Message no. 278
Author: John Griffith
Date: Sunday, April 8, 2007 3:48am
Come on, admit it. You’ve watched Family Feud at least once. I note that there’s a spanish
language version on now too. Plus a thousand years of reruns with different hosts and from
different cultural time capsules with different styles of personal appearance etc And
different “correct” answers too.
Well, it occured to me as I conduct my marathon solo discussion session in the wee hours,
that Family Feud was based on a failry useful model for learning analysis. One had to guess
how a group of 100 people would answer a question. So not only was it necessary to
imagine a single respondent to the question and what they might think, but a whole series
of respondents…100 of them to be exact.
And the answers might be correct or incorrect, but the point was tyring to figure out the
most TYPICAL response. And it struck me this is the model used to design most courses.
Or is it? Or should it be? Should we at least temporarily abandon institutional expectations
and standards, and teach to the TYPICAL class AS THEY ARE? Isn’t that what an
educational institution would be FORCED to do eventually? Or could they continue on without
change even if huge numbers of students failed and dropped out?? Gee, that couldn’t
happen, could it???
Do we then need to be good at this guessing game? Perhaps so.
So, there you have it. The Family Feud model of learner analysis put in play for course
design…
John
