Robert Zemsky has written two commentary pieces recently in Inside Higher Ed. In the first, on September 4, he discussed topics that higher ed reformers are distracted by and, in his view, should leave alone. In the second, on September 14, he discussed about as clearly as has anyone, the three topics that should demand the academy's attention, action and reform: learning, attainment, and money. I couldn't agree more with his selection, and think that these would make a great core for the Board of Trustees' next revision of the strategic plan.
While I applaud Zemsky's summary, I do think that his discussion of the specific challenges in our assessment of learning is a bit shallow, and leads him only in the end to suggest that brain research will in coming decades help us better know whether and what students have learned. He describes the current state of affairs as argument between those in "two linguistic cul de sacs"--champions (or at least testers) of rote learning, and a supposedly opposite camp that teaches for creativity and critical thinking. It's a false dichotomy. "Experts in the process of learning," know that learning involves a great deal of memorization, rehearsal, and automaticity, often as a necessary precursor to or basis for analysis, synthesis and creativity. Experts in their own fields usually have to teach for a long time, and with a good deal of critical attention, before they gain the understanding of student learning that helps them know how to structure learning toward ever more sophisticated ends.
Zemsky still makes a strong case for the need for the investors in higher education to act as though learning is the important goal: important not just to teachers and students, but to society:
In fact, the absence of adequately defined testable learning outcomes reflects the fact that getting a good answer to the question [how and what are students learning?] has to date not proved very important. The United States continues to invest vast sums of money in an enterprise whose most tangible outcomes are only tangentially related to learning. Were this country -- or any country -- to decide it was important to rethink those investments, I think the academy would suddenly get very good at evaluating which teaching and learning modalities were the best. The question then becomes how best to create those conditions.
That's the question all right.
