Just finished reading a really interesting article by Chip Heath and Dan Heath entitled "Teaching that Sticks." It is based on their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The Heath brothers have identified the six traits that they feel make an idea sticky and they include: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and story. The Heath's say, "As a teacher, you are on the front lines of stickiness. Every single day, you've got to wake up in the morning and go make ideas stick. And let's face it, this is no easy mission. Few students burst into the classroom, giddy with anticipation, ready for the latest lesson on punctuation, polynomials, or pilgrims." The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) has just released a full report called "Making Student Learning Evidence Transparent: The State of the Art." The report focuses on identifying best practices when it comes to institutions reporting their assessment data. Case Western Reserve University lists a fact of the day drawn from their institutional assessment data. One of the findings of NILOA is that institutions post assessment information more frequently than many would likely have guessed but the information is often hidden or not presented effectively. The Sustainability Across the Curriculum Faculty Learning Community (FLC) met on Monday to set their academic year outcome goals. Look for a survey in your email box soon as this FLC is very interested in learning what is currently occurring in the sustainability arena at LU. If you would like to get involved with this FLC contact facilitator Tony Pereira or co-facilitator Matt Hoch. "We do think we and the institutions have a public responsibility to stand behind the quality of education we provide our graduates, beyond just 120 credit hours and a 3.0 [grade point average]," said Ralph S. Wolff. "The big thing here we're trying to shift is from just ensuring that institutions are engaging in the process of assessment, to being about what the results are and what they mean. And are they good enough for us?" Wolff's comments came in a story about the Western Association of Colleges and Schools attempt to ratchet up their accreditation requirements. This fall Stanford University took a step forward in the open-education movement by offering three free online courses, following in the footsteps of several other elite colleges like Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The three classes being offered—”Machine Learning,” “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,” and “Introduction to Databases“—are among some of the university’s most popular computer-science courses. Enrollment figures for the courses seemingly back up this claim: Andrew Ng, the professor for the machine-learning course, has approximately 94,000 students enrolled in his class alone. Students in the class includes high schoolers, grandmothers, and soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. “Teaching tens of thousands of students at a time is a very gratifying experience,” he said.