accountability

I quickly read an article from the journal National Civic Review today called "The Accountability Trap." It's a bit tangential from our overall focus, but it stimulated some thinking that I wanted to capture, in case it became useful to how we think about reflection, response, and the classroom "audience." The article drew on "new public management" theory, which is all about accountability to customers. The writer was exploring this notion in terms of citizens' relationships with government and she pointed out that accountability efforts of various kinds often become accountability upward rather than downward; that is, over time, systems of accountability serve the institution rather than the "client". This parallels our systems of accountability in higher education, I think. I hate the notion of students as customers or consumers for the obvious reasons, but I think in some ways what we're doing with the CIQs, and any formative assessment, really, is mitigating the upward spiral of accountability in higher education. Our SROI's (student ratings of instruction) are supposed to make us accountable, but they only marginally serve student needs. The class is over, the students moved on, and they know that it doesn't serve them well or they would invest more in it, it seems to me. So, they robotically fill out an evaluation that allows them to vent but doesn't really lead to any substantive interaction between them and the instructor. But the CIQ does open this door, does allow for some immediate accountability.

And that immediacy is part of the accountability equation. If we go back to Czichzentmihalhy's (sp?)notion of flow, we know that satisfaction in learning and other experiences often is connected to regular and immediate feedback. Great delays in the feedback reduce satisfaction in the experience. The weekly system of the CIQs helps to ensure that the students get to have their say now and we can respond soon.