I am trying to give my answer to your question "1) What do YOU think is the most important outcome of higher education? Why?".

In my humble opinion, the most important outcome of higher education (HE) ought to be acquisition of higher order thinking skills and these include abilities to carry out judgment, analysis, criticism, logical reasoning, evaluation, and solving problems.

Higher education may be said to make persons gain knowledge but there are many sources of knowledge around. Due to the nature of human memory, knowledge can be forgotten so it is important for each of us to have the ability to get a needed information fast.

Some beginners may think that higher education will explore the innate abilities in persons and develop them through training. Well, this is unrealistic since there are "defined" curricula or courses that will be provided in (HE) which may involve training. A student, trained to do an experiment or to use an instrument, may forget that after the elapse of time unless the training was repeated over & over.

I am trying to give my answer to your question "1) What do YOU think is the most important outcome of higher education? Why?".

In my humble opinion, the most important outcome of higher education (HE) ought to be acquisition of higher order thinking skills and these include abilities to carry out judgment, analysis, criticism, logical reasoning, evaluation, and solving problems.

Higher education may be said to make persons gain knowledge but there are many sources of knowledge around. Due to the nature of human memory, knowledge can be forgotten so it is important for each of us to have the ability to get a needed information fast.

Some beginners may think that higher education will explore the innate abilities in persons and develop them through training. Well, this is unrealistic since there are "defined" curricula or courses that will be provided in (HE) which may involve training. A student, trained to do an experiment or to use an instrument, may forget that after the elapse of time unless the training was repeated over & over.

Thank you for starting an interesting discussion, Sean. I agree with Nazir that HE must focus on knowledge. But I would also claim that higher education should hold a wider view of learning.

Right now, I take part in the process of planning a new program for teachers’ education. When we train students for the role of educators it is natural to see their personal development as a central aspect of their studies. I would claim that the planning for, the conscious working with and in the evaluation of such a personal development should be a part of what is defined as learning in HE.

Great point, Johan!

But how do you define and measure 'personal development'? If it is defined as some sort of skill (communication, problem solving, critical thinking, etc.) development, do you look for a change in behaviour as evidence? If so, what behaviour?

Skill development is difficult to quantify, so how can we know if we are successful at helping our students reach these lofty goals?

I would include all the aspects that you mention in the personal development that should be seen as a part of HE. A teacher would as a necessary part of his or her development of professional capacity need to acquire skills in areas such as communication and critical thinking. These can be evaluated, but the process will have to be more complex than a mere test of knowledge.

A more complex part of the personal development has to do with abilities that comes from what could be defined as a development of identity. A teacher’s ability to understand and handle an obnoxious teenager, a medical doctors’ ability to uphold a dialogue with a dying patient or a policeman's ability to solve a conflict without using violence are all a part of their professional training. These abilities can only be achieved by learning processes that I would say has to do with identity formation. One way to evaluate such development would be through a close mentoring process with an experienced professional over a longer period of time.

For the scientific evaluation or description of learning as identity formation my view is that the method would have to be mainly qualitative. There are methodologies inspired by ethnographic studies or narrative studies that are designed to describe personal development over time.

For me, Meaningful learning is that enable human beings to practice humanity for sake of welfare of fellow human beings.

For meaningful learning, see the work of Karpicke and associates. Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000286 EndHTML:0000039339 StartFragment:0000038655 EndFragment:0000039299 SourceURL:file:///C:/Users/throckmortont/Documents/VAlidity%2012%20RN%20article%20Cumulative%20Testing%20with%20Standardized%20Exams%20and%20Prediction%20of%20NCLEX%20Success.docx

Karpicke, J.D. (2012). Retrieval-based learning: active retrieval promotes meaningful learning.

For meaningful learning, see the work of Karpicke and associates.

Please excuse the information after Karpicke's name in my response. I am not sure what happened. Karpicke and associates have done quite a bit of work with retrieval learning and meaningful learning. Karpicke's 2012 article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 157-163 is specifically related to meaningful learning.

Two additional benchmarks of meaningful learning is an admission of salience and the ability to apply what one has learned in both similar and dissimilar situations. It is not just about recall, but application and understanding both theory and technique and the ramifications thereof. If the learner can perform these actions (and it can be evident within an assessment interview if the right questions are posed), then in my opinion the learning has become meaningful.

A good question, while a little hard to answer.

Well, I'll try...

1) Though so far the scores have become the most intuitive and necessary indicators in schools, it should not be the only and most important outcome of higher education. Meaningful learning should look further for helping foster in the young the morally sound values, communication with others and outlook on the world and life. Through learning, one can more deeply explore the potential and thoughts. Through studying, one can also establish a love for learning and life. Knowledge is endless, and innovation, exploration and love will help people harvest and advance on the road to development.

2) Well, let's move the second question: how do YOU accurately measure this outcome in your research?

It's why I said it is difficult to answer..

How can you accurately measure the Love? Or the values?

Should we go back to the scores as what have happened in most schools in the world?

I have not found the answer yet and maybe the answer is beyond our research.

Is it good way to build some target outcomes for different levels for young? Well it depends.

Maybe for adult we could find some links between the human behaviors and their performances and then assess. But for young we'd better guide them rather than grade and mark them.

Sorry it does not look like a correct answer but I hope it will lead to more discussion and thinking and help us find the answer.

Certainly Meaningful learning in Higher Education is a topic of long debate. Bearning in mind the scope of learning in Higher Education, it is certainly not easy to assess its' outcome.

Students come to university to study a field, get the right knowledge, skills and attitudes on this field and contribute to it. I guess achieving that can be meanigful teaching and learning. The reality though is very very complex, I think.

Meaningful learning is a balance between what knowledge the learner finds relevant and the program of study (which may have external criteria to meet). Understanding the learner/teacher is invaluable to ensure philosophical match between content and learning strategies.

I utilize a heutagogical approach which I strongly believe is instrumental, as a philosophical approach, to influencing course design to ensure the creation of meaningful learning

My response to meaningful learning is the relevance of any topic to the lives of my students when I was still teaching. Our sessions would always begin with the experience of the student in such and such area of learning. From drawing out their experience, an educator may raise their level of awareness and later on attitudes and behavior.

Dr. Nizar Matar sir provided a really good comments about this.

I endorse the above contributions and add that being able to apply what is learnt in novel situations to include solving problems in society make learning meaningful.

Best regards,

Debra

Debra's inclusion of "solving problems in society" is particularly pertinent, in my opinion.

To me, meaningful learning is related to an individual learner, being able to solve problems related to the lesson learned and/or societal-problems-which is reinforced by adaptability, creativity, flexibility and team learning spirit.

I´d add, creativity and critical thinking as a part of learning , related to the study area in higher education students.

Meaningful learning is related to both transfering of knowledge and the ability to use such knowledge to solve real world problems, which requirs a set of skills might be learned at HE or gained by experience.

As the political scene becomes more and more sectorized with selective «alternative» news channels I would say that critical thinking and ability to analyze the media has become an increasingly decisive aspect of meaningful learning in HE. Could it be said that one of the central roles of HE in society is to uphold democracy by teaching students how to critically take part in the political debate?

Thank you all for your illuminating and thought-stimulating replies. Save for those who recited the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on meaningful learning, many thoughtful and important perspectives on valuable learning outcomes have been shared. It is clear that you have spent a lot of time and care on your teaching philosophies, which I'm sure your students would be happy to hear!

You asked, "What is meaningful learning?" and it is perhaps debatable what constitutes meaningful. Meaningful learning may vary from person to person depending on an individual's purpose of learning and the outcomes of such learning. If there is purpose of learning (anything), if that purpose is achieved as a result of the learning, then one can say that it was a meaningful learning. It may be related to literacy and language, technology, leadership, creative and critical thinking, general awareness of self and others, and qualitative and quantitative reasoning (in a broad sense).

The concept or theory of meaningful learning is that learned information is completely understood and can now be used to make connections with other previously known knowledge, aiding in further understanding. For more details please visit the following link

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rallrich/learn/mean.html

Best Regards @ Sean C. McWatt

Hello Sean - Thanks for asking this thought-provoking question - and I found myself nodding at the responses of many of the contributors in this strand.

I regularly articulate a top-line objective of my HE teaching (which involves educating pre-service teachers [PSTs] in how to teach aspects of Humanities and Social Sciences (mainly History, Geography and Civics and Citizenship to school children) that I want the beginning teachers to be able to design 'meaningful and memorable' learning.

Your question is: How effectively do I know that my unit and assessment tasks are achieving this objective? You are right to say that the students' grades only tell us a limited amount. However, a regular healthy assessment profile on assignments that are asking PSTs to APPLY their learning and where high grades show creativity and critical insight in designing engaging tasks does tell us something.

However, another answer is that meaningful learning 'sticks'. It is RESONANT. It connects with a learners key personal values and becomes internalized.

In my case it is - to some extent - possible to see if the learning from second and third year units is retained through to developed fourth year practice because teachers need to evidence their planning practices in a number of disciplinary areas to pass professional teaching standards (in addition to passing HE assignments).

How do we accurately measure how effectively we are promoting 'meaningful' learning? One answer is - We don't know until sometime later. Another answer is - let's check in a year later and see whether the learning has stuck and is STILL being applied to address relevant professional challenges.

What I really like with Peter's answer is the thought that meaningful learning must resonate within the learner. If this is true (and I really believe it is) than we who are responsible for the learning program/setting/activities have the responsibility to learn to know our students. We need to get close enough to them to understand how learning can be adapted, like Peter writes, to their "key personal values and become internalized".

For me the responsibility for meaningful learning must lie with the teaching staff as well as with the learner. The learning that resonates within the learner is something we merit through knowing our students and applying our knowledge of who they are to the learning situation.

meaningful learning in higher education is process of how to be real human being

Thanks, all!

Peter -- I really like the part of your answer outlining the resonant and 'sticky' nature of 'meaningful' learning. When it comes to accurately measuring 'meaningful' learning, your comment exposes what I think is a great approach. I believe that the ideal approach is a multifaceted one in which we acknowledge each student's personal connection to the content, their performance (on various tiers of cognitive complexity, of course), and how well that learned material/skill is retained in the future. How we choose to specifically measure those outcomes, however, is contingent on how we define 'meaningful' (as mentioned above by Shashidhar). For your PSTs, that is undoubtedly through application and creation of educational settings (very meta), but as Shashidhar pointed out, the desired outcome could be far more personal and complex (say, the management or reversal of one's social biases). I suppose it is our job, as educators and researchers, to determine the appropriate criteria for evaluation in our own contexts.

Your, Shashidhar's, and Johan's comments all therefore underscore the importance of being mindful of the context in which you are teaching and measuring learning that is 'meaningful' to your students.

Thank you for your insightful comments!

Ability to understand the information then remember it and then apply it

Learning becomes meaningful when we connect/link previously learned material with a new learning episode. Meaningful learning, in the words of David Ausubel, is active, constructive, and durable. This form of learning requires active learning techniques. This implies that meaningful learning happens when the individual has an active role since he/she has to organize information. Hence, own interpretation is a prime factor for a piece of knowledge to occur.