General Education & the Problem of Fragmentation

On Monday morning I attended a half-day meeting on my campus where, among other things, we discussed the General Education program at BYU and how to measure students' achievement of our GE learning outcomes.  To help us prepare for the meeting, we were provided with a document that outlined each of the learning outcomes, their rationale, and how the institution plans to measure them.  

In reviewing the document, one thing that became painfully clear to me was that the only direct evidence of the achievement of GE outcomes we collect are course-specific (e.g. writing samples from advanced writing courses, course assignments/projects, etc.).  I'm not suggesting that these artifacts would not tell us anything about what students are learning, but there seem to be at least two problems with relying solely upon course-specific evidence.  First, it flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of general education, namely that it should provide a holistic and integrated experience for students that runs across particular courses.  Second, it assumes that integration of core concepts and learning outcomes will somehow occur without any intentional or strategic effort on the part of the institution (or, that faculty members are designing assignments that ask students to make connections across courses and between disciplines).  

What BYU--and I'm guessing a lot of other campuses--needs to consider is whether the GE program is an isolated and fragmented set of learning outcomes, each of which can be measured independently of the others, or whether we are after more holistic and integrated growth for our students.  If it's the latter, then portfolios, captstone experiences, learning communities with shared assignments, and assessment plans that examine student work that arises from these deep learning experiences will become much more important to us than they are currently.

On "well-roundedness"

High school students are frequently encouraged to make themselves "well-rounded" in an attemp to become more attractive applicants for the schools of their choice.  The "good" students follow suit and  participate in an array of experiences they hope will "round them out."  As a result, we see the honors student who is also a member of the varsity tennis team, sings in women's chorus, volunteers at the local elementary school, and works part time at the Kinko's downtown.  The common thinking is that this diversity of experience is good for both the student and the college who will one day send her an acceptance letter.  After all, we want well prepared students who can also contribute to a diverse or well-rounded student body.  But, this scenario is based on a particular assumption about  "well-roundedness," namely that in order to have a well-rounded campus, admissions offices must recruit and admit well-rounded individuals.  

The danger in recruiting an entire class of students like the hypothetical one I described above, is that a campus ends up not being well-rounded at all, but populated by a freshman class who all look the same.  Yes, the particular extra-curricular activities on each of their applications may vary a bit from one another, but they are nearly identical in that they have each dabbled in a number of things, but without developing the depth of passion or skill that comes through focused engagement in a single activity or area.  In contrast is the student who may not have been on the honor roll, lettered in a varsity sport, or volunteered at the hospital, but who was heavily involved in drama at their high school and who comes with deep passion and skill in that area.  Or, the student who was the editor of their school newspaper and who developed a broad set of skills through their involvement in that single activity.  

So, when we talk about having well-rounded students, do we mean breadth of experience or breadth of ability and skills.  My sense is that they aren't always the same and that a long list of extracurricular activities may or may not make for a well-rounded applicant or one who can make a unique and meaningful contribution to the campus community.  An incoming class made up of students who were highly engaged in a limited number of activities prior to enrolling in college, may be a more useful way of creating a well-rounded campus community.  And, maybe more importantly, such a practice signals to students that we value deep learning and focused engagement just as much (if not more) than the shotgun approach of doing a little of everything, without ever becoming immersed in an experience.

What problems does performance pay solve? What problems does it create?

A recent article on Inside Higher Ed. reported on a proposal by the British government to link the pay of vice-chancellors to the degree to which they meet professional targets laid out by the governing bodies of their institutions.  The argument used by those backing the proposal is that because vice-chancellors (the equivalent of university presidents in the U.S.) make so much more money than most on their campuses, there should be added measures of accountability to justify that pay differential.  

It's an interesting idea and not that uncommon in other sectors.  Athletic coaches have bonuses written into their contracts for winning a certain number of games or winning championships.  Salesmen live and die performance pay in the form of commissions.  And, just today, I was in a meeting discussing how to train museum educators where someone proposed that we create monetary incentives for museum staff who interact with a certain number of patrons.  In short, whether we're a parent trying to get a child to do something they may not do on their own--eat their vegetables, mow the lawn, or get good grades--or a manager trying to improve the performance of an employee, incentives are part of the world we live in and can lead to a variety of positive behaviors.

The trouble is that, at times, the incentives or reward structures we put in place are actually incentivizing a set of behaviors very different than what we would hope for.  And, in settings where innovation or creativity are highly valued, performance-based pay has the potential to discourage the calculated risk-taking necessary for make improvements and breakthroughs to occur.  In the case of British vice-chancellors, their governing bodies need to think carefully about what they value in leaders and what constitutes success or "high performance" and then carefully craft their incentives and performance-based pay criteria in alignment with those values.  If what the performance indicators are in conflict with other values, there will be trouble and the government might get something completely different than what they expected when they set out to improve the "performance" of high-level administrators.  

Compensating or rewarding individuals based on performance measures can solve some problems.  By identifying desired behaviors and then "paying out" when they are seen with some consistency, people may start to behave differently.  But, there are often unintended consequences and we sometimes create new problems in our attempt to solve old ones.