Degrees that Matter: Moving Higher Education to a Learning Systems Paradigm by Natasha A. Jankowski and David W. Marshall (review)

Jankowski, whose primary role is as director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILO), and Marshall, a senior scholar at NILOA, task themselves with answering the knotty questions of how and what do we know about student learning and how might that information be presented in a unified accessible pattern for all stakeholders. Key to their exploration of a response is the precisely worded title with its emphasis on "degrees"—a spatial locator and the end game of higher education for the student. Positioning the Lumina-created Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) and its rough equivalent in European higher education, Tuning, the authors demonstrate in seven nicely balanced chapters how to delineate and articulate the notion of academic quality using the Learning Systems Paradigm. It is through the conceptual framework and application of this model, with its key concepts in systems of unity in collection, communication, and coherence of student learning outcomes data, that the inherent value of the book lies. Those involved in assessment, institutional effectiveness conversations, accreditation efforts, and course and curriculum design will find material for improving stakeholder buy-in on campus, professional development workshops, ways into writing effective grants, and patterns for holding meaningful conversations with everyone from parents to board members on how student learning is understood.

The Learning Systems Paradigm they propose has four synthetized points that build the intellectual and practical poles on which the quality argument is to be made—learning-centeredness, communication, alignment, and consensus. While most faculty members engaged in assessment will recognize these terms, the authors provide a context for advancing the conversation through their descriptive analysis of what each of the four approaches contributes to the overall understanding of how to demonstrate learning occurs, and the degrees by which that learning is seen to matter to students, faculty, and eventually employers. They supplement the inquiry with a discrete number of focused questions to create model dialogs, accompanied by tables that can be recreated, perhaps in a workshop setting where this book could be used.

The audience for the book is broadly conceived. Readers do not need prior knowledge of assessment and institutional effectiveness discussions to engage with the book. At the same time, readers familiar with the discussions will appreciate the attention in chapter 3 to what alignment really looks like on campus, and the application of the Learning Systems Paradigm to curricular mapping in chapter 4. While mapping is now a fairly commonly used process, Jankowski and Marshall reveal mapping as the central tool in affecting attitudes toward assessment since mapping can be used to argue the places where consensus, learning-centeredness, and alignment are shown to occur. When the Learning Systems Paradigm is implemented fully, as shown in chapter 5, a fresh or refreshed integrative experience is possible around the use of assignments as evidence for content mastery and students' facility with high-impact practices within their learning. Chapter 6, in particular, identifies and then shows how to address situations that often derail effectiveness conversations—perceived and real disciplinary differences, fear, the design of the assignments themselves and what outcomes are to be measured and for whose needs, and how to create effective holistic assessment environments. Assignments are not an adjunct to better understanding of what and how students are learning; assignments become the means to revealing the why of student learning in degree frameworks. The model offered could be imported into other areas where student learning is key to effectiveness—performance reviews of teaching, student evaluations of teaching, and accreditation or other external forms of reporting.

They argue that multiple voices provide the kind of creative tensions that encourage participants in the assessment process to dig deeper to establish why they do what they do in assignments, and contribute to the overarching conversations on how college degrees can be shown to...