Month: February 2017

I read this article once before in my former graduate school experience for a similar class with a similar structure. It is most certainly part of the philosophy with which I handle student assessment. I like Kohn’s assessment for 3 reasons: 1) He presents a clear case against a flawed institution that is severely out of date and inadequate, and has always been inadequate, for assessing performance. 2) He presents this case through a logical reversal of the incentives supposedly produced through grades. By his logic, if a student defines her success through the grading apparatus, her focus will be on the grading apparatus, on how well she’s doing, instead of what she’s doing. 3) He makes a clear distinction between assessing a student’s progress and measuring a student’s progress. The latter is clearly, although he makes no reference back to the enlightenment, a product of the rationalization of civilization. The problem is that rational systems can easily produce irrational effects.

For my class, I have them grade themselves. They can even produce they’re own metrics of how they might go about self-evaluating. Perhaps the nature of my course allows me to more easily generate an environment for this, but I do not think so. The course is called “The Creative Process,” and it is quite an open field as far as course design is concerned. We read a book and have daily discussions produced through a series of questions students must ask in response to the weekly reading; there are documentaries; there’s a group midterm project; and they present they’re individual creative projects to the class for the final. I provide feedback as best I can, but there is no real measurement I provide of the student’s success. I must admit, as I progress into my second semester teaching this course, there seems to be a lot weariness on the part of students when they encounter my attitude towards grades. Some have accused me of laziness (it is less work when I don’t grade them, and all the better for both parties). My response to that is I put more time in the feedback, a device with much more potential use than a grade, or a grade with feedback. But the students also seem equally anxious about being given almost complete free reign over what they will produce for my class. I guess my passing questions here are how do I motivate students who have never done they’re own research, who don’t know what they’re interested in, who are perplexed at the idea of generating a thing of their own, and who are so locked into the administrative side (asking question like: “what do I need to do to do well in this class?”) of education that it almost seems to destabilize their identities (as students) when I say I’m not going to grade you and you have to come up with your own research project?

Once in primary school, I got into a fight with an older kid in another class who was trying to bully my friend. Considering the fact that in my adult life, I am only 5.4 inches tall and weigh 125 pounds, much of this height and weight I gained only in the last 3 years, it wasn’t a particularly great idea to stand up to this tall kid. A little blow on the mouth was all it took to shut me up. I went home with one of my front teeth threatening to fall off any minute. My grandmother who is a strong believer in the potency of salt (she uses salt to treat all kinds of illnesses, from malaria to skin diseases to plain old cough), gave me a solution, highly concentrated with salt. My task was to fill my mouth with as much of this solution as it can contain for about fifteen minutes, spit it out and then fill my mouth again with another batch. After this, my grandmother moistened a ball of cotton wool with salt solution and then placed it on the root of the trembling tooth and asked me to hold it in place firmly with my lip. Her aim was to firm the root of the tooth so it does not fall out.

Assessment in the school system to me is like this: to check if the salt solution and cotton wool were doing their job of firming my tooth, I will take the cotton wool out and then wiggle my weak tooth to see if there was any sign of it firming up, every fifteen minutes. My grandmother kept cautioning me to stop doing that but I failed to listen until finally, the tooth fell out. Although my initial objective was to just ‘assess’ my tooth, I did more harm than good. A teacher engaged in an online debate on the importance of assessment used a different analogy of a plant being repeatedly ripped out of the soil to examine its growing status. Her argument was that, there are better ways of assessing students other than a standardized test.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that as educationists, our curriculum should be wide enough to cater for all kinds of students. As diverse as our thought processes are as humans, we should try to accommodate each other’s lines of reasoning. Having a specific rigid grading rubric where a student gets less marks depending on his or her deviation from the supposedly right answer, is not correct. Insisting that one travels a straight line in other to get to a particular destination, can be interpreted in so many ways by different students (just like this plot shows, this is for my engineer friends :)).

If teachers do their jobs well, I am of the view that there is no need for assessing the performance of the students after a lesson. If my grandmother had told me that the reason why she asked me to keep the cotton wool firmly in place with my lip was to prevent my teeth from moving and therefore allow it to be firm, I don’t think I would have found wisdom in the need to assess the firming process. If we do our jobs well, the result will definitely be positive, no need for assessment. Every teacher ought to be like my grandmother, she believes the process, and so she finds no need for assessment.

Assessment to me has a different meaning probably than to most of the people in the class.  In counseling, assessment can take much of a different interpretation.  Counselors tend to assess for mental health concerns such as diagnosis, suicidal thoughts, etc.  Thinking of grades equaling assessment takes some reframing, but it makes sense because we have to assess performance somehow!

Dr. Nelson was talking in class about how grades are varying, originally designed for objects and later people.  I’ve been amazed to see how different the same class can be from one semester to another, one professor to another, and especially one university to another.  One class that comes to mind is a class about Counseling Theories that I have taken several times in various forms and actually co-taught last semester.  I’ve found the lack of consistency to be somewhat frustrating in the past because I thought that there are certain standards in place that keep classes consistent from one place to another.  However, I’m starting to question that after looking at some of these readings and videos this week.  Maybe it is better that each class is a bit different.  Learning shouldn’t be about forming everyone around one way of taking in information but instead tailoring learning to each individual.  The grades may turn out different from one class to another based on students’ various strengths, but maybe that isn’t a bad thing.  The variability from one class to another that I was thinking was a limitation, I am now seeing as a strength.

I’ve always thought of this from the framework that standards are to keep professors from missing what is important to be taught in the Counseling Theories class.  But now I have changed my thinking that having too strict of standards and/or assessments for this class would take away from the intrinsic motivation that each of the professors was able to instill in the students.  After seeing the videos from Dan Pink, I recognize that a class like this is a mental challenge, not just a mechanical task in which students just follow the rules.  The “rules” of counseling are not straightforward because interacting with people is never the same from one instance to another.  So for that matter, why should counseling classes be the exact same from one school to another?  Counseling requires cognitive skills that Dan Pink refers to actually makes rewards work backwards.  People perform worse when an increased reward is offered (i.e. a grade).  For that matter, making grades the reward (in theory) should actually reduce performance.  So what I’ve noticed about the professors from these classes, was that grades were just sort of a byproduct of doing the work for class.  It wasn’t about how well students performed on tests but that they engaged with each other and the learning process.  As the Dan Pink video specifies, what is important for motivating people for these types of tasks are: Autonomy, Mastery, and purpose.  Learning to be a counselor requires a lot of autonomy, striving for mastery in the field, and a sense of purpose seems to practically always bring people to work in the mental health field.  You know we don’t do it for the money!  So a lack of consistency from class to class was something that frustrated me in the past, but to quote a few other people’s blogs, “Aha!”  I have found a whole new appreciation for the variety because just like in counseling, the work has to be tailored to the clients (or students in this instance).  Creating an environment where learning comes first (by allowing greater reliance on autonomy, mastery, and purpose) and grades come as an afterthought allows students to develop into counseling professionals.

I think back to my undergrad experience, and the main motivator was grades.  By the time I graduated, I had the system pegged!  I did the work, earned the grade, and moved onto the next class.  Granted there was a sense of purpose that I wanted to work in the mental health field, but “purpose” is not what looks good on a college transcript.  But that system I had in undergrad didn’t really work once I hit graduate school.  Doing the work was just part of the experience I came for, and memorizing facts to regurgitate on a test no longer worked.  I’m not sure how other fields of graduate study work, but my experience of graduate education was that I was motivated primarily by autonomy, mastery, and purpose to learn from my professors and peers in order to make a difference in the counseling field.  Grades slipped gently into the background and came more as a byproduct of learning than as the motivator for pursuing education.  I hope to use my experience to be one of those professors that brings out that intrinsic motivation in students, as many have done for me so far.

So that is my Aha moment for the week!

“[did thing] Check! [did thing] Check! [did thing] Check! [did thing] Check!…”

As an instructor of record at Virginia Tech, I am “forced” into using letter grades to assess my students. This is the exact same framework that affects my own graduate studies. Virginia Tech goes beyond the standard “A-D and F” grading scale and adds further qualifiers through the use of “pluses” and “minuses.” I cannot count the number of emails I have received from students towards the end of the semester in which they are requesting any possible way to receive tenths of a point in order to move them from an A- to an A or a B to a B+. This perception of an education and its impact on life often leads to viewing every day as a routine series of checklists and compartmentalization. It becomes a question of “Yes or No?” not “Why or How?” This is because they fear that their GPA will be affected and in turn, their GPA affects the quality of job they will receive after graduation.”Grades don’t prepare children for the ‘real world’ — unless one has in mind a world where interest in learning and quality of thinking are unimportant” (Kohn).

Have we reached a world where interest and quality of thinking are unimportant? Today’s current political climate, the disavowing of science, and and the use of “alternative facts” by those in power would surely suggest this. It almost seems that I refer to a quote from Sir Isaac Asimov on almost a daily basis. The quote I reference is from a January 21, 1980 Newsweek article he wrote titled “A Cult of Ignorance” where he says, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” Has the university become an extension of trade and vocational schools? I personally hope that this is not the case. I am hopeful that students realize the necessity of gaining a diversity of knowledge and what we might perceive as skills usually taught in trade and vocational schools are in fact examples of experiential learning.”Employers complain that many college graduates are not prepared for the workplace and lack the new set of skills necessary for successful employment and continuous career development” (Lombardi). These skills are not just knowing the mechanics of the student’s chosen trade or discipline but how to problem solve, how to do group work, how to not operate in a silo and work between disciplines. These skills can be found in experiential learning. My experience with experiential learning as a student was a positive experience. In my undergraduate program, I was required to have a semester long internship in order to graduate. That internship eventually turned into a job after I graduated. I was also involved in National Model United Nations (NMUN) in New York City. NMUN taught me daily skills used by diplomats, such as negotiation with others, writing position papers, and writing resolutions to solve global problems that are difficult to learn in the classroom at times. However, as an instructor, I have implemented this type of experiential learning with limited success. In a course here at Virginia Tech, titled Multilateral Diplomacy Workshop, some students felt the use of National Model United Nations in the classroom was too nebulous and that there should have been more lectures and direct applications to what they would have to do in their future jobs. Their work indicated a lack of creativity as they relied on current real world solutions to solve the issues presented to them. Instead, they should have come to the realization that we still have constant discussions about the same real world problems and that the current answers might not work. Therefore, they should primarily ask what is not working within the current structures and then creatively think about solutions involving those structures or invent new solutions.

Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon, in Imagination First, propose that the United States has created a society that stifles ideas; creativity; imagination; and deep thinking. The use of grades, metrics, rubrics, and teaching to the test are the root cause of the educational society we have created and we must innovatively disrupt this if we are to progress our educational system. This is supported via a point offered  by Kohn, “…the absence of grades is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for promoting deep thinking and a desire to engage in it.”

(Side note: Since I am a New Orleanian, I am inordinately appreciative of Liu and Noppe-Brandon’s acknowledgement of the Lower Ninth Ward that was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and remains an area of New Orleans that, even 10 1/2 years later, has not completely recovered.)

References

Asimov, Isaac. “A Cult of Ignorance.” Newsweek. January 21, 1980.

Kohn, Alfie. “The Case Against Grades.” Educational Leadership. November 2011.

Liu, Eric and Scott Noppe-Brandon. Imagination First. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco. 2009.

Lombardi, Marilyn M. “Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning.” Educause Learning Initiative. January 2008.

Sometimes when I grade assignments,  I really struggle with grading open-ended questions. In order to keep consistency and fairness, I often refer back to the instructor manual to decide the scores and put them into the rubric. In general, the closer the answer to that in the manual, the higher score I give. However, I feel this way to of grading discourages creative thinking.  It is a tragedy if 130 students have the same idea or similar answers for a question, even though the answer may be a common sense to most people. Therefore, I also try to be open to alternative answers and give students some encouragements on doing this. But another problem occurring is that the assessment becomes kind of subjective and depends on my personal preference. For example, how to decide this one is a creative answer, and that one is wrong or irrelevant to the question? Since my judgment cannot be correct all the time, I think grading can be a big challenge in this case.

After reading Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning, I understand that “students consider what is important as what is being assessed”. My challenge also affects their learning process, so I have to think about how to improve the assessment procedure. According to this article, a good strategy may be combining peer assessment with my assessment, and the total score can be a weighted average of these two parts.

A reflection on my experience and the reading suggests that educators should be more willing to think about “what if” cases in teaching, writing the learning materials and grading. As maintained in Imagination First, our adults have too much to defense and often prefer consistency instead of surprise. To improve students’ creativity, we should first work on creativity of educators, because their judgments in the assessment affect student behaviors. Another thing comes to my mind is the fact that current assessment often provides little incentive for creative solutions. Suppose a student knows the standard answer and also thinks of an alternative, she might be more likely to use the standard one in an exam because it is safer. As time goes by, this tendency of risk aversion may kills that student’s creativity.  To improve imagination and innovation, we should add bonus points to their creative minds and “risk-taking” behavior in the assessment.

Source: http://www.frsd.k12.nj.us/Page/3671

References

1. Lombardi, Marilyn M. “Making the grade: The role of assessment in authentic learning.” EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2008).
2. Liu, Eric, and Scott Noppe-Brandon. Imagination first: Unlocking the power of possibility. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

I really appreciated the reading for this week, Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon really spoke to us social scientists (well I am speaking for myself, I just really enjoyed their document as a social scientist and as a learner as well).  This idea of “Killing of imagination” is so true. Last semester I had a paper to write, the instructor encouraged us to be creative with the paper, we read narratives and poetry the week prior to the paper to inspire us and get ideas.  That paper was so difficult for me to start. Prior to grad school I prided my self in my narrative writing skills and “fluffy” writing concept (as a professor I had in undergrad once told me). But graduate school had conditioned me so much to “scientifically” write straightforward, “get straight to the point”, “no need for all these extra words”,”cite, don’t forget to cite properly” writing that this task that I use to love so much to free flow write was extremely difficult for me to at least start. I thought about it for a week, I sat in front of my computer for hours, nothing. Then I started and it all came back, it was just pouring out on my keyboard, it felt so good to let my imagination and creativity guide my writing. I thanked the instructor after turning in my paper, I told her it was difficult for me to start but as I my imagination shifted into gear I could not stop. Looking back I ask myself “What caused that block?” as mentioned before I once prided myself on the words I was able to put together to describe scenes in my head…my imagination had been kilt as I adapted to the way things are supposed to be, written and read in graduate school.

This brings me to the discussion that we had last week. Someone mentioned that she had never heard the phrase “This is just how it has been done for years” until she came here.  As a society I do have to say we have been conditioned and fixed to operate a certain way..”for years” or “years it has been done” without using our imagination. The reading touched on this concept as well the conditioning of to just operate in the way it is and has been done for years with out using our imagination. I also noticed it earlier. My childhood consisted of barbies, I collected them as well. I had the barbie car, the barbie dream house, the grocery store, the tour bus, the Spice Girl barbie, Pocahontas barbie, anything Barbie in the 90s you name it I had it! (still do). Came up with the best stories to play with them as well, my imagination as a child has great! My barbies had the best adventures, I do have to say so myself!

When went back home this summer and explored all the bins that stored my barbies for all these years and as I attempted to play with them and use my imagination to come up with the great adventures to take my barbies on as a 24 year old adult I couldn’t, it was hard I gave up and put them away. Something I once loved, all the stories, games and adventures my mind was able to create as a child was no longer able to do so. As I read the Imagination First document and the  “either you have it or you don’t” discussion I could not help to think of this experience and at the time I definitely felt like I did not have my imagination that day. The authors state that “the challenge is how to increase the potency and reach of the imagination”. As  learners and instructors this piece really encouraged the students use of imagination. With all this said and after reading this document it all makes sense! As instructors we should challenge our selves and our students to tap in or back into those imaginative spaces.

This also reminded me of the movie Hook with Robin Williams. Last year, someone really wanted me to watch it because I would really enjoy it do to my “imagination” and sense of humor. Long story short if you haven’t seen the movie Peter (Robin Williams) goes back to Never Land as an adult and has to use his imagination to see and even eat the things in Never Land. In one scene Peter is watching the Lost Boys were “eating” Peter couldn’t eat and see the food unless he used his imagination. Peter did he pushed his self to use his imagination and he did he saw the food, he ate, he tasted it and even started throwing it around and caused a food fight and the Lost Boys screamed “YOU’RE DOING IT! YOU’RE USING YOUR IMAGINATION!”

That same someone that told me to watch this movie and particularly this part of the movie told me “Take your imagination to the moon” “share everything you’re learning with others” and that is what I plan to do.

“To see oneself as pursuing a purpose and following a call, rather than merely going through the motion, is itself an act of imagination” pg.35  (act of reflection in action) -fighting the fear of what if

“Why imagination? Because without it, education is utterly empty” pg.30

I find the idea of grading to be important in the STEM fields because it makes the student accountable for the materials that were presented in class. Most of my undergraduate course required the traditional grading scheme where you have to put countless hours into studying in order to achieve the grades that you want. In terms, I do agree with Alfie Kohn that strict grading scheme does hamper creativity and causes the student to find the easiest task to get an “A”. In my undergraduate, I was able to take an “experimental” course in materials science. In this course, we were given options to “choose” the way that we want to earn the “A” in the class. We had options of writing weekly blogs on materials, writing midterm essays, performing research, creating a presentation about material topic and teach the class, etc. In that class I looked for the easiest assignments so that I can get it done quickly and focus on other classes. I remember very little from what I have learned in that class. In comparison, I can relate fundamental thermodynamics theories to the applications that I see every day. I find that the gradeless system may work to inspire creativity and pushes the student to self-explore, but it does not hold students accountable for the course topics. I find that it is “human nature” to take the path of least resistance in whatever they do. Therefore, unless the student develops a passion for that topic, they will only do the minimum amount of work whether it is grade or gradeless.

I disagree with the statement, “Grades don’t prepare children for the “real world…” made by Alfie Kohn. I find the that the GPA is a determination of the student’s perseverance, adaptability, and commitment. I personally have to put ridiculous amount of hours into studying in order to pull the GPA that I want.  That shows my commitment to “excellence” in whatever tasks that I am assigned with. Similarly, I am forced to take so many different classes in undergraduate that I feel the GPA represents my ability to adapt. It measures how well I am able to pick up new ideas and topic regardless of whether they are interesting to me or not. Lastly, I think it tests my perseverance because there are times that I have failed, but I kept on fighting for continuous improvement. Even though, the GPA does not truly measure a student’s intellectual capability or learning achievement, it does measure the commitment that the student has toward his education.

I do think that the traditional grading system needs a bit of modernization. Again, my experiences disagree with Alfie Kohn article stating that, “Initially Robbins announced that any project or test could be improved and resubmitted for a higher grade.  Unfortunately, that failed to address the underlying problem, and he eventually realized he had to stop grading entirely.”  The classes that I learned the most from are the ones that the teacher allows the students to make revisions on their assessments to get partial credit. The only assessment that the professor did not allow revisions was the final exam. This concept forces me to reevaluate what I have learned. It encourages me to take on harder tasks because if I fail, there is a chance to recover from. It is a great way to “force” the students to reflect upon what they have learned an improve it. If they don’t they will make the same mistakes on the final exam.