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 David Dirlam, Ph.D. Director of Institutional Research and Assessment 
Dr. Dirlam studied at Northwestern University (B.A, psychology) and McMaster University (M.A. and Ph. D., physiological, developmental and mathematical models of perception). His early work aimed to create a universal behavioral coding system. The first decade focused on applying the mathematics of organization to create efficient and powerful organizing systems. Next, the organizing systems were used to study drawing and writing development, the latter resulting in New York's pioneering natural language writing competency test-the origin of assessment rubrics now used around the world.The rubrics led to Dr. Dirlam's discovery that a generalization of ecology's law of succession applies to historical and personal development as well as ecosystems. The work on historical development was done with his students at a small Appalachian college. The culture of research on the mind that he created with them culminated in their receiving the Association of Psychological Science's award of Student Caucus Chapter of the Year in 1997, the first four-year college ever to receive the award. That same year, Dr. Dirlam's work on the succession model of development resulted in him receiving scientific psychology's prestigious Cattell Fund Fellowship for a year's study at UCSD's Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. There, he developed the implications of his earlier findings for assessment and cultural development, which included the developmental interview process and a keyword network method for analyzing text. Recently, he used developmental interviews of experts to create coding systems for many areas of expertise. At the Savannah College of Art and Design and the HUC-JIR over 200 faculty interviews resulted in the creation of developmental rubrics for 30 disciplines. These rubrics outline a comprehensive, developmental theory of each field of expertise. When faculty rate a representative project from each student in each course, the ratings create a Learning Outcomes Network that can be mined for potential program innovations. Dirlam is the facilitator of the Methodology Community of Practice of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education. His AALHE methodology postings can also be found at the HUC-JIR wiki section assessment methodology. |
