Americans for the 21st Century,” and Boyer’s “High School.” The more than 700 recommendations and guiding principals presented in these reports have been reduced to an essential 88 in this review. The document begins by examining definitions of excellence, then turns to the problem of selecting and organizing the recommendations practically. Several operationally oriented categories are used: (1) goals and curriculum priorities; (2) standards, expectations, and requirements; (3) instructional content and process; (4) school organization and instructional delivery; (5) instructional time; (6) acquiring and using available resources; and (7) staff roles, responsibilities, and rewards. A section on principles, procedures, and materials to use in acting on the recommendations in a structured, effective way completes the document. (PGD)
Total Leaders 2.0 - Leading In The Age Of Empowerment
Total Leaders 2.0 is a significant 2010 update and extension of Dr. Charles Schwahn and Dr. William Spady’s best-selling 1998 book Total Leaders. Both were commissioned and published by the prestigious American Association of School Administrators. The 1998 Total Leaders consolidated and synthesized the massive literature on leadership and effective organizational change into a powerful, easily understood framework for what leaders can do to initiate and sustain meaningful and lasting change in their organizations. The key: establish and sustain the five critical pillars underlying successful change efforts. Total Leaders sold over 50,000 copies in North America alone. Its 2010 2.0 version enriches and expands on that highly praised framework by, among many other things, integrating the criteria of the ‘total professional’ with that of the Total Leader.
Learning Communities 2.0 - Educating In The Age Of Empowerment
Learning Communities 2.0 is the companion book to Total Leaders 2.0 and was viewed by Spady and Schwahn as the natural result of education leaders implementing an empowering future-focused change strategy in their schools and universities. Although it is not explicitly about Outcome-Based Education, LC2.0 presents a deep, paradigm-shifting template for creating a learning system that honors the individual student and creates the ‘conditions of success’ for them to thrive in today and tomorrow’s Age of Empowerment. It’s here that Spady’s brilliance as a sociologist who understands organizational structures and new paradigm thinking really shines. And it’s here that Schwahn’s future-focused orientation as a career school leader breaks us out of old archaic assumptions about organizing curriculum and using 21st Century technologies to restructure the school day to foster student success.
Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning: Learning in the Age of Empowerment (New Edition)
Meeting the individual learning needs of every learner, every hour, of every day although espoused by educators, has only been a dream…..an impossible dream for educators facing student-teacher ratios of 25 to 1. But, alas, it is now a reality….a reality that is hiding in plain sight. Inevitable: Mass Customizing Learning (MCL) describes a detailed vision of how schools can change from the present outdated Industrial Age, assembly line structure to a mass customized learning structure with the capacity to meet the individual learning needs of every learner…..that’s every learner, not some, not most, but every learner.
An Umbrella For The Rainbow Nation
The decades leading up to 2050 are likely to be the most dramatic and potentially testing for all humanity. Will South Africa cope and perform within such a competitive and demanding international climate?
Development involves change. People within countries might not be prepared to change unless they perceive that there is a crisis.When asked the question: ’Who ensures readiness for change and adjustment during the change process?’ most would answer: ’That is the role of leadership!’
This book is driven by a conviction that informed human choice, arbitrated through governmental policies, individual decisions, and civil initiatives, can shape the future in essential ways. The vision we hold of the future affects how we act today, and the way we decide to act today, shapes the future. South Africa proved this to be so when the country reached a branching point in 1992.
When all is said and done, the startling reality is that the choice that makes all the difference is made in an instant. All it takes is a flash of lightning… or a glimmer of hope.
Emotional Intelligence
Globally, human development is under threat because of leadership failures or ineffective leadership practices. There will always be a leadership gap to some extent because leadership is forever evolving to meet the new challenges of ever-changing circumstances. However, according to the World Economic Forum, the major challenge for human development is the fundamental lack of confidence in global leadership to resolve global crises.
This is the first book in a planned series that will explore the crucial new role and effect of emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, and ethics in developing future executive leaders for sustainable success in human development.
12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles in Action: Teach for the Development of Higher-Order Thinking and Executive Function Third Edition
Higher-order skills such as critical thinking, planning, decision-making and persistence are the key to success for today’s students. Fully revised to respond to the Common Core and other timely developments, this indispensable guide builds the bridge from brain research to classroom practice. The updated third edition offers
Strengthening and Enriching Your Professional Learning Community: The Art of Learning Together
How can educators create a collective method of professional development that results in the genuine, sustained teacher learning essential to improving student achievement? That question is at the heart of this comprehensive and practical guide to process learning circles, a unique and powerful way to develop, strengthen, and enrich professional learning communities.
Authors Geoffrey and Renate N. Caine have dedicated more than 20 years to researching how people learn naturally. From this foundation, they describe in detail how process learning circles work, and they provide readers with a clear understanding of how powerful and successful this approach to professional learning can be.
The Re-Enchantment of Learning: A Manual for Teacher Renewal and Classroom Transformation
Optimize learning and realize human potential with this step-by-step guide. The Re-Enchantment of Learning takes you through a ten-week process. Each chapter begins with information and inspiration to give you a foundation for the activities at the end. More than 120 process and reflection activities engage you in ongoing practice-individually, in groups, and in the classroom. Boost your effectiveness in meeting today’s challenges with strategies based on the new sciences. Applications of these field-tested methods have resulted in higher student grades and test scores. And more importantly, dramatic transformations are evidenced by- Personal lives taking on a renewed sense of meaning Administrators focusing on bringing out the best in everyone Students taking pride in their work, behavior, and classrooms Bring the power of learning alive in your life and the lives of your students. You’ll find- Brain-based teaching explained in a way that every teacher or school can build upon New ways to perceive the world and how to bring connection and a sense of wonder back into the classroom Specific processes to develop the skills necessary to approach teaching at the highest level Innovative ways to tap creativity and originality with responsive learning approaches.
A Historical Study of the Contributions of Dr. William G. Spady to Education Reform
Forty-five states have adopted the National Common Core Standards. The purpose of these standards is to ensure that all students are proficient in the knowledge and skills needed for success in a highly competitive global society. Basing education on national standards for all students seems similar to some of the basic tenets that served as the foundation of outcome-based education (OBE). Since 1983, there have been numerous attempts at educational reform in the U.S. Despite these reform efforts the nation still has approximately a 30% high school dropout rate, and American students no longer rank at the top on international tests. Many current educational reformers argue that the educational system is obsolete and out of sync with the fast-paced changes impacting the world.
The purpose of this historical study was to explore the contributions of William Spady to the history of educational reform in the United States, particularly the impact of OBE on educational reform. This study also examined how Spady describes his contributions to the history of educational reform initiatives and leadership development. One major research question and two sub-questions guided this study: 1. What have been the contributions of William Spady to the history of educational reform in the United States? 1a. What has been the impact of Outcomes-Based Education on educational reform in the United States, according to Spady? 1b. How does Spady describe his contributions to educational reform and leadership development?
A qualitative, historical, interpretive design was used to conduct this study. Data were collected through an elite, face-to-face interview, telephone communications, emails, and the examination of Spady’s and other educational reformers’ publications. A major finding of this study is that several of the fundamental components of Spady’s system of OBE are embedded throughout many current educational reform initiatives such as classroom reform models, program alignment, external accountability, national common core standards, and approaches to school transformation. The findings from this research study may be useful for educational leaders and educational organizations that will be leading the implementation of the National Common Core Standards and other reform initiatives.
Outcome-based Instructional Management: A Sociological Perspective
During the past decade, a series of related instructional concepts and approaches has been refined and implemented which requires major adjustments in traditional patterns of instructional management and delivery. These approaches are known by names such as ‘mastery learning’, ‘individually programmed instruction’, ‘competency based education’, and ‘learner-responsive instruction’, and they often produce impressive improvements in the learning achievement of whole groups of ‘average’ and ‘poor’ students. While understood and implemented in a variety of ways, they share a set of common underlying principles and operational features identified here as ‘outcome-based’.
In describing these outcome-based philosophical principles and program characteristics, this paper focuses on changes in the management of time, students, instructional resources, and testing required of both teachers and administrators by such programs. In brief, the paper develops the thesis and framework that outcome-based approaches require an instructional management system that is assessment driven rather than assignment driven. Among other things, assessment driven systems rely on the existence of time-flexible instructional delivery, student grouping, and testing/assessment conditions in order to assure that virtually all students reach publicly acknowledged and operationalized learning goals. This mode of management represents a major departure from the clock, schedule, calendar, and age-grade based assignment structure within which conventional instructional systems operate.
William G. Spady, Agent of Change: An Oral History
What series of circumstances, events, individuals, and factors have shaped and changed the life and career trajectory of William G. Spady, sociologist, educator, and agent of change? This dissertation provided many answers to this guiding research question. What made this dissertation unique was that the answers were provided by the subject himself during a series of interviews at his home in Colorado. Spady‟s life began as the son of a hard-working garbage hauler and hog rancher in a little town outside of Portland. Spady attended the University of Chicago, and taught at Harvard and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He was also an active member of the American Educational Research Association where he and others helped to create Division G around the sociology of education. Spady served as Division G‟s third president. He worked for the National Institute of Education and served as the director of the National Center for the Improvement of Learning at the American Association of School Administrators.
Spady was named Director of the Far West Laboratory, and he leveraged this position to introduce Outcome-Based Education (OBE) to school systems in Western states such as Utah, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Arizona. At one time, 26 states offered some version of Spady‟s OBE in their schools. OBE came under furious attack in Pennsylvania, and was jettisoned in most states as a result. However, in 1997, Spady found through a phone call that OBE had been adopted by the African National Congress to be the vii national curriculum of South Africa. Spady spent the next ten years helping to foster OBE in South Africa and Australia. He also was named the Educational Director of HeartLight International. Recently, Spady turned his attention exclusively to U.S. education and policy by creating the New Possibilities Network to serve as a countermeasure to the No Child Left Behind legislation. This dissertation was an oral history of an important agent of change in the midst of his work.
Specific, Generic Performance Indicators and Their Rubrics for the Comprehensive Measurement of ABET Student Outcomes
In this research, we present the essential principles of an authentic outcome based educational model related to the development of learning outcomes, performance indicators and their rubrics with a focus on measurement of specific skills related to Bloom’s 3 learning domains and their learning levels for engineering specializations. An analysis of culminating ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission student outcomes is made with reference to Bloom’s 3 learning domains and their learning levels. A hypothetical model is presented for this analysis. The correlation of ABET student outcomes, course learning outcomes and performance indicators is clearly outlined. The necessity of the use of performance indicators is highlighted especially in reference to the measurement of course learning outcomes, development of assessments, teaching and learning activities. The importance of scientific constructive alignment of learning outcomes, performance indicators, assessments, teaching and learning strategies is discussed. A novel hybrid rubric for accurate assessment and scoring of student performances is also presented. Actual examples of implementation of this theory to program, course and student level performance evaluations using state of the art web based digital technology are shown. In summary, the benefits of specific performance indicators over generic ones are explained in detail with respect to support of authentic OBE principles, scientific constructive alignment, accurate measurement of student performances in specific engineering learning activities, performance failure analysis and continuous quality improvement.
NILOA Paper - Digitally Automated Assessment of Outcomes Classified Per Bloom’s Three Domains and Based on Frequency and Type of Assessments
One of the primary reasons outcomes information is not utilized for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is that the information collected is insufficient to make improvement decisions due to impractical manual processes that are either too exhaustive to complete for timely measurement and reporting, or too minimal for basic fulfillment of accreditation requirements. Massive amounts of outcomes data collected from various stages of curriculum delivery is a critical requirement for informing improvement decisions. Therefore, manual assessment, documentation and reporting systems are major factors that exacerbate the implementation of streamlining activities which are necessary to integrate improvement efforts of several stakeholders in an academic CQI process. In an age of technological advancement, use of digital technology allows for the collection of various evidence sources. The Faculty of Engineering at the Islamic University outlined five crucial elements of their outcomes assessment methodology which fully supports automation and digital technology based assessment/documentation/reporting systems to collect, analyze and utilize outcomes data to establish meaningful CQI and not just fulfill accreditation requirements.
FIE 2016 IEEE - Quality improvement with automated engineering program evaluations using performance indicators based on Bloom's 3 domains
In this paper, we present examples of quality improvement efforts to enhance student learning in engineering education by employing a novel program evaluation methodology that automates ABET Student Outcomes (SOs) data measurement and analysis based on the classification of specific performance indicators per Bloom’s 3 domains and their learning levels. The learning levels are further categorized based on a 3-Level Skills Grouping Methodology that groups together learning levels of related proficiency. Program evaluations use aggregate values of ABET SOs as an overall performance index. These values are calculated by assigning weights to measured specific performance indicators according to the Frequency-Hierarchy Weighting-Factors Scheme, which incorporates a hierarchy of measured skills, course levels in which they are measured, and counts of assessments implemented for their measurement. The number of assessments processed for measurement of performance indicators associated with the 3 categories of skills in multiple course levels is counted to calculate percentage learning distribution in the elementary, intermediate and advanced levels for the 3 learning domains. Learning distributions obtained for measured ABET SOs are compared to ideal models to verify standards of achievement for required types of skills, proficiency levels and align engineering curriculum delivery to attain highest levels of holistic learning.
Engineering Program Evaluations Based on Automated Measurement of Performance Indicators Data Classified into Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor Learning Domains of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
This research references past work which indicates that the major driving force of outcomes assessment initiatives in engineering institutions has been regional and specialized accreditation standards. Continuous quality improvement and accreditation-based activity at various engineering institutions remain as relatively isolated processes, with realistic continuous quality improvement efforts maintaining minimal reference to learning outcomes assessment data measured for accreditation. The lack of utilization of digital technology and appropriate methodologies supporting the automation of outcomes assessment further exacerbate this situation. Furthermore, learning outcomes data measured by most institutions is rarely classified into all three domains of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy and their corresponding categories of the levels of learning. Generally institutions classify courses of a program curriculum into three levels: introductory, reinforced and mastery. The outcomes assessment data is measured for mastery level courses in order to streamline the documentation and effort needed for an effective program evaluation. A major disadvantage of this approach is that it does not facilitate early remediation of performance failures because necessary outcomes information related to deficient teaching and learning mechanisms is measured only for mastery level courses. A holistic approach for continuous quality improvement in academic learning would require a systematic measurement of performance indicators in all three domains and their corresponding categories of learning levels for all course levels in a given program’s curriculum
Integrated FCAR Model with Traditional Rubric-Based Model to Enhance Automation of Student Outcomes Evaluation Process
In this paper, a novel approach is presented to demonstrate how a traditional rubric-based approach can be integrated with the FCAR assessment approach to allow computation of the SO performance index from roll-up data. The performance index is calculated based on the weighted average of relevant PIs for the three different levels of courses. Analytic results on how the SO performance index measured up against the heuristic rules used previously are discussed. Last but not least, results of how the SO performance index can be used to address the overall attainment of the SO expectation are shown.