Realizing That Passing the Exams Wasn’t the Hard Part!

I think that the main issue for using the wrong assessment techniques is the fact that we have lost the big picture! Why are we assessing the learners? What are they getting out of this assessment? and what are we preparing them for?

The first question is why are we assessing the learners? 

Well, the answer to this question seems pretty straight forward! Learning is a process that needs practice… I might think that I have learned a concept however as soon as someone asks me to explain what the concept really is about, I start to understand that maybe I have not fully understood all the aspects of this concept! One important factor in the learning process, is involving group work since how others observe and understand what we have learned will definitely open our eyes to a lot of things that we might not have thought of.

The second question is what are the learners getting out of this?

Now let’s take a step back and think… Does the leaner need to learn how to solve a system of non-liner equations? or learn why this solving method is being used from the first place? How about if we ask them to consider two cars driving towards each other, and ask them to find out at what exact time they will hit each other considering that we know the speed and acceleration of both cars. This is called sideways learning which triggers the creativity of students and motivates them to look for methods for solving this problem. This might even lead them to finding something new! Also, if they are going off on a tangent we can guide them to the right direction by giving them clues such as asking questions like what do we want to find? How can we simplify this problem? Such examples exist in all disciplines and will excite the learner and motivate them to learn new concepts.

Now what are we preparing them for?

At the end we are preparing the learners to solve real life problems with what they know while being creative and practical. This approach can solve both old and new problems, wheres the conventional method is mostly preparing the learners to solve the previously solved problems. This is what they should be assessed on… Can they solve the problem? Can they adapt what they have learned to new problems? Can they use new techniques and think outside the box? Does their solution make sense?

Of course this makes it very hard for the instructors since now they need to fully understand the topic that they are teaching, the problems that can be solved using the tools that they give to students, the alternative approaches to what they know, potential creative approaches that might make sense, etc… A rubric which requires you to take 2 points off if a student has 0.28 instead of 0.2 will definitely not do the job! I would say that at least in my case I can say that this conventional approach increased my stress level and forced me to just study for the exams, instead of looking outside the book and understanding why I am learning what I am learning . . . Coming to graduate school, I realized that there is so much more to what we learned and the exams did not really prepare me for what I need to do at this stage of my life! I am not sure if they were a useful life skill at all! Today I look back and think passing all those brutal engineering exams wasn’t the hard part! Applying all those concepts to my research problem today is the hard part! I wish I was prepared for applying my knowledge and not for solving a problem during a timed period which I studied so hard for to make sure that I have a rubric for it in my mind so that I can wrap it up during the timed period!

Incentive Directly Proportional to Motivation

Im sure all of you experienced the opportunity of receiving a reward from your parents when you cleaned your room or even when you helped with several task in your house. Of course your parents knew that you will always perform better when there is something in return. I remember when I was 12 years old, my family lived in a farm with a lot of grass to cut, therefore my father used to trick me by telling me that every time I clean the backyard he will reward me with the “extravagant amount” of $20. At that time, yes, for me was a lot of money but when I got older I noticed that the amount of money wasn’t equal to the amount of job that I was asked to do. That’s when I started to work without any motivation and started leaving areas unattended. Due to my lack of motivation, my dad decided to increase the reward and right away I started being the hard worker kid that I used to be.

The weird part is that it wasn’t always the same. It seems that the incentive didn’t work as well when he asked me to help him with his job. Why a 12 years old boy would like to spend his Sundays in a office working with task that require the use of his brain? Of course most of the kids believe that the only moment they should use it is at school. Yes! I know that most of you are saying right now: “That wasn’t me, I always wanted to read books and study math 24/7”, but not me, I just wanted to play Mario Bros. in my Nintendo and nothing else.

This experience that I had bring us to what Dan Pink was referring to in his animated video: The Surprising Truth About What Motivate US. How come I didn’t feel motivated by the amount of money or the other gifts that I was going to get just by using my brain? well, Dan Pink explained it very well in his animated video. He said that people work harder to get a job done when it requires mechanical skills or tasks that has an specific result no matter the way you do it. If you are going to be rewarded for $50 for each time you clean your parents house, it doesn’t matter if one day you start with the second floor and then the first floor or if you decided to start with the bedroom instead of the kitchen the result will always be same, which is a clean house. However,  if your parents decided to increase those incentives and to receive them you were asked to rearrange the furniture in the living room that has almost no space available, to accommodate another couch. Usually, a 12 year boy/girl would say: “Dad we are good like this, forget about the couch”, because we don’t want to waste time in a task that we don’t know if we are going to be able to accomplish it or not. Tell them to paint a house and they will do it because they know the beginning and the end of that task, but asking them to do something that has no clear end might be too risky and they will decide not to do it or give a poor performance. In other words, performance in mechanical task is directly proportional to the incentive, but is not the same relationship for the task using our brain.

The myth of giving to receive proves that no matter the incentive, the person will react different in each situation. Is not a matter of money or a matter of getting something that we need, Dan Pink couldn’t it say it better, is a matter of the challenges we pursue that will help us make a contribution while we master different abilities.

I don’t know about any of you but for me is kind of weird that after the first blog post Im not even thinking about the grade that Im going to get by creating a blog post every week. Ever since I saw that there is a “Hot Topic” section every week, my mind tells me that I need to find a way to challenge myself by using my knowledge and creativity at my best if I want to get that incentive. It seems to me that the truth about what motivate us relies on the idea of finding something that will challenge us in our own environment without believing that we are risking something if we don’t accomplish it.

 

Diving into the Grade-less Abyss

Schools that don’t assign grades has always intrigued me. I had many questions regarding the administration of such programs, such as:

How do such programs ascertain that students have mastered the material? How are such programs certified/analyzed by governing bodies of education? How are teachers treated/rewarded for student achievement? How do students progress to higher education and/or careers?

So, as you might imagine, the article by Alfie Kohn was the most engrossing for me. I thought he did an excellent job building his case based on the research as well as bringing the research into the real world by detailing examples from teacher’s classrooms.

However, looking into this topic a little more to satisfy my curiosity, I came across a couple of more articles that discuss grade-less programs in the real world. The first talks about a high school that has done away with grades and the second about universities. Below is an example rubric for the grade-less high school program:

  The rubric used to grade the final assessment for a freshman history class at Sanborn High School. Students don't get a number or letter grade.
From a WGBH news article by Mallory Noe-Payne

Judging by these articles, in the “competency-based learning” high school system, students pass a class by demonstrating proficiency in a set of skills laid out at the beginning of the course and assessment during the course of the class comes in the form of teacher feedback. In the university, it seems competency in a course is ascertained by observation of demonstration of skills, such as a nursing student taking patient vitals. Though I can certainly see the value in “going grade-less,” I am still not certain how grade-less university courses in particular may be efficiently implemented in all courses being that the demands on professors’ time are already at a breaking point. Anyone have more ideas on this? Maybe there are more TA-ships in our future?

 

In any case, I am definitely guilty in my own educational career of wishing for such a grade-less world. I vividly remember sitting in my dorm room wishing that I could just learn on the job, learn the skills that I knew I use in my career and be done with it (though, at this point, I do appreciate the well-rounded education I received). It seems strange and strangely appropriate to me that competency-based education is now becoming such a hot topic because, it seems to me, that this system is eerily reminiscent of apprenticeship. The days when one could study a subject for as long as they desired and demonstrate mastery not by an A+ stamp on a test, but by performing the skills that they learned through their dedication. Sounds like competency-based education to me! So, in short (and to probably oversimplify a bit), one of the ‘newest’ trends in education began in the Middle Ages. I guess what goes around, truly does comes around.

 

A medieval baker with his apprentice. The Boleian Library, Oxford. From Wikipedia.

The disadvantages for the current grading systems

I believe that the current method of the grading system does not work well and it is not a suitable indicator for the evaluations and assessments. I mention three disadvantages for it:

  • I explained this issue in my first blog related to the connected learning. I repeat it in this blog and suggest an alternative. I believe that there is no balance in education systems in the universities related to grading. You can imagine two students in the same major from two different universities. They have passed the same courses, but one of them took courses with some instructors who took easily. Therefore, the GPA of them is completely different. But, their knowledge is the same. They apply for a specific job and the investigator observes their GPA. Who will he be hired? Absolutely, the person who has higher GPA. So, I believe that current the education system is not fair. All of the students follow up their majors to get a degree. But, this degree cannot be an appropriate indicator of their qualifications.  We should find another method to certify the students about their knowledge. I want to suggest certifications instead of degrees. Certifications may be awarded to certify that the students know some skills in that area. Therefore, the employers should evaluate their applicants with more effective ways to select most qualified individuals for their jobs.

 

  • I personally believe that the exams are so stressful and I will be under pressure during exams. So I think we may need to find a better way to evaluate the students. This type of assessment may be the easiest way but it is not the best.

 

  • Each country has the own grading system. For example, the grading scale in Iran is from 0 to 20. In this link, you may find the grading system for each country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_systems_by_country . One issue regarding these differences is when the students want to apply to the universities in other countries. I had this problem when I applied to the US universities.  I firstly thought that I should divide my GPA by 5 to convert it to the US grading system. But after some applications, I understood that I needed to follow the specific instruction of each university to convert my GPA. For example Virginia Tech asked me to consider the grades above 16 as A.  Therefore, I think that the education systems should try to solve this problem. I could not find the reason for these differences and I do not know if it is related to the type of education system or not. I hope to find an answer to my question in Donna Riley’s discussion.

What’s wrong with evidence-based practice?

First, let’s start with the concept of evidence-based practice in education by looking at the evidence-based medicine (EBM) analog. Riley rightly claims that EBM places randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the gold standard for evidence, but wrongly claims that EBM closes off knowledge related societal or cultural determinants of health. We can and do conduct RCTs to obtain knowledge about these determinants of health, but we often have to look at these more complex phenomena through correlational studies that, while inferior sources of evidence, are fair game in EBM. Correlational studies provide weaker evidence than RCTs, but are strengthened when multiple lines of evidence converge and this approach has produced some of the most important and certain medical knowledge that we have such as the fact that smoking causes lung cancer. The medical field has taken EBM one step further along the axis of scientific rigor to science-based medicine (SBM) where the results of scientific studies are interpreted in a Bayesian manner, incorporating their prior probability derived from the current best scientific theories to inform the posterior from which inference is derived. In practice, an example of this might be that a homeopathy study obtained a positive result, but the prior probability that homeopathy works is essentially zero and so this trial is almost certainly just a false positive result. Riley dismisses evidence-based practice as “inane double speak”, while in fact, it is the most rigorous and reliable means to we have to obtain knowledge. These are the same tactics proponents of alternative medicine use when the science-based medicine community do not accept their claims. Education practice that is not evidence-based is just education practice that has not been proven to work.

Second, let’s talk about epistemology. Riley claims that the epistemology of evidence-based practice is logical positivism. This is incorrect. Logical positivism has been dead since the 1960s. Evidence-based practice is based on the Scientific Method, which takes a Reliablist account of epistemology where adherents are justified in knowing something if it is obtained through a reliable process such as the Scientific Method itself and Scientific skepticism. So what is Riley’s alternative epistemology? She doesn’t say! The closest thing to an alternative epistemology is in the statement that evidence-based practice devalues “epistemic frames upon which the eliminated outcomes are based; global and social context, professional responsibility, and lifelong learning are not fully characterized by empirical and logical positivist ways of knowing”. Why not? What alternative do we have? Am I missing something here or is this post-modernist obfuscation?

I realize these two issues are somewhat tangential to the main concern that things that are hard to test have been removed from learning outcomes, I just find it bizarre how she finds them to be sources of the problem and I can’t sit idly by while the Scientific Method is bashed.

My Experiences About Assessment

Here are my best and worst experiences about the assessment.

In my undergrad, in most of the courses, the assessments were used only to rank students! No feedback and comments were provided after exams. Almost in all courses, we had one midterm and one final exam and the instructors only announced the grades. I remember I studied very hard for a test and after the test, I was almost sure that I will get the full grade. However, I got 15 from 20. I went to the instructor office and asked him about my mistakes. He said I can review your answers but, this time, I am sure you will get less than 15! I never found what were my mistakes in that course.

Assessment should be used to motivate students to study (I study more when I have an exam) and give them feedback about their understanding. However, it was not the case in my undergrad.

My best experience about the assessment happened last fall. At the first day, the instructor explains the main goals of the course and handed in 2 pages to the students. Ninety-nine concepts were listed on the pages. He said you should be familiar with these ninety-nine concepts at the end of the course. In the beginning of each session, he explained which concepts will be reviewed in the session. He also sometimes explained that we have learned, for example, 20 of the listed concepts, if you did not learn some of them, please come to my office and ask me about them. All the exams and quizzes were about the listed concepts and we already know which concepts will be on each test. The most interesting part of the assessment was his feedbacks. Sometimes I thought I know a concept very well. However, after the test, he wrote some comments about my misunderstandings and at the end which concept I should learn better. I always was eager to take his tests because they were not for grading; the tests were a tool to evaluate our understandings and help us to eliminate our weaknesses.

How to venture in the snow, when you don’t have to…

In the light of the interesting weather, we are to expect… What makes us leave the warmth of our apartments and hop on a bus to go to school? What makes us venture out in such unpredictable weather? Is it the excitement to learn? or is it the fear of getting a bad grade? Is it the fear of getting in trouble for not showing up to a team meeting? Or the true intrinsic motivation to work? The answers to these questions are all in tune with this week’s theme, regarding learning, and the motivation behind it.

One of the most popular issues faced in schools and academia, are often what’s going to be on the test? And the desire the students have to get a good grade using the least amount of effort, and resources… Until something changes…

Well what changes? As Dan Pink called it, it is the intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the most powerful resource any human can have as a part of his or her life. It’s not that reward you’ll get for being the top student of your class–or the honors distinction in undergrad. Instead, it is truly having the freedom to do what one desires– autonomy as Pink named it. And wanting to do it.

I loved the example he gave, about the employees having no obligation to show up to work. And their only obligation was to complete their work. And how this company was super successful. At the same time, how companies like Google give their employees the option to do whatever they want for a fifth of their time. This is really intriguing and interesting. This wasn’t the first time I watched his Ted Talk. And every time I see it, I’m always impressed.

Of course, in the context of academics, well how do we let our students have this intrinsic motivation?! According to Alfie Kohn, that’s simple… Well, not so much. But, however, there’s a way to work around it until folks get more creative. One model explained in Kohn’s article, is that of making a school a democracy. We can’t stop giving out grades, obviously… At least for the time being. But making our schools a democracy will help.

If we let students do what they like, sometimes… if we give them a writing assignment that has no specifications beyond being in the scope of the class.. If we give them the ability to explore… if we give them the ability to decide their grades with the teacher… that will help. This will help grades be less torture.

Also, if we help our students discover their passions… They will be willing to pursue them at any cost. They will be willing to do anything and everything possible to achieve there dreams.  They’ll be willing to venture out on foot during the snow, to run an experiment they enjoy.

At least that’s what I believe, as aligned to the media related to this module– regarding education and motivation.

Why learn when you can memorize?

In reading Alfie Kohn’s piece, “The Case Against Grades”, I feel like a lot of what he is saying makes innate sense. When we know we are being assessed, we always want to be the best and come out on top.  I think it is in most of our nature to be competitive and strive to be the best.  However, as mentioned in his piece as well as the piece by Dan Pink, this most often inhibits any chances of learning or thinking.

A personally relevant example of this is how fourth year veterinary students are assessed. The first three years of veterinary school (here) are primarily didactic in nature.  You spend all day in a classroom learning lots of facts and a few ways to problem solve.  However, in your fourth year, you get the opportunity to use everything you have learned and rotate through the veterinary teaching hospital.  Here, at Virginia Tech, fourth year rotations are graded pass-fail (well, at least they were when I went through 5 years ago).  This was exceptionally relieving to me.  As a lifelong overachiever and fact-memorizer, I was just as Alfie Kohn discusses in his essay.  I was completely fixated on grades and would do whatever it took (ethically of course) to get the grade.  If I needed to pull an all-nighter to memorize a bunch of facts, spit them out the next day and forget them forever, I would.  When I had to write an essay, I would sit the rubric right next to my computer making sure to address each point whether it related to my topic or not.  (In fact, I once got an A on a paper with a note from the professor stating this was almost the worst paper he had ever read as it made absolutely no sense.  However, I had earned an A based on the criteria laid out in the rubric.  If THAT’S not suggestive of a problem in the system, I don’t know WHAT is!)  But, in my eyes, I needed the good grade to get into the good college to get a good job.  I kept this mentality through vet school (although now, looking back-it seems so silly).  When I got to my fourth year clinical rotations, I finally felt like I could take a breath and use what I had learned.  I wasn’t concerned with making the highest grade or knowing the most factoids.  The beauty of it was that I could focus on my patient, learn my case, and integrate facts with real world situations.

I think this generally applies to most disciplines. In real life, there is typically not a “right” or “wrong” answer.  You take what you have learned, integrate it into the problem you have in front of you and create a solution.  In my case, not being graded on an A-F scale in my fourth year allowed me more freedom to feel comfortable learning.  I’m sure many would agree that, I afforded the opportunity, they would find this just as freeing.

OMG, I’m Engaged!

“OMG, I’m engaged!!!” A phrase, I wish I thought in each of my classes, and a phrase I hope my future students think in mine!

Sorry to disappoint. This post has nothing to do with tidings of matrimony! Hopefully you are not too disillusioned, and you continue reading.

Alfie Kohn asserts the following in his article entitled “The Case Against Grades“:

  • It’s not enough to add narrative reports.  ‘When comments and grades coexist, the comments are written to justify the grade’ (Wilson, 2009, p. 60).
  • Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning.
  • Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task.
  • Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.

Let’s assume the above is true. Let’s assume that a qualitative learning experience better prepares students for the real world, instills a sense of purpose, and overall engages students in a more effective and rewarding manner.

My quandary isn’t how you would pedagogically shift the classroom from grade based to experiential, but how you would enforce this from an administrative standpoint? How do you make certain that teachers and instructors are implementing this strategy in a way that is motivating, engaging, and facilitating learning? Would you enforce assessment and measurement for teachers, but not for students? How would promotion work, or tenure if in an academic setting? Perhaps this specific aspect would need to shift…or would unintentionally shift if teachers felt more fulfilled…

When looking at this longitudinally, if I’m teaching a course that some accrediting body requires for my students to go on and become a credentialed professional, how am I held accountable if I’m facilitating the education process in a non-traditional manner? While this article assures its readers of data which support that even medical students go on to be successful, as a university or school, that still doesn’t address the question of how an instructor’s effectiveness is assessed- if not through measurement?

What are your thoughts?

Grades- The More You Get, the Less You Learn

In the “Case Against Grades,” Alfie Kohn quotes a teacher who has de-graded his classroom stating that some of his high-achieving students did not like the system without grades, because “they viewed school as work and their peers as competitors.” After reading about the case against grades and reflecting on how it has felt to be a student most of my life, I can understand why students would feel this way about school. This is, in many ways, how it is structured- complete tasks, turn in products, have these products assessed. The system isn’t really designed for learning, it’s designed for this cycle to recur.

Another part from that article strikes me as well- Kohn cites the results of a study (Butler, 1992) that indicate that when students are asked to think about their scores on a task, they become interested in the scores of other students, but when they are just allowed to do the task, they become are more interested in what the other students created. If you think about the broader implications of this, it is remarkable how grades could inhibit collaboration and promote competition. I know that in our society, we are supposed to think competition is a good thing, but it seems to me like there is much  to be gained from collaboration. Perhaps, if grades are emphasized less heavily in the classroom, students will stop seeing their peers as competitors and start seeing the potential for collaboration.

“Authentic Assessment” as described by Marilyn Lombardi in her article “Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning” may be key to making school be more about actual learning, since assessment does still need to be done. By giving students the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills, it will both better prepare them for the workforce and be more enjoyable and meaningful to them. It seems like a win-win, although there is so much opposition to changing the status-quo. At the K-12 levels, teachers may face tight constraints on how they can structure their classes and grading systems, and college faculty may be too overworked to deal with it. I am hopeful that change will come, since there is an increasing need for it, but fear that it will be very slow. I think that a crucial first step is for everyone: teachers, policy-makers, university administrators, etc., to acknowledge that the purpose of education should be learning. Perhaps teacher constraints and faculty demands could diminish if there was a greater emphasis on real learning. Then other things, like better methods of assessment, could begin to fall into place.

 


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