Category: Week 5 – Assessment

Process VS Product

When putting the pieces of a puzzle together there is time and effort going into the puzzle’s construction. There’s always the pre-excitement–going through Amazon or the aisle of a department store and looking at the covers of boxes. There are paintings of landscape reminiscent of Bob Ross or of your favorite movie poster. When you get the puzzle that is 1,000 plus pieces, you know there will be rigorous hours put into it, just to get into the end result. There are people who appreciate the tedious hours and work put into the puzzle. Whether they attack the puzzle alone or with a group, there is a learning curve to puzzles. They come up with their own strategies like getting the border first and then assemble the pieces that are more distinct in the original painting. There is more beauty in the process of making the puzzle than actual puzzle itself.

This can be similar to how instructors should look and value assessment. In “Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning” by Marilyn Lombardi, the article addresses how standardized testing can prove to set students up to fail. Even when we look at the SAT and the ACT, the answers are given in a multiple choice format which sets up the notion that only one right answer can be chosen out of 4 or 5 possibilities. In real life problems, there aren’t usually just one solution, but rather there are many of them that could reap different benefits or repercussions.

In the table Lombardi provided on page 6 discusses her viewpoints on Traditional Assessment vs Authentic Assessment. Even the wording on the chart is interesting rhetorically because it implies that traditional assessment is inauthentic, the assessment doesn’t ring true or genuine. In regarding to the previous paragraph, Lombardi compares answers that have a general reliance on forced-choice, written measures (traditional assessment) to answers that promotes integration of various written and performance measures (authentic assessment) which basically states that we won’t be placing students in one confined box.

In terms of my own grading in my English composition class I assess students partly on how well they improve from their original task and their skill set that they come in with. If an essay isn’t “perfect” in my eyes, I’m not going to dock them terribly if I felt like they put time and effort into their papers and saw their drafts got tremendously better over time. I don’t know how this would look exactly in a STEM class, but I’m sure there can be a way to look at performance and improved performance in the classroom. I know that in my high school, my math teacher made us do problems and show our work. Even if we got the answer wrong, she looked at the steps we made. If we were close in our process she wouldn’t completely dock us, but gave us partial credit. I think this viewpoint allowed me to have room for growth in math and not get discouraged if I did get an answer wrong which further emphasizes the point that process and not the product should be valued.

Rethinking the Grade: Risky, but Necessary

One of the most unfortunate feelings I experienced in my undergraduate courses was the feeling of disappointment, and really outright betrayal, when something that I had learned for an exam never actually appeared on that exam. “Well, dammit, why did I waste my time learning it if I wasn’t going to be tested on it?!” I would think to myself. I felt as though the teacher had tricked me into learning something and taking up valuable space in my already crowded head.

Of course, this is the opposite of what learning is all about. Learning should not be valuable only if it is necessary to some immediate goal, but undergraduate Jackson didn’t see it that way, not when he had to cram for three exams in one week (or even one day, at times). The assessment system as the majority of students have experienced it is broken and backwards, emphasizing rote memorization for the purposes of getting a good grade rather than actual learning.

Of course, this isn’t a secret; most educators will readily admit that the way that student learning is assessed is fundamentally flawed, or at the least in serious need of retooling. Yet, changing the grading system that is now fundamental to US education is a monumental task and one that requires great acts of bravery and defiance. That may sound dramatic, but think about it from the point of view of, well, me!

I am going to complete my PhD program soon, and am beginning the process of applying to institutes of higher education, with the goal of teaching as my main focus. In crafting my teaching philosophy, a large part of me wants to passionately espouse how I am going to reinvent learning and integrate all these newfangled active learning techniques while doing away with categorical grading. However, unless I am applying to an institution that does not use standard grades, I will be required to supply a letter grade for each student, and, more than likely, have a three exam a semester normative syllabus, especially if I teach introductory biology.

I want to get a job, more than I want to be a champion of change. I need to provide for my family and heralding a massive upheaval of the current education system is not likely to help. And, when I do hopefully get that job, I will want to get tenure, and not cause waves by teaching my introductory classes differently than the other sections. So, what do we do, as new teachers do we risk derailing our careers, or not even getting a career in the first place, by championing for change? Do we only apply to institutions like Warren Wilson that already “get it,” thereby changing nothing? Or do we wait patiently until we have our valuable tenure and then begin implementing the changes that we desire, that is if we have not already become mired in the standard grading system and too disimpassioned to change?

I only bring these questions up because I think they are important to consider. Of course we can champion change in smaller, bite-sized amounts that hiring committees will see as appropriately progressive, and departments will not balk at. My passion may scream out “To Hell with anyone who stands in my way! We need to change the entire system NOW!” but change, especially on an individual teacher basis, needs to be both strategic and iterative. Instead of giving exams, for instance, have students write review papers on a topic of their choosing (within the greater subject) and have their peers review those papers for quality and accuracy. The student then may make changes based on their peer review or not (though have them defend their decisions in a written statement) before presenting their paper to the class. In this way, you may assess whether concepts are being sufficiently learned while mimicking the real world of scientific discussion. There are no standardized exams in the real world, and you do not get a grade for each paper you write or talk you give. That being said, it may be a good idea to give weekly quizzes to ensure that the basic, necessary factoids are sinking in, but make them pass/fail.

As I apply for positions, I must keep in mind that I can make change, and stand up for what I believe, without doing away with everything standard at once. As future educators, it is our duty and responsibility to improve how we teach, and how students are assessed. There will undoubtedly be pushback from fellow faculty, the administration, students, and even parents, but we must be firm in our convictions and loyal to the success of our students.

Grades “Never Became the Focus of Energy”: Assessment and Black Mountain College

“I doubt there is a student or teacher worth a damn who has not at some moment pondered creating his own university” my friend Leon Lewis writes at the beginning of his essay, “Black Mountain College: A Strange Spot in A Strange Spot” in Appalachian Journal (vol. 1, no. 3, 1973).  I first read this essay when I was in college, recently fascinated with the strange experimental art school that operated between 1933 and 1957 in my backyard in Black Mountain, North Carolina. There are many things that thrill me about Black Mountain College (BMC) including the lengthy list of art-world teachers, faculty, and visitors who graced the community — Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Charles Olson, Buckminster Fuller, Hilda Morley, MC Richards, Jonathan Williams, Ruth Asawa, Albert Einsten (ok, not an artist per se, but still impressive), Salvador Dali (who visited and orchestrated a film viewing), and Joseph and Anni Albers, among many, many more. Yet, like several of the contributors as well as myself wrote in the new Black Mountain College Special Issue of Appalachian Journal, BMC is and was so much more than the big names who lived, wrote, worked, and created there.

As an educator, BMC captivates me because of its almost complete aversion for grades. As BMC faculty member John L. Wallen relayed to historian Martin Duberman in “the Bible of BMC,” Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community,  when asked what kind of education BMC stood for, would reply, “We don’t have grades,” “we don’t have required courses” (275).

Further, Duberman explains that “Classes varied considerably in format, since each teacher was left to his own devices. Some would lecture or direct discussions more than others; some would settle for words, others would show pictures or play music; an occasional seminar would be jointly taught by three or four instructors, and many classes had staff members or their wives sitting in as students” (100).

While grades were not central to the College’s pedagogy, Duberman writes, “Most instructors privately jotted down grades, but only–so went the rationale, anyway–in case a student later needed a ‘record’ for transfer or for graduate school. The grades were never passed on to the students themselves, and never, therefore, became the focus of energy or the standard for evaluating self-worth that they commonly do in most schools” (100).

Back to dear Leon’s idea that many of us involved in education have daydreamed about our own utopia-inducing schools, mine, like BMC, would not be “grade-obsessed.” I am so fascinated with BMC’s lack of emphasis on grades and meanwhile, the College’s production of loads of artists and writers that had extraordinary impacts on art and culture, both in the US and abroad. Whenever the topic of grading inevitably comes up, either in my own classes as a doctoral student, when grading my own students, or when talking with colleagues, I am always envious of BMC’s approach.

This week, while reading more modern scholarship on assessment and education, I heard the rumblings of the BMC spirit within the words of Alfie Kohn.  Suggesting that the basic function of grades is to collect information about student progress and share that information with students, Kohn suggests, perhaps controversially, that: “Collecting information doesn’t require tests, and sharing that information doesn’t require grades.  In fact, students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age.”

Citing research from others in education and across the humanities, Kohn establishes his argument against grades across three main findings: (1) “Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning” (2) “Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task” and (3) “Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.” 

Kohn suggests that in order to revise these deleterious effects of grades, educators should aim to “delete” or at least “dilute” grades and their hegemony in the classroom. Writing in favor of more narrative assessment, like in a letter from teacher to student upon completion of a course, Kohn adds that this change in grade format can be gradual, taking place over time, and that in the meantime, the grade-giving process can be made more democratic if students are invited to collaborate on their grade alongside an instructor, weighing in on the decision. Throughout Kohn’s piece, I kept daydreaming about my own ideal school, and feeling excited that the ideas of BMC and other experimental schools are very much still alive and in circulation through discussions of best-practices for educators.

As a graduate student, I am not quite ready to abandon grading, mainly because I’d rather not have that undoubtedly lengthy, difficult discussion with those in power in my department, at the registrar, etc. However, with the legacy of BMC and current scholars like Kohn in mind, I hope to switch to more narrative-based assessment for my students in the coming semesters.

Week 4: “What are you doing with that carrot, Professor?”

First things first, let’s hype everyone up, because I just know you’re reading this with bleary eyes at 3AM, and that’s okay. No judgement here.

“If we start treating people like people, and not assuming that they’re horses… slower, smaller, better-smelling horses… I think we can actually build organizations and work lives that make us better off, but… also make our world just a little bit better.”

-Dan Pink: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

When Dan Pink suggested that humans are not infinitely pliable creatures who can be easily controlled by their environments and the (market) forces surrounding them, I immediately began to reflect back on my brief liaison with psychology, and the Behaviorist school of thought more specifically. I went back to one of its most prominent detractors, Steven Pinker, who criticizes the Behaviorist approach to the human psyche in his book, The Blank Slate. In this model (or at least, his version of it which isn’t entirely accurate), we are primarily driven by external stimuli, the consequences of our actions, the things we have been conditioned (dare I say, programmed) to do, a model with which I happen to agree… to an extent. There is merit to our friend Steven’s critique of Behaviorism, and given my own experiences with genetic traits and their influence on human behavior, I happen to subscribe to the current model, which incorporates elements of Behaviorism (B.F. Skinner–the guy with the rats and the levers–being one of its most notable cheerleaders) and evolutionary psychology (our friend Pinker), among other things (ask the psychologists–they know way more than I do: also, Psychologists, please tell me if I totally butchered the whole Behaviorist thing!).

What does any of this have to do with learning? Well, by the psychological definition, learning is what allows us to adapt to new conditions, like, say a stressful university course that comes with specific expectations. In its most simplistic form, and sadly, in the form we most often see in too many schools, learning occurs when students associate conformity to testing standards, rubrics, syllabi, and rankings with positive reinforcements like gold stars, passing grades, higher class rankings, university admissions, and “better-performing” schools. This form of learning is not exactly the most inspiring or the most motivating, but it gets results–at least, the sort that would interest test-prep companies, school districts, and other adults who like quantifiable results. It does not benefit the students, however, because, according to the deeply depressing and realistic film, Declining by Degrees, many of them are simply going through the motions, seeing school as yet another series of hoops to jump through until they meet their next goal.

This is where Dan Pink’s motivational speech (about motivation… har-har) comes in. These uninspired, unmotivated, disenchanted students leave college and enter the workforce. Up to this point, they’ve spent their lives being treated like “slower, smaller, better-smelling horses” or worse, depending on the school district. Uninspired, unmotivated, disenchanted students make for disengaged workers who are less likely to come up with innovative ideas, be more productive, or even like their jobs. Worse still, those who aren’t fortunate enough to travel that path can end up in prison, which results in even more lost productivity and innovation since entire cohorts of young minds are wasted behind bars. I completely agree with Dan Pink: we need to endow our workers and students with a greater sense of purpose, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. He’s already mentioned the profit-driven model of large corporations and the problems that can cause with employee disengagement, but I think we should investigate the motivations of school districts and everyone else who is responsible for our current educational system which, if we look back, has mostly been corporations (remember that passing comment Dr. Nelson made about the role of the Ford Motor Company in the creation of school assessment? Yup. That B-minus was kinda sorta their fault).

 

Congratulations on surviving the first sixteen years of school! Now let’s see if we can make it better for those coming after us!

Assessment

I found the topic of this week – “Assessment” is interested. We have been assessed by lots of things. My application has been assessed so I am able to study at the Virginia Tech. My credit score has been assessed so I am able to get a credit card. This week readings indeed provided some different perspectives about assessment, grade, evaluating, and etc. However, I didn’t agree with much of these studies. From my point of view, assessment is important and we need to use the grading system to differentiate and evaluate the professionality of each person. Everyone is different and good at different things. Not everyone can be a doctor, developer, entrepreneur, professor, or etc. A perfect assessment is not developed to fit all people, on the contrary, we should develop various assessments to help us to find what we good at and create our own future.

Indeed, sometimes school assignment is boring and get a good grade from a class that has no interested is difficult. The truth is, you are so lucky that you can be just a student so you don’t need to get 100, you can get 95, 90, 80, 70, as long as you don’t fail the class, you still can earn the course credits. A lot of things in real life, either you get it or lose it. Will you get a grade on a job interview? No, you either get an offer or nothing. Will you get a grade from NSF or NIH after submitting your research proposal? Last year I attended a presentation gave by a VT CS alumnus about how to succeed in getting research funding. One key important thing from that presentation is that you need to research what the funding agency’s interests, not yours research interests and you need to show them how your research works can fulfill their interests and you will have a chance to receive their fund. I took so many courses and did hundreds of assignments. From my own experience, if I really like that knowledge and eager to learn and master of it, no matter the assignment is how hard, how bad, how unstructured or whatever, I will figure out a way and do my best to get a good score from that course. If not, in that case, I either drop that course or get an OK score because it is a required course. I don’t believe that better design assessment will change or make a person’s interesting different.  

Finally, I got the similar conclusion to what Dan Pink said in his TED talk. I conduct multiple research studies using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) during my Ph.D. study. MTurk is a web service that provides a human workforce to complete jobs for you. I spent a lot of time to design tasks and changes my tasks during each experiment and continue had a question in mind that why I raised the award money but didn’t get better results. I hope that I could saw his talked earlier!

Motivation and Mindfulness

When trying to understand mindful learning, I read through Ellen Langer’s article and get the sense of this new culture of learning which stresses on the self-consciousness of learners while learning. The article also shows how mindful learning looks like from a more methodological perspective. The whole idea was inspiring, but I always have this question in my mind while reading: why would I willing to learn?

I feel enlighted when the word motivation comes up in videos. I think motivation is the solution to my question. I see Dr. Emily Satterwhite’s talk today about their actions against mountain valley pipeline as a good example of full of motivation. By knowing what’s important to ourselves and the aspects we care about, motivations generate. Then decide to take actions. Of course, the real world cases are not this simple, but I personally believe they all start somehow in this way.

In the first place, I would define motivation is the lead of mindful learning, however; now I figure they are two different and interactive aspects. A motivation may not last long or become important enough if we lack the self-awareness about what we are motivated by. Motivation coming up from mindful thinking, are those can support us to get through tough times.

 

Don’t Judge a book by its cover, but still!!

I have to admit that before reading the article “The Case Against Grades” I was extremely biased. As soon as I read the title, I directly knew what to do next:
read the article, bash the article every chance i get, criticize the article in my blog. However, i quickly realized that the author Alfie Kohn is making very good points, and looking back on my own education, i have been the victim of many downsides of grading which include:

>Diminishing students’ interest in whatever they’re learning.
>Creating a preference for the easiest possible task
>Reducing the quality of students’ thinking
>Increasing the levels of cheating
>…

However, as much as i do agree with these points, I still think grading is necessary, at least in advanced levels of education. I definitely see how letting go of grades for children can enhance the learning experience, i mean giving a 7 year old an F isn’t really helping anyone. However, i would definitely feel more comfortable knowing that my surgeon can identify every single organ in my body, or that the pilot knows what the big red button does. Don’t take the previous examples too literally, but try to see the underlying point. If no grading exists how can we differentiate between people who are qualified and people who are not. The article suggest personalized feedback, or meaningful assessment, but once other people have access to these assessment this becomes another way of grading, basically all we end up doing is manipulating semantics.

So yes, i agree grading has an ugly face. However, before launching a crusade against grades to save students, we have to find an alternative that fixes the drawbacks of grading without destroying its benefits. Namely I m talking about the millions of people who choose a career based on making money without having any real interest in the contribution towards the domain. How fair is it to put a person passionate about his major at the same exact level of a person who can basically now manipulate the system since all forms of quantification have been removed?

Are grades hindering learning?

dwight studying

Part of learning how to educate involves learning about teaching and course styles that we have never encountered before. I prefer to make decisions based on facts, yet I have a quick, knee-jerk reaction to the idea of getting rid of grades. I feel profoundly uncomfortable – both as a student and as an instructor- with the idea that more students excel where they are not graded.

A premise behind getting rid of grades is that students will always choose the easiest tasks and take the fewest risks when in a graded environment. When freed from the confines of the traditional course structure, students will actively engage in the learning process. Students can and will learn without the threat or treat of a grade.

 

We can discuss how course structure impacts students, but a large component of student engagement comes from the students themselves. 

My struggle to accept the premise stems from my own experiences. As an undergraduate, I went to a college which emphasized not discussing grades with other students to avoid a competitive, grade-focused environment. It almost seemed like we didn’t have grades, because we were given our grades without any context. But for me, being freed of the competition of grades did not make me embrace creativity in all of my classes. Instead, I did minimum effort in courses that I thought were boring, and I poured more-than required effort into courses that interested me.

paid attention in classAs a graduate student, my habits became more refined. When I started taking courses that I knew would be useful my career, I made serious efforts at studying terms, taking thorough notes, and connecting information within and between courses. Content I did not believe would be relevant to me or I perceived as busy work received the minimal effort, and work that seemed relevant to my learning and my future career received more time and focus. When possible, I would choose paper and project topics that interested me or allowed me to pull in ideas from other courses. However, I simultaneously found myself motivated to earn good grades.

The two objectives did not exclude each other, though they were not always the same. When doing work just for grades, I did the minimum amount possible to earn the grade required. This could be taken as a comment about how grades distract from learning. But the issue was not grades, but that I did not desire to put any effort into work I considered a waste or my time or irrelevant to me. I would have felt the same even without grades. I would argue that the issue is instead that the required course work was not well-crafted to encourage learning or that the class was of no use to me, and I should have skipped it (the two concepts are not mutually exclusive/overlapping).

 

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“The typical structure of lectures and exams may simply prolong the time during which a learner continues to think like a student rather than an apprentice practitioner.” Lombardi 2008

The above quote stuck with me as I read Lombardi’s paper. I whole-heartedly agree with the intent: in undergraduate education, we should be focused on creating and fostering apprentices not throwing information at and evaluating students. We should be developing the skills and knowledge base required for students to be successful in their future careers. Some of this development requires the hard work of being a student; even master practitioners should be always learning new techniques to gather and analyze data, getting feedback their work, and learning from other people. The second portion of this development is on the educators- we need to treat students’ undergraduate experience as preparation for their future and help students recognize it as such.

Course work itself can burden students with work that does not help students learn.
As a graduate student, where I have had a lot of freedom to choose courses, the conflict between me wanted to earn good grades and learn led me to take busy work-heavy courses pass/fail or audited. With professors’ permission, I sat in on classes that seemed relevant instead of taking them for any credit. Courses do not need get rid of grades in order for students to be engaged with the course work, though they must not be so focused on evaluating students through grading that they don’t give students the ability to learn.

As instructors, we should be thinking about our objectives and student time. Can we test in a way that fosters thinking and not just regurgitation? If we need some memorization, can we evaluate students’ learning in ways that don’t require hours of simply retyping definitions?

Start motivated, Get worn down.

Environmental engineers tend to be the idealist, almost 50% female subgroup of the engineering discipline. We get students who want to change the world, help improve access to water and really want their work to be meaningful. Somewhere between the 4 semesters of calculus, 2 semesters of chemistry,  2 semesters of physics and one semester of biology though, you end up with a group who, sure, started because those were there motivations but really they just want a job.. And thats before the environmental engineering classes have even started.

My undergraduate institution tried and I give them credit for that. But the engineering curriculum is intrinsically designed to beat a lot of your interest in problem solving out of you before you even get started. We traditionally have undergrads front load their studies so they get the general elements out of the way. I really don't think this makes sense. 

Freshman in college are some of the most idealistic people in the world. They want to be the change and they do it whole heatedly. Seniors on the other hand, have seen things, and are basically worn down by the time they get out, if they get out. I think the drive that freshman have comes from the excitement of getting to choose what you learn. For the first time! You want to help drill wells to bring water to remote populations? You're finally in the space where you can learn how to do that!

I think engineers strive in project motivated environments. That's why we became engineers. Too many of my courses were designed to teach fundamentals with little context and I'm beginning to see the value in designing a course where, yes you will need to learn how to treat water, but maybe because you have chosen a community or an issue that appeals to you. 

I'm not sure I can get rid of grades but I can get rid of the idea of rigorous testing to prove a point. In today's world, engineers need to know how to find, apply and understand when equations are valuable. They don't really need to memorize the equations themselves because there is simply and I hope truly no environment in the real world where they would find themselves designing a plant or a project all on their own. I appreciate that extrinsic motivators don't work, because honestly you can cheat, and the consequences can be disastrous. 

Most of us come to college with some intrinsic motivation and I think its our job as educators to make sure we foster it rather than go out of our way to squash it. 

It’s easy to name the problems; it’s much harder to fix them

This week’s content has my brain spinning. I have heard much of it before: grades are bad, motivation is key, rewards and punishment are unhelpful. Every time I hear these things, I don’t disagree. There is plenty of proof; however, I am stuck with the same question: how do we fix it?

Our society lives by the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Here’s the problem, though: we disagree about what is broken.

I am no expert, and I have not been teaching that long, but in my experience, I feel confident in saying this: education is broken. We need to fix it.

Grades are a motivator, yes, but they can also motivate laziness. A student can be motivated to get the lowest grade possible to pass. That, inherently, means the student is not motivated to learn; they are motivated to get by. Education should make students learn, not get grades.

I completely grasp the idea of eliminating grades. As someone who loves qualitative data, I see the merit in written summaries, conferences, and conversations. There are more meaningful (and useful) than a letter or a number. I also see how very time-consuming those things are for a teacher. Moreover, I see students compare grades and scores, essentially ranking themselves compared to others but never caring about what was learning and how they are growing. Practicality and education are always at odds.

I always argue that the greatest motivator of human behavior is fear. We fear the bad grade, losing money, disappointing people, and many other things. It’s interesting to think about how education–the fundamental thing we provide to everyone–basically exacerbates and solidifies these fears in people from a young age. Go to the potty? You get an M&M. Don’t? Disappointment. It starts so young, but the sad reality is that it never ends. Life is a cycle of the same game with different scenarios.

I feel like I am just continuing to agree and note the problems, but I am not providing any more solutions. Truly, I think the easiest solution is to try to implement new tactics. It requires research, trial and error, and effort–things that most people dislike. If enough of it is done, though, the new norm will start. We must be dynamic.

Finally, I have some thoughts about MOOCs. My dissertation work is about increasing access to education so that students, regardless of SES or geographic location, can have access to a good education–one that is not determined by things out of their control. For this, I believe MOOCs are great; they are working toward that goal. However, the depth of content and course design leaves much to be desired. I think the idea is awesome, but much needs to be done to improve the quality.

 

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