Capturing Student Achievement and Learning Pathways at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In 2015, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) recognized the need to capture knowledge, skills, and abilities acquired by students in both co-curricular and curricular endeavors not being captured in any identifiable way. The Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer desired to document competencies gained by students in the variety of contexts on campus and to track student, faculty, and staff achievements in a way that would both benefit each individual while also supporting the mission of the institution. This vision led to the adoption of a digital badging initiative resulting in a scalable process for implementing new badges throughout the university community. UMBC's digital badging program became the springboard for the institution's entrance into the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) realm whose objective is to capture all credentials earned by students, whether they be awarded before, during, or following their tenure at the institution.

Comprehensive Learner Record as a Vehicle for Assessment and Learning Transparency in a Skills Economy

This chapter outlines assessment technology that supports the development of Comprehensive Learner Record, or CLR. Here the authors present the theoretical landscape upon which current credentialing innovation builds, explore advancements through a case study of practice between University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and the Greater Washington Partnership (GWP), and culminate with an overview of the assessment technology that ultimately facilitates recognition, validation, and portability of learning in the form of a comprehensive learner record.

Book Reviews

Michael Andrews of University of Maryland, Baltimore County reviews “Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the World in University Research” by Miguel Urquiola. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the free market approach to education in the United States, addressing how American research universities rose to preeminence and why they have retained their status in the world.”

Cyber-Physical Security Research at UMBC's Eclipse Lab

This article focuses on the research and development work at the Eclipse Research Cluster at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to address cybersecurity challenges. The research team is seeking to address cybersecurity challenges by employing a diverse set of specialty areas including Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. This group is looking at leveraging physical relationships to provide a diversity of measurement and reporting to not only improve anomaly detection, but also make decisions about how to keep critical functions operating even if only in a degraded mode. By exploiting the physical relationships between pressing a brake pedal and the operator’s leg position and the power consumption of a sensor and the instructions being run in it, this group proposes to provide new indicators that can be used to increase resilience to cyberattacks. This concept describes an example for a small section of a typical vehicle system. This group’s future research is seeking to expand this general approach of using the physical relationships of sensors to the properties they are measuring or actuators and the cause or effect of their action.

Skills for Healthy Adult Relationships at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County: Program Development and Preliminary Data

The present study examines the development and preliminary pilot findings of Skills for Healthy Adult Relationships at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (SHARe@UMBC)—an intimate partner violence prevention program for college students. SHARe@UMBC is based on an integrative cognitive-behavioral model of communication and emotion regulation in close interpersonal relationships. There were four aims of the present study: first, to describe program development; second, to examine program acceptability and participant satisfaction; third, to examine the extent to which participants acquired relationship skills and their level of confidence in using those skills; and fourth, to examine perpetration and victimization of physical, sexual, and psychological aggression. These aims utilized data collected before program initiation, immediately after program completion, and at a follow-up 9 to 15 months after program completion. Findings from two pilot groups (15 students in total; eight women and seven men) indicated high ratings of program acceptability and satisfaction, reductions in negative communication, improvements in confidence using conflict management strategies with romantic partners and peers, and confidence initiating new romantic relationships. In addition, large effect sizes were observed for confidence providing emotional support to a romantic partner and self-disclosure with peers. Participants reported no incidents of physical, sexual, or psychological aggression perpetration or victimization at follow-up. Pilot implementation and initial uncontrolled results are encouraging and provide support for initiating a more extensive controlled investigation of program efficacy.