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Table of Contents > Dr. Tobin’s Message
Research universities exist to serve several competing agendas, from professional preparation to providing a liberal arts education, and producing theoretical and applied research. None of these goals can be attained without a dedication to enlightened principles and practice of teaching. The purpose of the units within the Office of Academic Programs is to assure that both faculty and students benefit from all forms of support, both conceptual and concrete, that will lead to superior performance in the classroom.
If, as everyone seems to agree, the purpose of undergraduate education is to change the student, then we should expect that graduating seniors should be able to think with clarity, to communicate effectively, and to have acquired a body of knowledge that will inform their decisions. Ultimately, we hope that our graduates will possess the one faculty indispensable to a world where, as Descartes warned us centuries ago, opinion passes for fact: judgment.
How do we know that our objectives for student learning have been met? Through evaluation, or, to use the current buzzword, assessment. We have heard much about assessment on this campus, but not usually in the form of a true intellectual debate. Yet a campuswide discussion of the measurement of student learning is important because not a year goes by that most academic departments do not review their curricula. In such deliberations we are thinking about our students and asking ourselves for proof that we are offering them opportunities for change. Consequently, we are beginning to acknowledge that there are more and less effective ways to educate and that an institution should aim to take students out of their routine in order to explore new intellectual paths—which is a definition
of thinking.
The units of Academic Programs constitute the principal campus resource for responding to the challenges inherent in the instructional mission of UC Santa Barbara. Instructional Development, (ID) with its grant programs, media services, sophisticated production operation(video services, artworks, sound recording, photography), and, most recently, Shirley Ronkowski’s faculty discussion group called “Teaching Circles,” is, nonetheless, not the only purveyor of teaching-related resources and opportunities. Summer Sessions (SS) affords faculty the time to experiment with new methods, a more intimate context for instruction, and the ability to suit content to different forms of time compression: 10, 6, or 3 weeks. Instructional Computing (IC) provides the campus with space and equipment for teaching with technology and is a prime mover in exploring a campus Course Management System. An untapped pedagogical possibility at UCSB lies in the reworking of upper-division courses to include opportunities for returning Education Abroad students to use talents developed in foreign countries, such as language and cultural awareness. Extended Learning Services (ELS) stands ready to provide courses of a practical nature to complement the more theoretical approach that most departmental offerings adopt. And, together with Off-Campus Studies and ID, ELS is especially interested in collaborating on the creation of assessment tools that the campus would find useful.
The best locus for experimentation being the Residence Halls, Academic Programs is anxious to replicate the success of the Manzanita Faculty in Residence program in other Halls, thereby establishing multiple environments for the advanced level of living/learning that would vault UCSB to a position of national leadership in undergraduate education.
RONALD W. TOBIN
Associate Vice Chancellor
for Academic Programs
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