Winter 2012 Partnership Magazine - College of Education Home ...

New Systems for Working Together
This fall, the Assessment and Research team welcomed an
experienced education leader in research systems and higher
education. Bob Hugg, now Educational Research Systems Liaison,
for the College of Education worked closely with faculty across the
University this fall to spearhead development of a common research
system all stakeholders can access. The result will be a “system of
systems” with portals connecting faculty research interests and archives
with education communities’ needs and desires.
The system will hold six separate yet interconnected databases.
The web-based Faculty Research Interests database does just
what it says, it stores information on current faculty interests and
Winter 2012 Partnership
publications. Another
node allows community
partners (PDS K-12 &
research collaborators)
to put in requests for
more information on best
practices and research
methodologies. A third
piece links the previous two
together so that practical
questions can be answered
on both sides of the
common goal.
Bob Hugg
One portal houses archives of faculty research while the
remaining nodes build in related data systems, such as the one storing
all College of Education and Unit data. The Assessment and Research
team expects to use this clarified research connection to yield bigger
research questions as well as identify capabilities for longitudinal
studies in relevant topics.
Hugg defines the current questions driving the development
of MavAIR/Prism as “the quality of teacher preparation in terms
of the needs in the field, enhancing capability to reach out to
partner schools, and the ability to clarify and refine the impact and
application of our preparation program curriculum.
“I like to put it this way, this will allow us to collaborate to
innovate to collaborate,” says Hugg. “And we will have an ability
to take multi-level surveys from our graduates that will help us
clarify and refine, over time, the trends, needs, and impacts of our
students.”
With new partners and new opportunities our Assessment team
comes ever closer to understanding what our students must know
when they enter the field. When they become new teachers, their
colleagues have already helped pave a path toward success in
their practice and, consequently, in their students’ achievement. Their
collaborations, facilitated by the Assessment team and sustained
in the PDS, extend to improve the whole of teaching practice as a
result, a collective engagement that requires solid foundations.
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