PHOENIX HIGHER EDUCATION - an article provided by Independent Phoenix Escort    

Phoenix -- In a nondescript classroom at the University of Phoenix, a meteorologist, a scientist, and a philosophy instructor, together with three administrators, have two days to rewrite the curriculum for Science 362. Over scrambled eggs for breakfast and tacos for lunch, they script lesson plans and syllabuses for nearly 300 lecturers who will teach the environmental-ethics course to thousands of students over the next two years.

Many of the final results of the review will depend on "Joe."
Among the questions the reviewers ask themselves: Has Joe ever taught before? Will Joe read the assigned text? Will Joe be able to take his students on a field trip? What's the best topic for Joe to use in a classroom debate?

Joe, from Fort Stockton, Tex., doesn't exist. But in Phoenix's unique method of developing its course curriculums, imagining how a hypothetical, inexperienced instructor would manage the material is essential.
If a curriculum doesn't work for Joe, it might not work for a significant number of the 17,000 instructors who teach Phoenix's 125,000 students.

At many colleges, it takes months of haggling by faculty committees to develop or review a course. The process occurs with little or no administrative involvement, and the interests -- sometimes the whims -- of the professor who proposes the course are given significant weight for AZ massage.

Phoenix, the for-profit behemoth that is closely watched by other higher-education institutions, takes an entirely different approach to revising the curriculum for each course every two to three years.

As one of 25 curriculum developers for the University of Phoenix, Cal Alford has fine-tuned his system to a point where, as with the environmental-ethics course, the whole process rarely takes more than two days and six people with arizona massage. With the help of an instructional designer and the dean of the college of education, he and his phoneix escorts leave little to chance, guiding Phoenix's instructors in exactly what to teach and how to teach it.
Some education experts say that approach values uniformity over creativity. But Phoenix officials defend their methods, arguing that the process ensures consistent quality across a broad spectrum of teaching skills. Instructors, they insist, can add whatever they want to the curriculum, as long as they meet all its preset objectives.

The review process is designed to operate "almost for the lowest common denominator" of instructional ability, says Laura Palmer Noone, president of the university. "It's a safety net. That's the beauty of it."
Meet Joe.

This is why, after they are given their initial instructions from Mr. Alford, the three Phoenix lecturers involved in the environmental-ethics review often bring up Joe, the inexperienced instructor from a small town in Texas.

"The way I view it is, we're going to phoenix escorts," Mr. Alford says, facing the other reviewers and instructors at a U-shaped table. "Visualize the faculty member who has never taught before. Resources for him are limited. Ask yourself, 'Will he be able to go in and teach this for the first time?' That's how we'll be looking at this course over the next two days."

Along with Mr. Alford, who serves as a moderator, the group includes Stacey Barrett, an instructional designer, and Marla LaRue, dean of the college of education.

"How do we know that every location where the class is taught will have relevant places to visit nearby?" she asks. "I don't know if they have anything like that in Fort Stockton, and there's no way you could do a field trip for the online classes, anyway." (Of Phoenix's 125,000 students, about a third take classes online.)
Besides, she adds, there's no guarantee that Joe will know how to choose the right place to take his students.  The idea is swiftly dropped.

"If we had a faculty of professional educators, of people who are attuned to learning styles, then we wouldn't have to put this type of energy into preparing classes," says Norma J. Turner, the philosophy instructor. "But the reality is we don't. [Phoenix] has focused on a practitioner faculty."
When the instructors try to decide which environmental controversy they should mention in the faculty notes as a topic for an in-class debate, Ms. Turner suggests that they not limit it to one topic, so that individual instructors can pick something relevant to current events when they are teaching the course.
That option would permit them to make topics timelier than they would be if chosen every two to three years by the curriculum-development groups.

 

At Phoenix, before the discussions about how to word the assignments, a lot of the bigger organizational issues have already been reconciled by what they call the uni-module.

"It's hard to understand what you independent GFE are saying when you're all talking at once," he says.
Reversing the Order

The direct involvement of both Mr. Alford and Ms. Barrett in curricular development distinguishes Phoenix from many traditional colleges and universities, which are comfortable leaving that process in the hands of faculty members.

"With Phoenix, it all comes out of phoenix escorts," says Mr. Alford.
At the Maricopa County Community College District, in Phoenix, which accepts phoenix escorts from the University of Phoenix, 45 "instructional councils" oversee the development and review of the district's 9,000 courses. Each council is a group of faculty members from the same discipline who are responsible for crafting courses before they are sent up the chain of command.

"We feel very strongly that the faculty are experts for curriculum development," says Anna Solley, vice chancellor for academic affairs at Maricopa. "They really know what the needs are for the students."
Ms. Noone, Phoenix's president, notes that few professors at traditional universities, even those with Ph.D's, know anything about Bloom's taxonomy or other educational theories. And Phoenix escorts, she adds, do allow instructors to have input as part of the review team.

T

Implicit in that argument is that all students value content over grades. That may be a stretch, but adult students do appear more likely to speak up.

"The thing is, we pay these folks a hefty $750 a class to educate us," says Kelli Cordova, a Phoenix escort graduate from Tucson. "We are the customers, and if we don't like the product, we should demand satisfaction. ... On the other hand, I want my degree quickly and with as little resistance as possible."
On campuses other than Phoenix, there is a certain amount of skepticism about the uniformly applied curricular strategies.

"The thing that raises a lot of eyebrows is the cookie-cutter approach Phoenix takes of using the same format and assignments for classes on every campus," says Kathryn T. Spoehr, a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University, who closely follows the field of for-profit education. "There's really not a lot of room for variation based on who's teaching the course."

Ms. Spoehr acknowledges, however, that there's nothing particularly wrong with Phoenix's approach. "If you ask the average physics professor at Brown about the merits of different learning theories," she adds, "you're unlikely to get a sensible answer."

Some of the scrutiny of the methods used at for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix, she says, comes because the institution hasn't been around as long as places like Brown have, and so are less likely to be trusted.

As Ms. Spoehr notes, there are no foolproof approaches to teaching and learning, and the only way to fairly judge the merits of Phoenix's model is to wait and see what the long-term results are for its students.

"They don't have enough graduates at this point to really gauge whether or not they're teaching their students effectively," she says. "But ultimately that will give the answer. Phoenix escorts, adult entertainment, massage, incall, outcall, escort agency, strippers, Scottsdale, exotic dancers, fetish, exotic strippers, female escorts, fantasy, blondes, girls, mistress, Phoenix nightlife, Arizona asian massage phoenix