Dive Brief:
- Virginia Commonwealth University’s vice provost for learning innovation and success, Gardner Campbell, points to retention and graduation rates as institutional outputs that don’t say much about students and could be corrupting factors for student success.
- Campus Technology reports Campbell, who is also the dean of University College and an associate professor of English, says grade inflation is one way to ensure students “succeed,” but such controlled metrics don’t have the same currency in the digital ecosystem, which may be one reasons he sees some schools have turned their back on it.
- While Campbell sees the prior growth in higher education to be paired with impersonal metrics of success, he looks at the digital world as an opportunity to create engagement and contribute to students’ personal formation, which could be displayed in some type of learning portfolio.
Dive Insight:
State governments have begun to demand accountability from colleges and universities by allocating a portion of state funding using performance-based formulas. This seems to drive what Campbell sees as a negative focus on institutional outcomes. Yet, while e-portfolios and next-generation transcripts are being celebrated as ways to identify more diverse learning experiences and show proof of skills that may not be reflected on static records, they will be significantly harder to repurpose as measures of institutional success. For the same reason standardized tests have become so important to education, easy-to-calculate metrics are bound to remain central. A challenge for institutions will be balancing that with their own goals for student achievement.