From an email to class discussion…
Ah, turn about is fair play. Why not have the students assign themselves the points??
Gee, I think I recall someone in the cohort talking about this kind of an approach. I bet he or she is sorry now!
“Assigning the points” does seem to imply/require some form of scale, a criteria, a standard by which to “objectively” judge student output.
Two problems with that. Well, at least two. How do we determine in fact what “student output” is? In reality, we are attempting to measure what has been learned. Because that is so hard, so very hard to measure, we instead try to measure a defined student “output”.
And once we are doing that, are we still measuring student “learning”…. or are we constructing means to produce “student output”? If so, a course of learning becomes a course of producing “student output”. Right away we’re in trouble here.
But say we weren’t in trouble and we posit that “student output” is in fact the only practical way we are ever going to have to know if learning has taken place. Then we still have to confront all the difficulties of objectively judging that output. That’s a very difficult if not impossible task, because student’s are different, and thus student output is different. Beyond that teachers are humans, they are not objective machines.
So to obtain objective measurements of student output, we must first design courses that produce standardized student output that lends itself well to objective measurements. Or at least the appearance of objective measurements, with scores, and numbers that lend credence to the presence of rationality.
But unfortunately, statistics is a science of great complexity. It is beyond most of us to design statistically meaningful objective measuring devices of student output, so we are in trouble again. We must rely on experts far removed from our personal knowledge of what is valuable student output for a particular student. Or for a “typical student” from our ‘school’. Or from a typical student from our region… etc.
We are now a very long long way away from trying to measure learning of an individual in a particular course, or learning activity. Good luckwith that.
So, to get back to that place, of knowing if learning has occurred or not, and getting some picture of or “grasp” on what that learning might be, perhaps one needs to design a course that does not attempt to produce “student output” but learning experience. And incorporate into that learning experience a subjective, but workable way for student/ teacher to have a useful sense of what learning has or hasn’t taken place.
That’s not my book to write, I don’t think. Interesting topic though, and I’m sure it’s been addressed by many before me who have done it justice. I’m learning a lot just thinking about this, but I defer to others who have done the hard work on this topic.
To the direct question of POINTS EARNED:
I’d say I learned enough in this Blogstorming activity to pass on to the next activity, and that’s probably a good enough assessment for this part of the course. As with most of the course, I would suggest there’s a real problem with time allotted, because if one is really interested in what people have to say here, which is at least as rich a learning opportunity as the course itself, it’s going to be a lot longer than allotted.
I mean, really, if one is going to actually respond to what’s written by others, one does a disservice to them and to one’s self, if one just goes through the motions to get the points and finish the activity in time allotted. A real problem for formalized instruction in general.
So, since I didn’t work on this as much as I would have liked, but did work on it long enough to learn something meaningful, I’m giving myself whatever points equal passing the activity, which I take to be a B, which I take to be 80-90% of points allowed, say
85% which I think comes out to be: 34. What the hey does 34 mean re what I’ve learned?
It’s a number, so it must mean something, I guess.
John
