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Blair Peterson

The shocking truth about competency based education - The Edvocate - 0 views

  • “Three important developments stand to dramatically change the way we think about degree programs and pathways: The rapid adoption of competency-based education (CBE) programs, often using industry and employer authority for guiding the creation of the competencies and thus programs An eventual move to suborganizational accreditation, with Title IV funds available for credits, courses, and microcredentials offered by new providers in new delivery models, part of the accelerating trend toward “unbundling” higher education Increasing recognition that postsecondary education will no longer be contained to the existing and traditional degree levels but will instead be consumed at various levels of granularity—less than full degree programs and continuing throughout lives and careers”
Blair Peterson

Grading Systems - SCHOOL, HIGHER EDUCATION - Students, Grades, Teachers, and Learning -... - 1 views

  • In essence, grading is an exercise in professional judgment on the part of teachers. It involves the collection and evaluation of evidence on students' achievement or performance over a specified period of time, such as nine weeks, an academic semester, or entire school year. Through this process, various types of descriptive information and measures of students' performance are converted into grades or marks that summarize students' accomplishments. Although some educators distinguish between
  • In fact, prior to 1850, grading and reporting were virtually unknown in schools in the United States. Throughout much of the nineteenth century most schools grouped students of all ages and backgrounds together with one teacher in one-room schoolhouses, and few students went beyond elementary studies. The teacher reported students' learning progress orally to parents, usually during visits to students' homes.
  • Between 1870 and 1910 the number of public high schools in the United States increased from 500 to 10,000. As a result, subject area instruction in high schools became increasingly specific and student populations became more diverse. While elementary teachers continued to use written descriptions and narrative reports to document student learning, high school teachers began using percentages and other similar markings to certify students' accomplishments in different subject areas. This was the beginning of the grading and reporting systems that exist today.
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  • But in 1912 a study by two Wisconsin researchers seriously challenged the reliability of percentage grades as accurate indicators of students' achievement.
  • These demonstrations of wide variation in grading practices led to a gradual move away from percentage scores to scales that had fewer and larger categories. One was a three-point scale that employed the categories of Excellent, Average, and Poor. Another was the familiar five-point scale of Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing, (or A, B, C, D, and F). This reduction in the number of score categories served to reduce the variation in grades, but it did not solve the problem of teacher subjectivity.
  • At the same time, significant evidence shows that regularly checking on students' learning progress is an essential aspect of successful teaching–but checking is different from grading. Checking implies finding out how students are doing, what they have learned well, what problems or difficulties they might be experiencing, and what corrective measures may be necessary. The process is primarily a diagnostic and prescriptive interaction between teachers and students. Grading and reporting, however, typically involve judgment of the adequacy of students' performance at a particular point in time. As such, it is primarily evaluative and descriptive.
  • To ensure a fairer distribution of grades among teachers and to bring into check the subjective nature of scoring, the idea of grading based on the normal probability, bell-shaped curve became increasingly popular. By this method, students were simply rank-ordered according to some measure of their performance or proficiency. A top percentage was then assigned a grade of A, the next percentage a grade of B, and so on. Some advocates of this method even specified the precise percentages of students that should be assigned each grade, such as the 6-22-44-22-6 system.
  • Grading on the curve was considered appropriate at that time because it was well known that the distribution of students' intelligence test scores approximated a normal probability curve. Since innate intelligence and school achievement were thought to be directly related, such a procedure seemed both fair and equitable. Grading on the curve also relieved teachers of the difficult task of having to identify specific learning criteria. Fortunately, most educators of the early twenty-first century have a better understanding of the flawed premises behind this practice and of its many negative consequences.
Blair Peterson

Do you teach individuals or 'average' students? | Times Higher Education (THE) - 1 views

  • “dynamic systems approach, [which] starts by assuming individuals vary, and seeks to identify stable patterns within that variability”. This, of course, requires rather different training and analytical tools.
  • In order to rise to this challenge, Rose believes that universities need to stop offering “a batch process” and cater far more flexibly to what real individual students (rather than idealised average students)
  • Institutions should switch their focus from “grades” to “competency”, partly determined by employers and professional associations, so that students acquire the job-related skills they require and employers become stakeholders in the university system.
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  • There are two obvious problems with grades. By reducing very different factors, such as achievement, attitude, behaviour and effort, to a single mark, they tend to represent a very crude measure.
Blair Peterson

Open-Book, Closed-Book, or 'Cheat Sheet'? Researchers Test the Merits of Exam Types - T... - 1 views

  • Another finding weakened Mr. Phillips's argument for cheat-sheet exams. An independent scorer evaluated the students' cheat sheets for organization and richness of detail. Higher-scoring cheat sheets, it turned out, had a weak relationship to performance on the exam.
  • "I was more adamant that the cheat sheet would result in better retention over all, and that wasn't the case," he said. "I think I might use more of an open book."
  • But, again, the results yielded a surprise. Students thought they would study most for the closed-book exams, but that view was not reflected in reports of their actual habits. Students in the psychology class spent the most time studying for the cheat-sheet exam, or more than four hours. Open-book exams yielded slightly fewer hours of study, while closed-book exams resulted in the least amount of time studying, 3.32 hours.
Blair Peterson

Making Student Blogs Pay Off with Blog Audits - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Ed... - 0 views

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    Assessing student blogging. College example with sample rubrics and ideas for grading and self-assessment.
Blair Peterson

Cathy N. Davidson "Now You See It: Why the Future of Higher Education Demands a Paradig... - 2 views

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    The history of grades and multiple choice tests.
Blair Peterson

Education Week Teacher: Best Practice: Formative Assessment Done Right - 2 views

  • Grant Wiggins says this about the feedback we give based on formative assessment: "Feedback is value-neutral help on worthy tasks. It describes what the learner did and did not do in relation to her goals. It is actionable information, and it empowers the student to make intelligent adjustments when she applies it to her next attempt to perform."
  • It’s information for me, but just as importantly, it’s information my students can use to achieve more and perform at higher levels.
  • Grades don’t tell them much about what they need to learn or what they need to do better. When students earn a "C," they may feel like failures, but they have little idea what to do to improve their skills.
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  • Once I realized how little help a grade was for students, I changed things—big time! Now they get the feedback they need to gauge their own progress. Sometimes my feedback is on the content of the curriculum and sometimes on foundational skills.
  • My formative feedback at each step of the way let students see how to improve their notes or summaries and whether they needed to look for more examples of the laws. From the first drafts I read, I could tell they had no idea how to write these kinds of descriptions. I had to create writing frames so that students could learn specific patterns of writing and how to use simple math calculations from their lab work to support their ideas.
Blair Peterson

The rise of the 'gentleman's A' and the GPA arms race - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • The authors attribute today’s inflation to the consumerization of higher education.
  • And indeed, some universities have explicitly lifted their grading curves (sometimes retroactively) to make graduates more competitive in the job market, leading to a sort of grade inflation arms race.
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