CCK08 – Assessment/Marking and Networks OR Do you Trust Your Grade to the Cloud?
I’m still sorting through the complexity theory readings for this week, but one of them made me think of something else. It’s now time for one of my $64,000 questions. How does/should assessment work in a decentralized/networked learning environment?
When I read Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning , I liked the openness of the course structure, but immediately wondered student learning was assessed. Lisa Lane also writes about being graded/marked in CCK08.
The problem is this. Educators don’t just enable learning, they also serve as gatekeepers. Whether or not they like it, or think they ought to, much of the rest of the world uses the marks/grades and degrees that educators generate as a measure of a given person’s skills. It seems to me that one undermines networked learning to some degree if, after allowing the learning to be decentralized and learner directed, the assessment of that learning is still centralized and instructor directed.
So how would one do networked assessment? There’s always peer review, but many are wary of it because
- Only some students can be counted on to be dispassionate and fair in their peer assessments (how do we ensure Alice and Bob don’t grade each other poorly because they had a personal spat the weekend before peer evaluations are due?)
- Particularly early in a learning process, students may not understand the evaluation criteria or the course material well enough to peer assess effectively.
Is there some other way to do networked assessment, or does the nature of grading make it inherently an authoritarian exercise?
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It seems to me that one undermines networked learning to some degree if, after allowing the learning to be decentralized and learner directed, the assessment of that learning is still centralized and instructor directed.
I would think that one could allow the assessment of learning to be decentralized (students decide on how to mark the assignment, decide on their own rubrics, etc) and still have it instructor marked. While that does allow for the possibility of the assignment being too easy (as an instuctor you could step in and demand that a portion of the mark be more stringent) that shouldn’t be an issue.
I tend to agree that grading is an authoritarian exercise, regardless of the form it takes.
I think the individual courses either won’t be evaluated or will by tested by a computer marking system like lyryx. When one feels qualified, there will be a rigorous testing process for certification to enter any field. First students will have to pass a general knowledge testing that meets a worldwide standard. If they can get through that process, they’ll send in a portfolio to be evaluated and finally they will have to prove themselves in front of a panel. The money saved on buildings could be diverted towards the certification process. Academics will still have work preparing students, developing courses, setting standards, building knowledge through research and ensuring that people entering their field have met a recognized academic standard.
This was necessary regardless of technology. We need consistent worldwide standards so people can move with recognized qualifications. There are too many degrees out there that don’t mean anything because the papers were bought or plagarized, people were exchanging sex for marks, they were coming up with cleverer and cleverer ways to cheat, etc. It would prevent setting a test and then specifically teaching towards that test. And it would do something about parental donations buying degrees.
Information is available for everyone but if one wanted to be certified, that certification process would be rigorous in order to be internationally recognized and ensure the standards of the profession are maintained.
I have just been pulling quotes from
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=df8mx5rb_78g755hr
Bill is suggesting a more holistic assessment process. More or less the student laying out the evidence of evolution of thinking/learning.
“These could be in the form of activity parameters such as how much reading students do, how extensive their journal entries are, how much they participate in class, how many exercises they have completed, etc. They could also be in the form of self-report on how motivated students feel and how interesting the material is to them.” I think this could be made quite rigorous.