Making a Greater Impact on Student Learning with University of Rochester School of Nursing
| NEWS FLASH! Our project is a finalist at Learning Impact Awards: The Future of EdTech Starts Here “IMS Global’s annual Learning Impact Awards competition is conducted globally to recognize outstanding, innovative applications of educational technology that address the most significant challenges facing education.” — Voting closes this Friday, May 21, 2021, at 12:00 Noon ET. Vote for us NOW! |
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The Beginnings—Making a Greater Impact
As an academic leader for most of my life, I always want to make a difference in students’ lives. Whether it was helping them battle stage fright through public speaking strategies or providing them a voice in interpersonal communication through introducing blogging back in the early 2000s, it was about the students and the skills they were building for everyday life.
I took that same methodology with me as a director of assessment. After all, faculty are learners too and need to be lifted, supported and provided with strategies that will help them make a greater impact on their students, their discipline and their own professional persona.
One of the best things I get to do working as a Director of Academic Partnerships is collaborate with amazing educators across the country. Supporting their success is joyful and impactful to me professionally and personally.
For about three years now, I have had the incredible fortune to be working with Dr. Andrew Wolf, Director for Educational Effectiveness, and Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester School of Nursing. We began our collaboration back when I was a director of assessment and we continued working together as I transitioned to AEFIS. Through this time, we talked much about the importance of making assessment data more accessible to stakeholders—specifically faculty and students. And making assessment data more meaningful—linking it to competencies specific for practice.
One of the best ways to do this is through curriculum mapping and linking key assessments to competencies, which can populate onto a Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR). CLR is a dynamic portfolio of student learning, bringing together learning activities that occur inside and outside of the classroom, at different levels and points and time, and makes it visible in one place to enable deep reflection, understanding, and evidence to be shared with employers. CLR can help you capture assessment data in real-time, so that you as an academic leader can see where students are falling and provide interventions just in time. Ultimately, students can see their areas for improvement, engage in learning resources provided by faculty, and reassess, and progress on time, but with the skills that will make them better practitioners, better employees, and more successful leaders.
URSON-AEFIS Academic Partnership
University of Rochester School of Nursing began their work on CLR during the pandemic and amidst the changes being prescribed by the nursing profession. They moved to a competency-focused curriculum, enabling students to engage in learning through activities and experiences that helped them practice the knowledge, skills, and abilities more in meaningful ways.
The recognition of this work and its impact on learners is enough to keep going as I am intrinsically motivated, but when you are recognized by academic leaders, your peers, for work, now that is extremely special. This spring we learned that the University of Rochester School of Nursing and AEFIS were finalists for the prestigious IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning Impact Awards.
“What distinguishes IMS Global’s Learning Impact Awards is its pragmatic focus. Compared to other award programs in the education sector, a greater amount of work goes into the Learning Impact Awards evaluation process. Judges assess entries based on the use of technology in an educational institution context with clear evidence of learning impact.”
IMS Global
We Won…Almost!
IMS Global is inviting the public to vote for their favorite Learning Impact projects. We are humbled and proud to be finalists and hope you will vote for our project. You can do so by taking the link below.
Our project is listed #8 Educational Pathways, Portfolios, and Learning Maps and is entitled: “Comprehensive Learner Record: Empowering Embedded Assessment of Competency to Determine Student Readiness for Real-World Problems.”
From my humble faculty beginnings to my collaborative work with academic leaders across the country, it has always been about making a greater impact on student learning. I hope you will join me in this same mission, but likely you are already on that mission. Please lend your voice and contribute to the greater impact in this space and vote!
