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The notion that learning is not an outcome of teaching is a challenging conundrum to those who teach. Perhaps for two reasons, first, it’s counter intuitive, and second, it begs the question, “Well then what am I teaching for if not to bring about learning?!” While teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, the reality is that it is possible that what learners actually learn in a given lesson or course has little connection to what the teacher does or is trying to teach. We can imagine that some of this has to do with poor teaching. But some of it has to do with other complex dynamics of learning, including motivation, confirmation bias, attentional states, and capacities. A teacher who does not understand principles of learning, neglects to prepare well-designed learning outcomes, fails to ensure student engagement, and fails to apply sound instructional practices will likely not bring about meaningful learning. But the concept that “learning is not an outcome of teaching” goes deeper than that. The idea has to do with the fact that learners need to be, and are, active participants in their own learning. Regardless of our particular educational intent as teachers, students bring to the learning experience their own expectations, felt needs, goals, assumptions, frames of reference, and limitations related to the learning experience. Those factors often are more determinative of what will actually be learned than will anything the teacher intends or works toward. Experienced congregational ministers are familiar with this phenomenon. Regardless of how well they craft a sermon and despite how intentional they are in being clear about the purpose, function, and objective of the sermon, the fact is that the “real” sermon is the one that is heard by each parishioner in the pew and not the one preached from the pulpit. The preacher may be preaching the one sermon he or she prepared for Sunday, but there will be as many sermons heard as there are people in the sanctuary. This phenomenon always makes for interesting conversations at the door as the pastor greets the parishioners. If five people comment on the sermon on their way out, the preacher will be left wondering how and when it was that they heard those five different things in the sermon! The concept that learning is not an outcome of teaching can challenge certain educational approaches, like “teaching by telling,” lecturing, or an exclusive diet of direct instruction. If learners are active agents in their own learning, then we need to use those educational approaches that tap into what students bring to the learning experience. Ways to Ensure Better Outcomes The best way to ensure better learning outcomes is to design for student engagement. • Facilitate ways for students to discover their own learning and insights • Allow students to negotiate their own learning goals and facilitate ways for them to achieve them • Focus on problem-posing (which requires data gathering, observation, analysis, and interpretation) as well as problem-solving • Cultivate student's capacity for learning how to ask questions rather than getting good at answering teacher’s questions • Facilitate ways for students to construct their knowledge rather than providing them with information • Help students articulate their prejudices and bias • Help students uncover and identify their misunderstandings • Help students identify their resistance to new ideas • Allow students the options of approaching learning in the ways (modalities) they need. • Ensure that students apply knowledge to demonstrate learning, including through non-academic venues.

One of the most common pedagogical errors I see in course syllabi is confusing a learning activity for a learning outcome. This often becomes evident when reviewing course learning objectives. A professor will write a course objective that reads "The student will participate in class discussions." Or, "The student will write a 12-page paper on an assigned topic." Or, "The student will submit two case studies from their ministry context." Those assignments provide clear expectations of student learning activities, but they reveal little about desired learning outcomes. What is the student supposed to learn as a result of doing those activities? Or, in what ways and to what extent will those activities provide evidence of student learning? The potential miss in confusing a learning activity for a learning outcome is that a teacher will be satisfied with grading an assignment, like a research paper, but fail to assess what learning (knowledge or skill) the student has acquired. A learning activity is something you want the students to do in order to achieve a learning outcome. A learning outcome is the evidence the student provides that they have understood a concept, gained knowledge, mastered a level of competence, or changed affect (attitude, appreciation, or opinion). This can be tricky in that sometimes an assignment can be the outcome. For example, in an English composition class writing an effective essay can be an outcome. But in a theology or philosophy course, writing an essay may be a learning activity that leads to an outcome. In the former, the teacher assesses the quality of the student assignment, like form, grammar, styles, etc. In the latter, the teacher assesses the essay for evidence of critical thinking, correct application of theological concepts, logical reasoning, avoiding errors of bias, sound interpretation, responsible use of facts, comprehensiveness, etc. Well-written Learning Objectives Can Help One way to overcome the trap of mistaking one thing for another is to design well-written learning objectives. Instead of identifying what a student will do ("The student will write a case study," "The student will read the text"), which is a learning activity, identify what the student will demonstrate ("The student will demonstrate . . .") which is a learning outcome. Avoid being satisfied with vague educational terminology like, "The student will understand . . ." without providing a criterion for what constitutes understanding. Use a taxonomy of learning to define the quality, characteristic, or criterion of understanding you will look for in your learning outcome (e.g., Wiggins and McTighe's taxonomy of understanding). Rubrics Can Help Another way to reveal the learning intent of an activity is by applying a learning assessment rubric. A well-written rubric will identify the criterion and the quality of learning outcomes. Some rubrics evaluate the product of a student assignment, but fail to identify the learning that is supposed to result from the assignment. Elegant rubrics can do both, but at least try to write your rubrics for outcomes of learning and not merely for evaluating a student product (an assignment). It can help to differentiate outcomes from activities by placing them in different headings in your course syllabus. Needless to say, your learning activities should align with your published learning outcomes: (1) In what ways will the learning activity help the student achieve the learning outcome (if it doesn't, then don't assign it), or (2) In what ways will the learning activity demonstrate that the student has achieved the learning outcome? Attached is a graphic handout that can help you differentiate an activity (assignment) from an outcome. 

Urban Preparation contributes to a needed body of research on race that investigates “mechanisms, systems, structures, and practices that have a real bearing on students’ opportunities to learn” (vii). Urban Preparation highlights the scholarship of leading researchers who address questions related to race, poverty, achievement gaps, and the academic performance of minority students. An underlying thesis of Urban Preparation is that students in general, and minority students in particular, succeed when appropriate measures are in place. This is a resource for scholars in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to: education, law, sociology, psychology, health, political science, and social work. The book begins with an overview of the Race and Education series at Harvard Education Press. The series editor, H. Richard Milner IV, lists several objectives that guide the series and he challenges those in power to work “for the good of humanity, to interrupt systems, policies, and practices that work only for some while others remain underserved” (ix). Reasons are given for focusing on the intersection of race and education and questions are asked related to poverty, transportation, housing, and employment, among others. In the Introduction, Chezare Warren explains why he wrote Urban Preparation: “to subvert dominant narratives that insist on casting urban-dwelling young, black men and boys as ‘at-risk’ or ‘disadvantaged’” (1). He shares the stories of these young people as counter-stories that portray them as hyper-vulnerable. He is also convinced that social inequities and stories of failure must be examined alongside counter-stories of resilience, persistence, accomplishment, and triumph. The book highlights the stories of seventeen young black men who are members of the inaugural graduating class of Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, referred to as “UP.” UP is a high school for boys in the Englewood neighborhood which has one of the lowest median household incomes among Chicago’s Southside neighborhoods. However, UP is widely recognized for 100 percent of its graduating class gaining admission to four-year colleges and universities. Urban Preparation aims to: (1) describe the organizational design of UP; (2) examine the intersections of place and space to discern factors that motivate young black men to succeed against the odds; and (3) explore the factors that help narrow “opportunity gaps” for urban youth, and the implications of these factors (3). The book’s qualitative data consists of interviews, field notes, memos, and participants’ responses in order to construct a “coherent continuous narrative around dominant themes” that emerged from analyzing data (8). From the data, Warren chronicles the real-life experiences of the first graduating class by grouping the students into five composite characters with overlapping characteristics. The title of the book is derived from the school’s name but the book tells the stories of the seventeen students and “the meaning associated with growing up in an urban environment” (18). More than anything else, the book gives a better understanding of the academic and cultural strengths of urban minority youth in secondary and postsecondary settings. Urban Preparation is fundamentally a counter story as well as a critical study that challenges educators and all those interested in improving the education outcomes of black men and boys to listen to them and to learn from them.

Outcomes-based learning invites the question of how to best produce them, and this book introduces the reader to seven high-impact practices (HIPs), namely high expectations, close and frequent student-faculty interaction, effective teaching strategies, undergraduate research, collaborative learning, service learning, and diversity. Chapters are organized around these seven features. The authors use their own school, Oxford College of Emory University, as a test case for their hypothesis that these features provide the best means for student success as measured in desire to continue learning, graduation rate, STEM interest, and community engagement. Institutions promoting HIPs provide intentional support to their students for these practices, cultivate diversity, and blur the boundaries between classroom and extracurricular life. The book is seasoned with excerpts from faculty and student interviews and almost constant reference to the last thirty years of research on academic practice. High expectations are created in classroom synergy between students and instructors, where instructors lead students in exploring beyond the basic subject information students are expected to learn on their own. Students report appreciation for being pushed beyond introductory knowledge and for gaining the self-knowledge that they underestimate their own learning capacities, something they would not have learned without high expectations. High expectations are successful when students have more opportunities to interact with faculty. This works best at smaller institutions and requires the institution’s support to work. While faculty report that interaction helps them tailor their instruction to students’ needs and abilities, they also caution against an over-customization that reduces a subject’s breadth and prevents students from being challenged by new and unfamiliar material. As expected, high-impact teaching calls for active learning techniques, with fourteen such practices – called “Inquiry Guided Learning” – described in the third chapter. Among them are student discovery (as in problem-solving), systematic construction of knowledge, cross-disciplinary integration, addressing misconceptions, creating surprise in the classroom, and using mistakes strategically. These practices are not formulas set forth by the authors but were derived from student-faculty conversations about good teaching at Oxford College. The reader looks in vain, however, for the redemption of the lecture as a component in active learning. In any case, faculty are advised to use practices that fit their personality and their discipline; some fit better than others. Collaborative learning is enhanced through student research projects, which should be found across the disciplines (STEM fields have done the best job here). Such learning is best coupled with collaborative leadership in student life activities. The greater benefit accrues the less division there is between a campus’s academics and student life. Students learn leadership skills and gain confidence if collaboration with their peers is encouraged in both areas. Service learning includes collaboration and moves students beyond mere cognition to an experience the authors describe as spiritual and aimed at the “whole student.” And, the more diverse a campus, the better the outcome of any sort of collaborative activity. The conclusion offers readers ways and means of implementing these HIPs on their own campuses. Flexibility and adaptation are key, and in the process, more HIPs may be devised from conversations among all parties in different campus contexts.

Tat-siong Benny Liew Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies College of the Holy Cross “You are now entering the real world.” This is undoubtedly one of the most popular remarks that college/university graduates hear around the time of their commencement ceremony. The comment implies, of course, that life

In this short synopsis, Using Technology to Gather, Store, and Report Evidence of Learning from NIACE’s Digital Learning Guides series, Terry Loane presents an overview of the current prevailing technological methods for collecting and reporting evidence of learning. Largely, the guide is sufficient and serves as a solid reference for non-technical educators; it demonstrates the best methods for individual circumstances by providing ten vignettes of real-life situations. Loane’s opening theme of “a revolution whose time has come” (4) flows fluidly through the seven chapters, comparing and contrasting old ways with the new. Loane explains both the need and value of utilizing common elements of modern technology like mobile devices, online tools, and e-portfolios, in order to efficiently and effectively collect and present the fruit of one’s learning. He notes that the days of simply having to state that a qualification was met are gone; now the learner can present learned skills using easy and effective methods like mp3 recordings, YouTube videos, and blogging (55). The majority of the book covers the various forms of evidence gathering, technological means for data collection, and options for long-term cataloguing and presentation of one’s learning. The methods covered do offer a satisfactory representation of current options; however, as Loane notes, “the world has indeed moved on in just five years” (23). With rapid technological shifts, we must be open to adjusting our methods. Even since this book was published in early 2014, technology has moved more toward video, the one method Loane warns readers includes a range of issues involving lighting, intrusiveness, file sizes, and non-standardized codecs (28-29). As these obstacles are fast being worked out, and becoming more standardized, this guide may have a short shelf life and be in need of a second edition in the near future. What I found most intriguing was Loane’s futuristic idea – and possible current direction in the use of technology in preserving evidence of learning – of developing an “Online Record of Learning, Experience, and Achievement” (5) that will “rehumanize learning” by showing that learning is more than marks on paper (56, 57). The development of an online clearinghouse of sorts for learners and assessors to store and share evidence of learning is one that could greatly benefit the educational community as a whole. Loane rightly demonstrates that even technology that learners and assessors use everyday (like smart phones and tablets) has all the tools necessary to easily present learning and to create such a system, offering the ability to take certifications and evidence of learning along as one moves from institution to institution and job to job. I recommend this guide as a suitable reference tool for the non-technical educator, learner, or assessor seeking to move from old paper-and-pen methods to contemporary digital options. As Loane demonstrates, the benefits of embracing technology in learning far outweigh the hindrance of changing former traditional methods.