Consultations & Training

CSID offers researchers and educational practitioners both formal and informal consultation.

• For individual researchers, particularly graduate students, interested in issues related to intellectual development in general and the Perry scheme in particular, I am happy to provide informal discussions and recommendations about instrumentation options, data collection and data analysis procedures and issues. 

• More formally, the Center can do a workshop for institutions interested in designing a developmental outcomes assessment program to supplement the typical content-oriented academic assessment efforts. This workshop focuses on the broad range of student learning outcomes of higher education, across a variety of dimensions, not just the intellectual domain a la the Perry scheme, including a discussion about the instrumentation available as well as general developmental measurement issues. If appropriate and requested, special attention can be given to the issue of using locally-designed vs. standardized measures; there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, but in many respects locally-designed measures can provide benefits far beyond the assessment process itself.

• The most popular formal consultation available from CSID focuses on the broad teaching/learning implications of the Perry scheme, for individual courses, specific curricular interventions (e.g., freshman seminar courses), and for the curriculum as a whole. The general approach is built on Lee Knefelkamp's "developmental instruction" process model, and can be offered by itself or in conjunction with a more extensive rater training workshop as a way of helping educators understand the scheme and its implications in greater depth. This workshop has been conducted at a variety of institutions over the past few years, most recently Moorpark College (CA), Western Washington University, the American Association for Higher Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Association of General and Liberal Studies, Eastern Washington University, Douglas College (Canada), the University of South Florida, and the University of Washington (for the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education). For more specific information about workshop topics, formats, and costs, please contact the Center.