This week Dave asks us – if you can’t measure learning – what can you count?
Or as Dave says it:
This
week’s challenge
Get out there and count! What can we measure that
isn’t learning? Think about all the other facets of the human experience… can
we do better? What about all the fancy tools we’ve seen… can they help? Should
we throw it out all together? Can we help people measure themselves? Is there a
better way of looking at it? Be theoretical. Be practical… but GRADE ME!
The
naming of parts
This takes me back to last week
and ‘The Naming of Parts’. The Henry Reed poem has the voice of the drill
sergeant naming parts – even those parts that ‘you do not have’. The responses
are the poetic thoughts of the men – in the garden amongst the coral flowers –
the almond blossoms - the bees – easing the spring. That poem captures the
dichotomous nature of education for me – on the one hand the percussive naming
of parts; the taxonomies; the hierarchies; the lists; our places on the lists…
on the other the joyous wandering.
In the end it is the reason I
dropped out of school. I was studying botany, zoology and chemistry (and not
allowed to combine these with English Literature – for that did not fit!) – and
oh it was all about the naming of parts: family - phyla – genus… the whole nine
yards – and for what and for why?
Like Piaget and his hierarchy of
learning: enactive – iconic – symbolic – going upward – leaving the doers
behind. Of course.
A perfect model for a measuring
system.
Ironic that I’m currently
teaching on a module: ‘Managing the Assessment and Feedback Process’ – and one
assignment that we set is that participants have to determine a group project
on an assessment-related topic and they have to generate measurement criteria
for their group presentation.
What a fraud am I?
My criteria would be:
Fail: did not meet the criteria
C: met the assignment criteria
A: met the criteria – and
demonstrated engagement, joy and/or enthusiasm.
B: not sure about B – more than
a C – not enough joy for an A.
Bonus: Bonus marks are available
for something special or interesting. Capturing bonus marks means that you
could score 100% for this assignment.
I don’t suppose we’d get that
past the Validation Panel.
Funnily enough we’re trying to
do something a bit like this on our first year module, Becoming an Educationalist. We have set several projects for the
students to do – including taking over three weeks of the course for their
‘Performances’. (For this week’s performance, check out this student blog: https://becomingeducational.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/learning-log-week-26/
.) It is a year-long module and we set a Research Project and an Essay – but we’ve
also allocated 30% of the marks for three portfolio items - and said to the
students that they can submit anything – a blog post – a piece of art – a
notebook… anything that reflects their best learning experience – anything that
showcases their creativity – talent – engagement – joy. And of course this is
really confusing. And of course – we try to be helpful. But not to say so much
that we generate another form of strait jacket – we want the bees and the
flowers – and not the naming of parts.
Postscript:
For those who fancy a course
video – here’s a Yale one on Zizek, D&G and the rhizome: http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300/lecture-15
For those who fancy an even
better course video – here’s Zizek on the Internet:
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