REBEL GIRL was going to hold off until the holiday was over but dang — she's not the kind of teacher who doesn't give at least some reading over a long weekend. Nope.
So here's your homework. It will be followed up with responses from the likes of Clio Bluestocking who chimes in on Learning Outcomes:
Outcomes assessment — that is, ensuring that students are learning what they need to learn in order to advance to the next level or in order to have mastered basics of a subject — is generally a good idea. Some oversight on the process is good, too, especially if it is meant to improve performance not punish the performer. All fine and good, except that we, the instructors and the departments, tend to already do this. It's called "a test" or "a quiz," and "peer evaluation" and "department evaluation" through classroom observation. What seems to be demanded, however, seems to be not what the instructors and department have determined is a good means of evaluation, but what someone somewhere else had determined is a good means — even if their means has proven to be a patented failure in actually assessing mastery of a subject. The result becomes a huge waste of time in which the whole official "outcomes assessment" becomes a cynical exercise to produce numbers, while the actual assessing of learning and instruction becomes this renegade shadow activity addressing the actual problems we see in our classrooms — the ones that take time and money to actually fix.
...and Historiann, Dr. Crazy, Notorius Ph.D., tenured radical, Clio's Disciple, The Clutter Museum and other Ivory Tower rabble rousers.
But here's the text that stoked the fire: from the New York Review of Books, Anthony Grafton's wide ranging "Why are They Failing?" considers the eroding engagement of students, the rise in student debt and the decrease in education funding, the shifting priorities of administrators and much more.
excerpt:
...Is the higher education bubble about to pop? I don’t know. The more thoughtful writers warn against monocausal explanations. Bowen and his colleagues, for example, test the effects of student loans on attrition rates. They conclude that it is not clear that debt is a primary cause of student failure. Still, these developments are interwoven, in the experience of many students if not in the intentions of legislators. Imagine what it’s like to be a normal student nowadays. You did well—even very well—in high school. But you arrive at university with little experience in research and writing and little sense of what your classes have to do with your life plans. You start your first year deep in debt, with more in prospect. You work at Target or a fast-food outlet to pay for your living expenses. You live in a vast, shabby dorm or a huge, flimsy off-campus apartment complex, where your single with bath provides both privacy and isolation. And you see professors from a great distance, in space as well as culture: from the back of a vast dark auditorium, full of your peers checking Facebook on their laptops....To read the rest — and you should as it will be on the test — click here.
...The system runs, in part, on its failures. Administrators count on the tuition paid, from borrowed money, by undergraduates who they know will drop out before they use up many services. To provide teaching they exploit instructors still in graduate school, many of whom they know will also drop out and not demand tenure-track jobs. Faculty, once they have found a berth, often become blind to the problems and deaf to the cries of their own indentured students. And even where the will to do better is present, the means are often used for very different ends.
In many universities, finally, the sideshows have taken over the big tent. Competitive sports consume vast amounts of energy and money, some of which could be used to improve conditions for students. It’s hard not to be miserable when watching what pursuit of football glory has done to Rutgers, which has many excellent departments and should be—given the wealth of New Jersey—an East Coast Berkeley or Michigan. The university spends $26.9 million a year subsidizing its athletic programs. Meanwhile faculty salaries have been capped and raises canceled across the board. Desk telephones were recently removed from the offices of the historians. Repairs have been postponed, and classroom buildings, in constant use from early morning until late at night, have become shabbier and shabbier....
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11 comments:
oooh, some said what I've been thinking: "What seems to be demanded, however, seems to be not what the instructors and department have determined is a good means of evaluation, but what someone somewhere else had determined is a good means — even if their means has proven to be a patented failure in actually assessing mastery of a subject."
Yes, but are we not trapped?
On this Thanksgiving I am NOT thankful for SLOs though I AM thankful for the people who create them and yet i can't help but feel that it is an empty exercise. We ARE trapped.
SLOs: chomp-monsters that ate good teachers.
I like that "chomp-monsters" but what to do? How to resist this? It just keeps getting worse and worse. Time and resources that should be spent on teaching better classes and funding classes for more students is instead being eaten up trying to satisfy the ravenous appetites of the SLO chomp monsters.
An observation to ponder:
I believe the cause of America's students ranking so low is from nonsense courses and majors in cultural studies, i.e. African-American, Latino-Latina, women's studies, etc... All this PC stuff has been crowding out the vital stuff students need to succeed.
If they have a passion for the PC stuff, they should persue it on their own time; do Colleges really need to be handing out degrees in these kind of social justice areas?
I believe the high paid administrators should become the primary focus of SLOs, and they should be held accountable; not the teachers, as they are only executing designs created by the admins. If the students don't learn, replace the admins. They aren't protected by unions either, so it should be fairly easy to fire them. Fire them in the same maner kathy Shrader was fired; very swiftly!
Just my 2 cents...
Just a reminder: please don't feed the troll
SLOs, CORs, LEs, CTE, LHE, OSH, WTF?
I tend to agree with the troll on this subject; stuff like this is just dumbing-down our students, and has been for quite some time. What purposes do these “majors” have other than creating more social engineers? Is that what we need to become competitive again? I think not. The progressive left always seems to be so preoccupied with gender, race, social position, etc... which I suppose in places like Europe these “vocations” could be considered useful, but how many more know-it-all, non-productive control freaks with higher degrees does the world really need? Really? The truth is all that stuff doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans, so why require students to fulfill those courses and/or hand out degrees in those areas? I see it as nothing more than higher education pandering to the demands of certain ethnicities and agendas.
Here’s an example of how dumb this is: an Hispanic person majors in and receives a degree in Latino-Latina studies. How hard or challenging you think that was? How much critical thinking was involved? The program no doubt highlighted and drilled-in all the inequities between that race and the dominant American race, and for what purpose? You tell me…
If the govt. imposes SLOs, why not go after the 1%’er admins. for failing to do their part?
Whatever one might think of cultural studies, the notion that such programs are "the reason" for our decline is preposterous. Hence the "troll" warning.
I think part of the problem is that students don't read - just like many of the commentators on this blog. Please READ the article that rebel girl linked to BEFORE you comment.
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