My friends’ Chambliss and Takacs’ book How College Works (Harvard University Press 2014) has just come out (previous coverage in ). I worked on a small piece with Chambliss at the beginning of their Mellon funded research in assessment project many years ago and have followed along as the book took shape. It’s well written, well reasoned, and their’s is a perspective that does not delight the higher ed assessment industrial complex. That is, you will find it an interesting read if you work in the kind of institution I work in.
See also
http://www.hamilton.edu/documents/TheHamiltonPlanforAssessmentofLiberalArtsEducation.PDF
Chris Takacs and Dan Chambliss are the authors of the forthcoming How College Works (Harvard, February 2014). Their work is based on an eight year long, social science based assessment study. Among other points, here they suggest research-based reasons why having a broad selection of really good intro courses is important.
More generally they suggest making sure any course that students have to take is high quality, not least because there’s no “voting with your feet” to give us feedback on these courses. This advice will, alas, fall on deaf ears because we are uncomfortable with the idea that any of our courses are not high quality. But the idea of deploying teachers strategically where they can do the best job is smart.
Inside Higher Ed piece discussing Chambliss and Takacs’s finding, in How College Works, that an inspiring encounter with a faculty member strongly influences a student’s choice of major
