Student complaints

I had a chat with a colleague last week, as I was looking for some feedback on the e-assessment she had run this year. She told me about this student complaint, and how it was handled. In all honesty I still can't quite believe we can be this stupid.

Some of our lecturers are experimenting with feedback during summative exams. This means learners immediately know whether they answered a question right of wrong, and sometimes why. It also allows them to instantly view their result at the end of the exam. So far, results from the experiment have been quite good (except for learners who really haven't mastered any of the subject matter, who obviously get rather depressed by this whole affair).

A student that had previously taken part in one of these experimental exams, was now taking part in a regular exam; no feedback and no immediate score. The lecturer, as usual, had received the transcripts from us and, after a possible moderation, had published these to the learners. This learner however was apparently convinced that the lecturer had fiddled with the results. Why else would they not have published the results upon the exam finishing? Apparently the student made quite a scene, upon which the programme leader decided to adhere to the students demands and make the exam available again for his perusal for another week. He was then also granted a resit. I really don't understand the problem here.

Let's look at a normal exam. When you hand in the paper, do you get an immediate result? No, of course you don't; a lecturer takes it away, marks it, maybe a colleague moderates it, and the mark is published. It's the lecturer's job to fiddle with the results, that's what we are paying them for isn't it? They look at the answers provided, and make a judgment on the extent to which they satisfy the assessment criteria? Introducing (partial) marking by a computer can only make this process more objective, not less!

It's no wonder lecturers and teachers sometimes complain about the lack of respect learners give them. Because this isn't just about caving in to a student and giving them their way. This also sends a message that this lecturer was wrong. It sends the message that it is the lecturer who has to cater to the students every whim, as she has now been instructed to do. I understand this lecturer will not be teaching here next year, and if this story is true, I can understand why.

Plagiarism

This article in the New York Times caught my eye this evening. Not the smartest thing to do when you're a superintendent, to copy your speech of the internet. Then again, I feel we do sometimes loose perspective in these issues.

Only very rarely in our lives do we manage to be original. And in fact more often then not when we are, we are not as right or as effective as we could be. Perfection after all takes time, practice and experience. Our whole success as a species stems from our ability to copy each other.

So is it so bad to plagiarize? Sure, it is wrong to claim credit or ownership for something that is not your own. But when you are doing your job, isn't it perfectly normal to apply existing best practice to that job. In fact, aren't we all expected to do this? When doing this, we are not claiming ownership, or credit. We are merely utilizing the collective experience of our race to further our cause. In my opinion, that's the only thing this superintendent is really guilty of. Ok, maybe she could have made a bit more of an effort to rephrase some of the ideas and concepts she collected from the internet. Plagiarism however, is really not the issue here though, that is just taking things a tad too far.

Targets, procedures and learning

The idea that responsibility and creativity are slowly dying by neglect has bothered be for a while now. I've never really been able to put my finger on what the problem was, but now I have had some help by two very distinguished thinkers:

The first person to lift up some of the veil was Peter M. Senge. I recently read his book "The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization", which I thoroughly enjoyed. In it he discusses much about how people, but also organizations, learn. More importantly, he addresses why they often don't. A lot of that links back to the systems we use to enforce and measure. Systems that, by their constant need for satisfaction, lead us to shorty term symptom driven thinking and compliance, in stead of long term holistic and creative problem solving. I am looking forward to reading Dr. Senge's treaty on education "Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education", in which I hope to gain some insights in how to make changes to our education system in order to create an enviroment in which students are once again challenged to be creative, in stead of pummeled into being compliant.

Last Thursday I coincidentally had the opportunity to attend a lecture by one of our visiting professors: John Seddon. His crushing analysis of the effects of the target and regulation driven framework that is destroying much of our public services fitted seamlessly into the seeds sown by My earlier reading. I would recommend visiting the vanguard website to have a look at some resources or events that are planned.

I see lots of parallels between these management paradigms, and concepts that keep us busy in education. The discussions about formal and informal learning, the pros and cons of instructional design, and the problem of over-assessment all seem to be based in similar (mis-) conceptions over what makes us learn and thrive. There are parts in our education system, and more so even in the collection of professional bodies governing some of the qualifications and licenses, that seem to be tailored towards breeding armies of self-confirming professionals, in stead of critical and independent thinkers. And while this seems comfortable at first, I do believe we are slowly digging ourselves some enormous holes.

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Update: I gather that the podcast of John Seddon's talk is now available.