很难相信，在1870年，17岁的只有2％in this country had a high school diploma.

Over the years that number rose and peaked at 77% exactly a century later, but on average it’s been slowly falling ever since. While of course this is troubling, there is some good news for people without high school diplomas or college degrees. New ways to evaluate students are becoming more and more mainstream, as colleges become more forward-thinking and education becomes more open. Whether they’re used in admissions or in certifying valuable skills, these are the evaluation methods of the future.

5 New Ways School Are Evaluating Student Learning

1.MOOCs

Khan Academy. edX. Udacity. Coursera. Much has been said already about the power of these providers of massive open online courses to radically change higher education. We are right on the cusp of a new era that will see colleges using completed online classes as a way to evaluate a potential student’s … potential. TheUniversity of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Caltech, and 12 other schools are signed up to evaluate courses offered by Coursera. From there it’s just one small step to accepting the courses for credit, a step that will be even smaller should the American Council on Educationgive MOOCs its blessing. Coursera co-founder and Stanford prof Daphne Koller has no doubt what the outcome will be: “[MOOCs are] going to push more people into college and make them more successful.”

2.Badges

是教育的未来filled with badges? As one Brigham Young University professor put it, “Employers look at degrees because it’s a quick way to evaluate all 300 people who apply for a job. But as soon as there’s some other mechanism that can play that role as well as a degree, the jig is up on the monopoly of degrees.” Digital badges pose just such a mechanism. They’re like certificates, only they certify unique skills companies are looking for with a specificity that degrees and diplomas don’t. Forecasters predict a future where online schools — and even other organizations that are not strictly educational, like Microsoft, Mozilla, and the Manufacturing Institute — grant badges for civilian work, algebra, mentorship, and anything else an employer might appreciate.

3.第三方评估师和监管考试

A critical component of the digital badge and MOOC movements is the question of legitimacy. As with anything involving online education (or online任何事物, for that matter), the risk of sketchy or downright fraudulent behavior by companies posing as educational is high. That’s why groups like the American Council of Education are working to “grade the graders” and bring authenticity to badges and MOOCs. While some schools will count badges like credentials, many will still require verified demonstrations of skills through proctored exams. Some are partnering with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning to learn how best to use life skills and other non-diploma factors to evaluate students’ abilities.

4. e-Portfolios

对于学生来说，将其完成的作业和项目收集到学校以向他们展示给招生辅导员和/或雇主，这并不是一项新的创新。这种做法正在采取的新形式以及现在需要它的学校范围，而不是将其作为对学生的建议。从高中到大学再到研究生，学校通过让学生每年汇集一些最好的作品来展示随着时间的推移学习，从而利用了越来越多的数字化学性质。许多人要求学生在整个学校逗留期间让这些电子港口开放，以通过教师的检查，以便对他们的进度进行监控。这些集合可能包括音频和视频，以便审阅者可以看到学生在行动中，PowerPoints，JPEG，PDFS以及任何易于共享，查看或以其他方式与数字交互的文件。

5.生活经验

The recession had yet to hit home whenThe New York Timesran a pieceon continuing education organizations offering college credits for life experience. They noted that the allure of such “prior learning credits” was two-fold: get a degree faster and cheaper. Four years later, the cost of a college education has gone from a secondary consideration to priority number one for most students, and more people are looking at prior learning credits as a partial solution to the money problem. Older adults especially, who have been working full-time for years without a bachelor’s degree, served in the military, or even done volunteer work, can turn the skills and experiences they had in those roles into real college credits. For example, in James Madison University’s Adult Degree Program, students can earn up to 25% of the credits they need to graduate through prior learning credits.

This is a cross-post fromonlinedegrees.org;图像归因Flickr用户PeteselfChoose