Category: Authentic assessment

The future of learning: Five trends that could change the face of Indian education

30th January 2017

The education system in India is in trouble and everybody knows it, not least of whom is the Government, whose inputs to the National Education Policy 2016 — currently in draft form — do not shirk away from the scale of the problem. In this preliminary document it is acknowledged that learners are disengaged, teachers are untrained and unmotivated, school leadership is lacking, and infrastructure is poor; factors which contribute to learning outcomes that fall a long way short of those required if India — soon to have the largest working population in the world — is to fully exploit its demographic dividend.

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Want to eliminate cheating? Ask better questions

30th June 2013

There was an excellent piece in The Conversation a week or so ago written by Beverley Oliver (@DVCEdDeakin) entitled, Proving knowledge by degrees: MOOCs and the challenge of assessment. The reference to MOOCs in the title is a useful device for attracting attention, but the content of the article focuses on the quality of assessment design, and has broader applicability beyond the context of MOOCs.

The design of assessment tasks is critical to the creation of authentic learning environments. Student engagement and the deep learning that ensues, is far more likely if students can see the point of what they doing (see, for example, Lizzio & Wilson, 2013). As Professor Oliver notes:

Perhaps instead of focusing on how we test students, a more purposeful question might be: presuming we know what outcomes we need students to achieve, and at what standard, what evidence will enable us to judge that this student is ready to graduate? In other words, assessment tasks are opportunities for students to create evidence of learning achievements in an array of formats.

In other words, if we look upon assessment as learning, rather than of learning, the approach taken by the learner (and faculty) takes on a completely different complexion, as Dr Adele Flood describes in this video clip.

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The Five Minute University

11th April 2012

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c00GPvns31U]
This classic clip from a Father Guido Sarducci stand up routine was shown a couple of times as a conference I attended recently. Unfortunately, this caricature of the extent and depth of learning at university is not too far from the truth. Ideally, learning experience should translate into competence, but so long as assessments focus on testing memories rather than skills, the probability of this happening remains low.

This problem has become particularly acute in recent times as the gap between university curricula and the knowledge and skills required in a digital age has widened. It has been a hot topic in India for a while now, but as a quick Google search demonstrates, it is a global problem.

The solution? Well, Father Sarducci may have the right formula. Start by asking what a graduate should be able to do once they finish.

Hopefully, this should take longer than five minutes.

Universities and the Brave New Academic World

8th February 2012


Image source: telegraph.co.uk

An article published in the UK Sunday Times at the weekend and republished in The Australian yesterday adds another name to the growing band of influential figures seriously challenging the notion of university education — at least as it is currently structured. This time it is Larry Summers, former President of Harvard University, and erstwhile colleague of that other Harvard academic, Clayton Christensen, who has also set the cat amongst the pigeons with his most recent book, The Innovative University.

According to Summers, the explosion of knowledge, and our ability to access it through computers, demands change in the way universities operate. Furthermore, most companies look nothing like they did 50 years ago, yet undergraduate education looks much as it did in the middle of the 20th century. He also argues that:

Universities are going to have to be increasingly about pinpointing principles, ways of thinking, common values and common aspects of experience rather than trying to teach all there is to know because no one can know all there is to know.

This sounds to me like an argument for getting students to analyse rather than memorise, which may not appear a big deal except that it would mean a fundamental shift in the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices of a great many tertiary educational institutions around the world.

The image above is a common sight in universities everywhere. It does not resemble any real world setting where a graduate might be expected to apply their newly acquired knowledge and analytical skills. They are also using pens and paper which, while quaint, is not very 21st century.

Beyond critical thinking

2nd December 2011


Michael Wesch of A Vision of Students Today fame gave a TEDx talk last year that I revisited the other day when I found myself (frustratingly) having to justify the case for authentic assessment. “But they’ll cheat won’t they?” is the classic response I get when I present the case for an open-book, open-web summative assessment. Some research I did with Amy Wong back in 2009 suggests the contrary but a much more important question is why someone would want to cheat in the first place.

If the test of a person’s ‘knowledge’ is the ability to dredge information from the brain and use this to piece together something resembling a coherent argument in the unnatural setting of an examination hall, then resorting to unethical means for the dredging process will never be beyond temptation.

If, on the other hand, the knowledge to be tested is a person’s ability to think on one’s feet to solve unstructured, real-world problems, generating unique, meaningful and useful responses, how is it possible to cheat?

Wesch uses the term knowledge-able to describe this attribute, which amounts to a little more than being ‘knowledgeable’. The difference between the two is that the latter does not necessarily require you to practice your knowledge, where you go beyond critical thinking to actually create meaning.

Acquiring knowledge-ability effectively ‘future-proofs’ your learning … it is learning that lasts way beyond the ‘test’.

Occupy Education

10th November 2011


I’ve been monitoring the nascent Occupy Education movement with interest over the last couple of weeks, not least because there are so many dimensions to it. The complexity of it all has been addressed far more coherently than I ever could over at Tenured Radical, but my crude interpretation is that it essentially revolves around access and relevance (or lack thereof!)

These two factors would appear inextricably linked, in my mind, as access to an affordable education is obviously more worthwhile if it also happens to be relevant and useful, yet few of the Facebook contributions and Tumblr pages I have perused so far seem to make this connection, there being a tendency to focus on one or the other.

I understand how — given the origins of the Occupy movement — the socioeconomic dimension takes primacy, but if there is to be reform to provide equity of access, I hope an equal amount of energy is expended in ensuring it is access to a quality education, that accommodates the learning styles and life styles of individual learners, and not some factory model that caters to the lowest common denominator.

An Occupy Education movement that focuses on flexible delivery of programmes, allowing people to fully participate, assessing learning outcomes in an authentic and engaging manner is one I would happily sign up for, because I think it would have a good chance of addressing both the inequities and irrelevancies that currently plague the education system in the US and elsewhere.

Pedagogy 2.0: ICTs and Disruptive Innovation

2nd April 2011

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRyPayyUYPE]
This is an excerpt from a presentation I gave last month at the EDGE Forum 2011: Shaping the Future of Indian Higher Education, ICT: The Catalyst for Next Generation Learning Environments in Education, at the India Habitat Center in New Delhi. It certainly seemed to provoke a lot of discussion afterwards which was very pleasing. Most importantly, the widely held view — with very few dissenting voices — was that India is ready for this kind of paradigm shift in thinking. Furthermore, given ICTs are so readily embraced and a key platform for the country’s economic development, there should be fewer obstacles to the adoption of Pedagogy 2.0 in India compared to other countries where the old paradigm may be more entrenched.

India’s chalk and talk problem

21st October 2010


Image source: sidedish.dmagazine.com

There was an interesting piece in the The Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month entitled India’s Company Classrooms Challenge ‘Chalk and Talk’ Colleges. The reason it is interesting, is that I’m not entirely sure the corporate universities are challenging the didactic pedagogy so commonplace in Indian institutions of higher education. In the Infosys case cited, the key difference, it would seem, is that PowerPoint is preferred to the chalkboard. The fact the wifi is turned off during class time would seem to indicate that Web 2.0 approaches to learning are yet to be readily accepted.

The Indian corporate sector has been complaining loudly about the inability of the higher education system to produce ‘job ready’ graduates for some time, some estimating that only one in four graduates possess the requisites skills. As a consequence, a new market player has emerged that is rather quaintly referred to as ‘finishing school’. This is not somewhere in Switzerland where the British aristocracy send their daughters to learn deportment, it’s a modest looking facility in the outskirts of an India metro where recent graduates learn the soft skills to enable them to participate as fully fledged members of the global workforce.

There is every chance that this segment of the Indian education industry will continue to expand for some time yet because success in education and success in the business world is chalk and cheese [pun intended]. Indian students will continue to ‘mug up for exams’ — a phrase in common parlance in the UK in the 1950s — because very little has changed within the Indian university sector since the 1950s. The focus is on teaching not learning, and testing memories not problem-solving skills. Industry, meanwhile, requires life-long learners and problem solvers.

Apologists for the system will no doubt point out that at every top university and leading corporate in the world you will find well-educated Indians. This, of course, is a product of the law of large numbers. These people have succeeded in spite of the system. Imagine what could be achieved if there were widespread acceptance of a learner-centric, technology-enhanced, participatory pedagogy with authentic assessment. To date, there has been very little incentive for institutions of higher education to change. With the opening up of the Indian education system to foreign competition, domestic institutions may be forced to reflect on their outdated practices.

Combatting the US High School Drop Out Epidemic

15th June 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AJkAZlR5sc]

One in three students drops out before they graduate in the United States each year (7000 every day or one every 26 seconds). In some cities the ratio is one in two. From having the highest graduation rate in the world, the US now ranks 18th and the cost of this epidemic is non-trivial.

First of all, high school drop-outs are more likely to be unemployed. Some 15% are out of work compared to the national average of 9.4%. This costs taxpayers more than USD8 billion annually in welfare payments. If they are in work, they end up earning about USD10,000 less a year than high school graduates which corresponds to about USD300 billion in lost earnings every year. High school drop-outs are also more likely to be incarcerated. Almost 60% of inmates are high school drop outs and, as one speaker in this video clip asserts, there are schools in Los Angeles, for example, where more kids go to prison than to college.

The factors contributing to the high drop out rates are varied and have as much to do with the decaying fabric of society as anything else. The problem, of course, is that social problems will only get worse unless there is a education system in place that works, keeps people in school, and has them graduate with the skills and self-esteem to make a positive contribution to society. Charter schools like the one described in Philadelphia might be the answer for some, but a solution has to be rolled out a broader scale, and this requires a rethink on what it means to go to school. The ‘industrial model’ of schooling with a standardised curriculum, a fixed school day, and neat rows of desks and chairs is certainly no longer relevant.

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