Absolutely, which is why grades and assessments need to work together to give a full picture. One does not work well without the other.

We all have our moments of ” I really don’t feel like doing my homework so I’ll play a game” or “I really really don’t want to do a literature review so I’d rather browse amazon.com” :-)). Perseverance is key, especially if it is a topic you are passionate about. So it all goes back to using whatever means you can to instill passion in the minds of students.

Absolutely. In a world where everything is competing for our attention, it is very easy to get bored of an activity really quickly and move on to another. Educators must use the tools that are available in the year 2016 to encourage learning and blossom the passion for it.

Hello. And Bye.

I agree that “tests do serve a purpose in some cases, so do not completely overlook their potential”. Test is used to see if students acquire the knowledge and skills. For introductory courses which try to build knowledge system for students, test is useful to promote students to memorize and master basic concepts. Then students can apply the knowledge they acquired to solve real-world problems.

I think we should still give credits to grades. I agree grades produce anxiety among students that detract from learning and decrease creativity. That means we should not judge students only by grades. Grade is an indicator to assess students’ learning and we should try to find effective assessment tools to make grades reliable.

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In many cases, thorough assessments from the teacher will also be converted to grades, but the assessments don’t like grades from test which are more objective, they are subjective which might cause reliability problems.

Oh Mary I envy you. I think you are so lucky. All the confessions you made in your first paragraph, I should make them, too, except for the last one. I love video games, reading books and Karaoke (haha!) and can do them all night long but for learning, I have a really complex feeling. When I am actually enjoying learning something, it is usually something easier or something I am almost about to figure out. But when I am struggling and frustrating, I will postpone learning till the last minute and will pick whatever is more funny and rewarding (well, looks like so), like video games! So for learners like me, I think we do need to think how the digital world are influencing us and how we can utilize it.

I totally understand your concerns.

Great post and nice thoughts! I really like this one “Just because we are not biologically programmed to do something naturally does not necessarily mean this skill is not worth practicing”. It really makes me thinking. I guess we can look at this aspect in two ways. As a learner, we do need to practice a lot of things are not “naturally” in our mind/body, in which case your thought makes sense. On the other hand, as a teacher, do we need to take the biological limit into consideration while we try to inspire and inform the students? I will say yes to that. I also agree with your confusion on TED talks and likes your idea of developing an “analytical ear”.