A tale of two brothers: Inseparable at birth, separated by assessments

There were once two brothers, let’s call them Steve and Harry. They were born into a middle-class Indian family in 1989, separated by 5 minutes. It was a different world back then, exciting times. H.W. had just become President, Exxon Valdez was about to devastate the North Pacific and Alaskan Coastline with an oil spill, and the Berlin Wall was going to come crashing down later in the year, lifting the iron curtain over half of the world. When the brothers were 2 years old, the heavily regulated Indian economy was liberated from the socialist clutches of the Government, bringing unprecedented economic growth to the country. Indian middle-class was about to witness a radical change in the standards of living and the recent events had ensured that the brothers would receive the best possible education and a world of opportunity. All was well.

Steve and Harry went to the same schools, were in the same classes, had the same group of friends and were, in other words, inseparable. By middle school, it is clear that Steve is “better” than Harry, as he is always top of the class and has a near-photographic memory, perfect for memorizing everything and dumping it in the exams. Harry, on the other hand, is barely scraping by in school as he is “stubborn and doesn’t want to study”. Steve gets pampered and has access to everything, while Harry suffers in silence. No one knows that Harry has a genius for pattern recognition and numbers speak to him. He can see trends and relationships where others can’t, but he has nothing to show for it, except for his above-average math scores. Recognizing what Harry is good at, would be asking too much from assessments which assign arbitrary numbers to students based on how well they can memorize.

It is April of 2005. The brothers are now 16 and in the 10th grade. This year is extremely important and could “make or break their careers”, people around them can’t seem to stop reminding them. At the end of the school year, they will take the “Board Exams”, which are administered to millions of students by the central education board. The purpose of this is to sort the students based on their scores in at least 5 3-hour exams and limit their options for the last two years of schooling based on it. The top students can pick from any of the 3 streams – science, commerce, and humanities. Who are we kidding, this is India and if you make the mistake of being good at taking exams, you have to pick science, or your parents will pick it for you. Undergraduate degree eligibility will be limited based on this hierarchical system where students who picked science in high school can pursue any degree, while the peasants in humanities are limited to humanities degrees.

It is May of 2006. Steve and Harry, along with hundreds of thousands of others, await the results of the board exams. Steve, as expected aced the exams achieving 95%, while Harry barely scraped by with 62%. Their parents are elated for how well Steve did, and are worried about what Harry will do in life.

It is June of 2006. There is sort of mad rush to sign up for limited spots in science for 11th grade in most schools. The brothers’ parents are able to get Steve admitted to a top private school to study science and eventually pursue engineering. They have high expectations from Steve. But Steve doesn’t want to study science. He has a passion for English literature. He devours works of the likes of Hemingway, Eliot, Shaw and, Yeats. But he did so well in the board exams. How can his parents let him make the mistake of not picking science? Fights and arguments ensue. The parents win. Steve enrolls to study science. Harry has no choice but to study humanities. No reputable school will allow him to study science or commerce. But he wants to study math. He got a perfect score in math in the board exams. The schools don’t care. Their policy is to look at the percentage score and not individual subjects. Harry’s parents try and finally give up. Harry enrolls to study humanities. The brothers are separated for the first time in 10 years. They go to different schools, take different classes, have different friends. Both brothers are miserable, and the assessments have claimed two more victims.

It is August of 2008. Steve is about to join a private university to study computer engineering. He “wasted” too much time in the last two years reading novels and hasn’t done as well as his parents hoped. He can’t get into the top public universities in India, so an expensive private university is the only option. Harry is getting ready to move to the UK. He has an uncle who wants him to come and work in his restaurant and is willing to help him go to college in London. Harry is determined to find a way to study math. The past two years have been tough, but there is hope now that the brothers are moving out.

It is 2017. A lot has happened in the past 9 years. Harry is now running his uncle’s restaurant in West London, as uncle is ill and can no longer do it on his own. He enrolled in college but had to drop out as it was too expensive and he was in too much debt. He is doing a decent job managing the restaurant and makes enough to lead a mediocre life. His passion for math was long forgotten. Steve is furiously typing his way through a complex piece of python code. He is on a deadline and needs to deliver this module to his client in the US in a few hours. It is the middle of the night, he is in a dimly lit office, in a generic IT company in India. He hates his job, but it pays the bills. His passion for literature was long forgotten. One brother adds to the statistics of Indians who left the country in search of better lives, and the other adds to the statistics of Indians stuck in IT jobs with minimal growth.

There were once two brothers, inseparable at birth, separated by 5,000 miles. What if they were born in a different time, in a different place? What if the assessments were better suited to figure out what they were good at? What if someone had looked beyond their scores and encouraged them? What if there were no scores at all? What if….

Alright, if you are still reading, I will let you in on a secret: I made this story up. I used it as a means to channel my frustration and anger at the education system in India. The sad part is, India has 1.3 billion people and there probably are thousands of Steves and Harrys out there.

Education and Empowerment

Alfie Kohn elaborates on the effects of how an educational grading system can be problematic for student learning, as well as it can reduce the quality of students’ thinking. From my point of view, Kohn’s analysis arises as a consequence of educating people so they can get a job, but not to empower them.

Empowerment is defined as the authority or power an individual has to control one’s life and claim one’s rights (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). However, this complex construct can be understood by both the economic growth and the capabilities approach. Within the economic growth approach, development is associated with efficient economic growth and productive forms of market participation (Keleher, 2007). In this context, empowerment is the ability of a person to make market-related decisions and autonomously control his/her economic status (Keleher, 2014).

On the other hand, empowerment within the capabilities approach is a process of expansion of the substantive freedom people enjoy, and it relates to an individual’s ability of being freely to perform in life (Keleher, 2014; Sen, 2011). This approach positions empowered people as owners not only of their economic activities but also as owners and managers of all the different spheres of life (Alexander, 2008). Additionally, unlike the economic-growth perspective, in order to achieve a lifestyle that a person has reasons to value, empowerment cannot be delivered by anybody, but it can only be achieved by individuals their-self (Conger & Kanungo, 1988), and each individual has to do it at his/her own pace (Rowlands, 1995).

Based in those two delineations, I consider essential to understand that education is a process in which students can get the tools they need to get empowered so they can achieve the lives that they want. Seems to me, that an education system which focus on its majority in the importance of grading, is a system that will be limited to prepare students so they can get a job, accordingly to the economic growth perspective. Consequently, by realizing that any education system should go beyond numbers and grades, and by focusing more on student’s learning experiences, education will be about empowering students so they can find the tools they need to make their difference in the world.

 

References:

Alexander, J. M. (2008). Capabilities and social justice: The political philosophy of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=H4DcWEDqAngC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Alexander,+J.+M.+(2008).+Capabilities+and+social+justice:+The+political+philosophy+of+Amartya+Sen+and+Martha+Nussbaum.+Ashgate+Publishing,+Ltd&ots=I2mZsvg5Gp&sig=Z9I7DrTWlDOsYF_FT1mCVw703eo

Conger, J. A., & Kanungo, R. N. (1988). The empowerment process: Integrating theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 13(3), 471–482.

Keleher, L. (2007). Empowerment and international development. Retrieved from http://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/7584

Keleher, L. (2014). Sen and Nussbaum: Agency and Capability-Expansion1. Retrieved from https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/10936

Rowlands, J. (1995). Empowerment examined. Development in Practice, 5(2), 101–107

Sen, A. (2011). The idea of justice. Harvard University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OM4RBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=Sen,+A.+(2011).+The+idea+of+justice.+Harvard+University+Press&ots=0soNdLyTdy&sig=vB8F0R0yo6Y_yNn9zuUbkXk4XzE

 

Grades shutting down student interests

The opportunity given students to take electives at college allows them to explore and awaken interests, and to acquire new views on topics. General education classes offered stimulate intellectual interests and offer students a broader understanding of the world through the introduction of material  that they would not necessarily be exposed to within classed associated with their majors. In picking elective classes, students are inclined to classes that are interesting to them, ones taught by professors with excellent teaching reputation, or, unfortunately, ‘easy’ classes to merely complete the requirement.

Current student evaluations of their teachers in higher education are biased and the metric they have are difficult to assess teaching with. In fact, with support implying that expected grades have a positive effect on course evaluations, evaluations in some cases have lead to a negative effect on teaching quality as biases in evaluation provide professors incentives for grade inflation further leading to a misrepresentation of student learning.

Regardless of learning expectations the choice of ‘easy’ classes plays a major role as students pick their classes. This is particularly clear as students recommend classes and professors to other students merely depending on workload and grades. Such classes are commonly known as ‘easy A’ classes that give students more time for other pursuits without risking their grade point average. Hence, factors resulting from detrimental issues of grade inflation impel students to choose easy classes over ones that allow the engagement in genuine intellectual interests and prepare them for their careers.

WHAT DOES A GRADE MEAN?

Grading, as a major assessment approach in education nowadays, is used to evaluate the students’ performance in classes. Combining the grades for all classes together, each student has a GPA, which is used to evaluate if a student is good at studying. If someone has a GPA of 3.9, he/she is considered studying better than a student has a GPA of 2.9.

It might be true when the difference in GPA between two students is significant. However, when the difference becomes smaller, say 3.9 vs 3.8, can we make the same conclusion? The student with a GPA of 3.8 may take a class offered by a harsh professor, who usually give low grade. The student with a GPA of 3.9 may intently avoid tough classes to keep a high GPA. There are so many factors that can affect students’ GPA.

A question I have been thinking a lot since college is what does a grade tell us. It seems to me that GPA almost always weigh the most in Graduate School admission and fellowship/award application. If someone have a good GPA, his/her chance of being accepted by top schools is high. Does a higher grade indicate a student is more intelligent or what? I am very confused about this.


6:30 pm: will you give me an A+?

Today is Sunday, according to the calendar we use to “track” the pass of time, and also based on my current location, because in Europe/Africa, Monday is already starting. Here in Blacksburg, VA, it is 5:15 pm, and I still have some time left to publish this post and make it available to the GEDI community to “make it count”, otherwise my efforts might not receive a corresponding grade. Previously, by this time, I would have already published something, but this weekend was different. For multiple reasons I got derailed from reading and writing, and no, not because I can skip one post (apparently no more than one), simply because I did not feel like doing it, although I always had on mind to write before the deadline, which is why I finally started the readings and now trying to write. What time is it? It is 5:25 pm.

Ten minutes of my life have gone writing the introductory paragraph, and I have the option to erase it and lose the precious time, or leave it as it is and just keep writing, hoping that it was good to keep you reading… But if you decide to leave, then, I guess I am lucky that this post is not being assessed by the number of comments (or is it?), and there is no way to know how many people have read it (or is there a way?), in fact, I have no clue how it is graded at all. But if time spent writing could be a criterion in my grade, then let me share with you, it is 5:34 pm. Which means that I am writing a paragraph every 10 minutes more or less.

It is likely that time spent doing the assignment cannot be used to grade, and that is good, because each person takes different paths to accomplish something. For some it might take a long time, while others are able to convey a clear message really fast. Some might need to erase and erase until the desired product has been achieved, others might have a natural easiness and clear vision from the first time. I could go on and on with examples of how people learn differently or how tasks are done differently, and could potentially site research related to this, and yet, no matter how many situations have been described, all students are typically evaluated the same way: same test, same time limit, same grading scale, etc… is this fair? By the way, it is 5:44 pm.

Alfie Kohn, author of “The Case Against Grades” (2011) and other articles, provides a nice narrative to this case, and is striking that some of what he discusses is not new. Some of the thoughts that caught my attention in respect to the effects of grading are:

  • A danger in grading is that students would not take intellectual risks to avoid failing a class
  • The competition between classmates leading to fear of failure and cheating
  • No desire to learn, rather desire to simply pass…. There is no real motivation towards learning

It is 5:54 pm, and comparatively speaking, the lines immediately above kind of resemble a paragraph, so it seems I am being consistent in my writing speed, perhaps this could be a measure of assessment?

I have no idea what you might think is the reason for me sharing the time after each paragraph is completed, what I do know, is that whatever you think it is, you have a very high chance of being wrong. Therefore, if you were grading this post based on how much non-relevant details were included, you could not (or should not) take any deductions for me sharing the time… and that takes me to reflect how in previous grading that I have done, I used to scratch parts of lab reports written by students, with aside comments like: “this is not necessary”, “you are wasting paper” and even if I didn’t necessarily took points of from their assignment for “excessive” writing, I did truncate in a way their learning process. Likely, I framed future reports to be within certain constraints, and that could have resulted in future poor performance by avoiding key words with the fear of being too much. It is 6:05 pm.

So, to clarify the reason to keep writing the time, in case I could be judged for including non-relevant information: I felt like doing so. Liu and Noppe-Brandon (2009) point out to the value of “imagination first”. I have to admit that while writing this post, I never imagined that it would take me 10 minutes per paragraph, I did however, imagined how I wanted to share my thoughts on Kohn’s article and how I wanted to finish my last paragraph discussing the power of imagination. But, I have run into a problem, it is 6:15 pm, which means that the time I have allotted myself to write this post has come to an end. Will I be penalized for my honesty?

Ok, I didn’t want to just cut today’s journey like that, because I do have some more inquiries to share: Have teachers become “killers” of potential great student’s ideas? Is the education system promoting the assassination of imagination? Is the “job market/world” dictating how learning should occur? Sometimes it seems like that is the reality, and even though I believe that student’s performance, especially in engineering and medicine must be evaluated, to make sure that someone’s life will not be at risk. I do have to admit, that assigning numbers or letters, and ranking students by performance does not sound like the best alternative after all.

Ok, it is 6:25 pm, time to choose a title for this post, publish and move on…

Let’s keep learning. Let’s keep educating. Let’s keep moving forward. Let’s keep asking WHY. Let’s continue to be more MINDFUL… give me an A+ ? … and then let’s discuss how to remove grades from the education system… 6:30 pm

Carlos F. Mantilla P.

Grades vs. Knowledge Slugfest

In the constant struggle of evaluation process, students and teachers are find themselves trying to navigate that highwire tightrope scenario of a grading rubric.  I have often heard instructors mention how they would be perfectly happy if everyone if their class earned an ‘A.’  The careful use of language does not go unnoticed.  The subtle use of “earned” rather “received” provides insight that the successful benchmark isn’t the ‘A’ but the satisfaction that students are learning.  In most cases, from grade school throughout undergraduate studies, students may not see the difference between the two.  I know as an undergraduate, especially when fulfilling the minimum requirements for general education courses, getting an ‘A’ meant I learned enough to survive and move on to more meaningful and relevant courses.  Marilyn Lombardi describes a situation I recall happening in nearly every gen-ed course.  It can be summed up in six words: (say it with me) will this be on the test?  And there it is, the ultimate educational line in the sand.  The unfortunate fact remains that this isn’t necessarily an indictment on the student for asking.  When the reliance of educational empiricism falls on Standards of Learning tests throughout high school, SAT scores for undergraduate admission, and (gasp) the GRE for graduate admission, students are intrinsically trained to view education in a means-ends relationship.  Again, this isn’t an indictment on the student.  This is how they’ve been trained to view “learning.”

From a social science perspective, I have a full range of emotions when it comes to standardized tests: dread, discontent, fear, contempt to name a few.  Give me an essay any day.  Let me argue.  Don’t handcuff me into finding only one “correct” answer.  Let me think for myself and try to defend it.  That’s why engineering and math were never in the cards for me.  I can’t argue with algebra.  Laws of physics are called laws because they’re not being contested, they’re just proven facts.  That’s why you won’t find any sociological laws, only theories.  But I’m ok with that.

Now I’m certain that if you’re in a hard science discipline, you couldn’t disagree with me more.  That there’s something comforting about knowing an answer with certainty.  Fortunately neither of us are wrong.  So how does any of this relate to grades and evaluation?  Well if you’re a student that has been subject to evaluation through evidence or outcome based education as Donna Riley describes, then you may perceive learning as the end outcome, namely if you received an ‘A’ or not.  But is this really the best evaluation of education?  I recieved  enough ‘A’s’ that get me through my undergraduate degrees but I certainly can’t what I retained.  I also came from an outcome based high school and trained myself that the measure of success was good grades.  It wasn’t until I started my graduate studies that I really started to enjoy the journey of academia and embraced the idea of learning rather than the grade I received at the end of the semester.  I kept my books after the semester ended, something I would never dream of as an undergraduate.

Now this doesn’t mean I can’t see the use and need for grades to an extent.  As with our readings and discussions about mindful learning from last week, there is an idealized standard that each of has when approaching the classroom.  I would love to never give a single test, and rely on discussions or counter-arguments like the format of many graduate courses or akin to Alfie Kohn’s perspective of evaluating without grades.  The difficulty comes in trying to overcome the students’ culture of outcome and evaluation based results.

How should assessment be applied to large classes?

The largest class I’ve ever taken was Introduction to Anthropology. Over 1500 students were seated in the convocation hall, facing a large-screen projector and a professor on the podium. The course rotated through four areas of anthropology (biological, archaeological, linguistic and social), and lectures were provided by four different professors according to their area of research.

What were the assessment methods?

The two exams – midterm and final – consisted of multiple choice questions, as many would have guessed. This seemed like the most efficient method of assessment for a large number of students.

The other deliverables consisted of four essays, one for each area of anthropological study. These were graded by teaching assistants, who were responsible for about 150 papers each.

Were these assessment methods appropriate?

Multiple choice questions get bad rep, and I think for the right reasons. They certainly served as efficient tools of assessment, since the instructor (or more likely, TAs) only had to insert answer cards into a machine; but they were not necessarily appropriate because they could only determine whether the student was proficient in memorizing facts. Ironic, since the field of anthropology is riddled with uncertainties, in terms of facts and perspectives.

The essays, on the other hand, were appropriate for learning the subject as they required greater critical thinking, but they were not necessarily appropriately evaluated. There was already inconsistency and unfairness by having multiple evaluators. Throw in the difficult task of assigning a single number – a percent grade – for 150 students, you can imagine the variability per evaluator as a result of fatigue, mood…

To be fair, attempts were made at demystifying the grading process. I remember there being a rubric that outlined the different facets of assessment, and the grades were assigned in increments of 5% (to avoid ambiguity between 85% and 86%, for example). The result still seemed to leave a number of students unsatisfied, possibly for the reason that the rubric was simply another scale in disguise, a complement and justification for the grade.

What would be an appropriate method of assessment?

Not sure. How about start by not having large classes? Idealistic, I know, especially when massive open online courses are on the rise. A large class is convenient for mass information transfer, but is also an obstacle on its own in terms of providing students with meaningful feedback. When instructors and TAs are saddled with the burden of grading so many assignments, they, too, are likely to succumb to the “get it done” mentality familiar to many students when completing assignments. Let’s not even mention attempting to track the development of individual students.

Thoughts on evaluation for large classes? MOOCs?

Signs of life in the Skinner box

I’ve long felt that grades are an outdated mode of determining educational performance. As seems universally supported across the readings this week, grades don’t measure what is learned by the student, only what they were tested on. Grades also encourage limited learning as the motivation becomes focused on passing the test and not learning to learn.

The students have become conditioned, similar to that of mice in B.F. Skinner’s experiments, do exactly what you are told with no variation and you will be rewarded with the grades you want. Deviate from what you are told and your reward will be altered. The conditioning begins early in elementary school and continues with the introduction of honors and AP coursework. Learn exactly what you’re told better than most of everyone else and you will get to move ahead to the next level of rewards, completed course credits in college.

The problem is that for us as academics, like Kohn and others have pointed out, this approach leads to classrooms full of perfectly conditioned college students, seeking their reward and the instructions on how to claim it. But the conditioning is so strong that if for some reason the earned reward is not at the same level as was expected for their work we are faced with emails, upset students, upset administrators and poor teaching evaluations.

This situation is so pervasive and the conditioning so strong that it makes alternative evaluation approaches challenging. Students don’t respond well to abstract criteria they cant necessarily study for. In my grading approaches I prefer written essay statements from the students, formulated from response to various prompts, demonstrating their mastery and understanding of the concepts. I describe the approach to the students in advance as looking for “signs of life” from them, that there is more going on than a parroting back of definitions and theories.

Ultimately, my quest to find their “signs of life” has to be equated back into a numerical grade as the students can’t exist without a grade. But as soon as the grades go out, those unhappy with my assessment will inevitably email me to argue for points back…

25% 25% 50%

One thing that I have been told by a few different teaching mentors is the 25%25% 50% rule. The rule goes something like this: 25% of your class is going to be on board with almost anything that you do.  Another 25% will not be on board with almost anything that you do, whether it’s for lack of interest in the subject, or a heightened interest in another subject, or parties, or WoW, they just aren’t devoting that much time to your class. That last 50%, that’s the 50% that what you do makes all the difference whether or not they are on board. For the duration of the blog, let’s assume this is, at least generally, true.

Looking specifically at the “Case Against Grades”I’m wondering how some of the “effects of grading” and the benefits of getting rid of grades would affect the 25%25%50% rule. Would that first 25% who are totally on board no matter what, produce even better work? Think at an even higher level? Maybe. Maybe their already extant self motivation would be augmented and their creative freedom would result in some amazing things.

That other 25% though, what would be the effect of taking grades away from them? Would they magically care a little more? would that 25% become 12%? and the other 13% join the 50%? Would they all join that 50% and there would be no one focused on doing the bare minimum? Or are grades just motivating enough, to get the students that don’t care about the subject to put in a little effort in order to pass? I don’t know.

Before we go any further with this, let me admit that I’m looking at this from a hugely generalized perspective. I know every individual student has their own motivations, and each will respond differently to different scenarios. Still I can’t imagine that getting rid of grades is going to have the same effect on every student, the same way the keeping grades won’t have the same effect on every student.

That leaves the 50%, or the 63%, How would getting rid of grades alter their education? Personally I think this is where the lack of grades would have the most effect. I think they would be the ones that would relish in the autonomy, and be more focused on the task. They would spend more time thinking about how to accomplish the task than how the teacher wanted them to accomplish the task. They would be thinking more critically, more invested, all the things that getting rid of grades is supposed to accomplish.

All that being said, leads me to the question. What about that 12-25% that just aren’t going to care no matter what? Can we let them not care and give them credit for completing the class? Or would that lead to a decrease in the value of VT degree? Can we grade them more on a gut feeling about how much work they put in, or how much they participated? Or would that create legal issues if they decided to protest the grades, having nothing but the teacher’s opinion to go on? Also, how would that affect the university’s graduation rate? Do the politics or the university play a role in how all of this would go down if it were allowed to happen?

 

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