
Trudy Banta
Professor, Higher Education,
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
I've been searching for evidence of effectiveness in higher education since I began research for a book, Making a Difference, which was published in 1993. At that time I wanted to know if instruction and student support services were improving, if students were learning more, and if the quality of colleges and universities was improving. In more recent books, I have collected more and more specific evidence of impact in these areas. Now I advocate empirical studies to determine if evidence-based changes have actually produced improvements. In this session, we'll explore multiple avenues for gathering and using evidence of educational effectiveness.