Interestingly enough this week’s post is about assessment and not the wonderful English producer I’ve recently fallen in love with (hence the image above).
As I’ve spent my weekend revamping a portion of my course inspired by the “gaming segment” earlier in the semester, I’ve had to figure out my own method of assessment as what I’m implementing is different than what any other instructor teaching my course is doing. Historically in ENGE 1215, we’ve not provided rubrics to prevent the following conversations:
Trying to break students out of the mindset of learning for the test or for the grade is a difficult task. For at least 12 years of formal education, students perform with one goal in mind “how to get the A”. This mindset is dangerous – it teaches students that if they’re robots they can succeed.
So how can we assess students in a manner that encourages them to pursue knowledge and not the grade? Well one radical idea is to get rid of all grades…
However we know this isn’t the most feasible route. Our society is built on a ranking system and in order to create those ranks we must have some sort of evaluation system in place. But again this feels counter-intuitive. I like the notion mentioned in Kohn’s “The Case Against Grades” of “diluting or diminishing” grades and found it comfortingly timely as I solidified the rubric I posted for one of my students’ assignments. The class voted to not have a major final paper as a part of their class project and in it’s place two mandatory meetings with me as they progress throughout the project. However, I still wanted to assess their growth in technical writing. My compromise – having my students create a 1 page single spaced summary based on their detailed outlines that will be a part of the grade they receive for their update meeting. So instead of one 60 pts multipage final paper, my students will have two update meetings with 1 page summaries, 30 pts each (where the summary is 10pts of the 30). To me, this made sense in allowing students to have the entire real world engineering project experience as it pertains to conceptual ideas: create the idea, document the idea in an outline (or concept map), present the idea in summary to the manager as a part of weekly or bi-weekly meetings. It makes sense to me – hopefully it makes sense to them too ?.
In terms of other GRADES, I’ve fallen in love with these songs maybe you will too ?.
It’s great how you seem to be adapting your curriculum to some new ideas; and the idea of splitting a grade up seems far kinder than having one assignment worth 60%. The more realistic setting will hopefully also get your students more in tune with the real world!
I like your concrete examples of how to be more flexible with assessment and that you gave the students a choice. It seems intuitive to me that if students pick a format for work that they are more comfortable with, there may be more chance they will be excited about a project for its own sake rather than seeing it only as a stepping stone to getting the A.
Thank you for writing about real examples that you are practicing! Its awesome that you are actively making changes to your class based on material and discussions stemmed from GEDI. I think one of the biggest problems I face is how these big topics we discuss can be actually be applied…mostly because I am not currently teaching and have not taught a class for a few years now. That disconnect makes it hard to really to believe in some of the topics we discuss.
Nice use of GIFs, Racheida. I like that you are modifying your courses based on the material we have covered in class. I really like your project management approach to grading. When working as a team on a major project you have to be able to provide accurate updates to your sponsor about your progress. These updates need to be easily understood, free of jargon, and most importantly, concise. Many project sponsors like having these face to face meetings prior to having a final report in hand because it allows for them to “steer” the research or work in the way they would like it to go (per the contract) if they see it going off the rails.
I think your method is not only applicable to real world situations, but generally awesome and far less stress inducing compared to standard assessments. I’d love to see this implemented more broadly in engineering.