Rene’s Assessment

It seems that, after static content, the lecture has now definitely made it into the realm of ‘what you share for free’ in stead of what you ‘sell for money’. We’ve had Teachertube for a while now, but this always struck me as being a tutor-to-tutor resource:

Bu in recent weeks we’ve had a launch of two really great resources that provide world class lectures directly to learners. A few weeks ago we saw the launch of Academic Earth which is aspiring to bring us ‘Thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars’ such as this lecture from Paul Bloom:

It seems from the embed-tag that Academic earth uses blip.tv, which is interesting. But what I really like about Academic Earth is that is often provides full transcripts and reading assignments, which makes these videos into a truly accessible and valuable independent learning resource.

And today I stumble on Youtube’s attempt to create an online iTunesU: Youtube EDU, which does not seem to have the high production value of Academic Earth, but will most likely develop very impressively in terms of sheer available content, such as this series on special relativity:

Other then being very grateful for these wonderful resources, I must also say that I am intrigued by the speed which with the traditional University is being dismantled. That information, content, and perhaps even knowledge have been commodotized is not really that surprising, but that, only a few years after that development, are already declaring the lecture dead in terms of marketable value, that does surprise me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I disagree, I am just baffled by the speed of developments. Either way, I’m going to wrap up this post, as I have some lectures to watch.

The lecture is dead: Long live the lecture!

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The report  “The Transition to Computer-Based Assessment – New Approaches to Skills Assessment and Implications for Large-scale Testing” has been published. The volume, which is based on a set of workshops that was held in Iceland in September 2008, was edited Julius Björnsson and Fritz Scheuerman. I think it gives a very broad and comprehensive overview of the current state of, and issues around, computer based assessment.

I would especially recommend The article on “CAT as a pedagogic tool” by Jakob Wandall, and “Issues in Computerized Ability Measurement: Getting out of the Jingle and Jangle Jungle” by Oliver Wilhelm.

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I must first of all thank Stephen Downes for his truly excellent post on the  Monkeysphere Ideology. It is a profound and insightful analysis of some unhealthy fundamentals in society, of which this banking crisis is perhaps just a single symptom. This post is about how the education sector perhaps is suffering the same symptoms, and so might actually be headed for a similar meltdown.

Fail

It is argued that the financial crisis is one of destructive incentives, and hyperinflation of quality ratings, that lead to a massive over-investment in what turned out to be worthless assets. A truly horrific oversimplification, but it will do for the purposes of this post. Higher Education also rates it’s products, and ironically it is a credit rating system. Attainment in the UK is measured in academic credit on levels 4 (first year undergraduate) to 8 (doctorate). Credit on these levels is highly valued, and often seen as key to successful participation in the modern information society. As a result there is a dramatic effort to widen participation in an attempt to get up to 40% of the population equiped with a level 4 qualification or higher. And in a similar way to how mortgages were handed out without ensuring clients had sufficient capital and earnings for repayment, we are now handing out academic credit without ensuring that when we hand it out, it represents adequate intellectual capital.

There is no need for this, as my case certainly doesn’t revolve around some elitist notion that the majority of the population is fundamentally incapable of learning and functioning on this level. The problem is that we are being given the wrong incentives. We are incentivized to pass, preferably with a first. Our funding, and our ranking in league-tables depends on it. And slowly but surely, this erosion is also eroding the value of Higher Education. And unfortunately, it erodes the value of all degrees, just as the credit crisis is devaluing all our houses, regardless of our credit-worthiness. And with the value of qualifications diminishing, and their cost increasing, inevitably the time will come that this eroded qualification is no longer worth the inflated tuition fee that is being asked for it.

The key for recovery to me is failure. We should be allowed to fail, learn from that failure, and let a phoenix arise from it’s ashes. We seem to have missed the point that success is a value that is relative, relative to failure. We forget that the greatest of successes have often come from strings of failures. Who knows what great innovative company might arise from the ashes of a bankrupt General Motors, but we will probably never know. Just like we will never know how great some of our students might have been after overcoming criticism, setbacks and failure, because in stead we have sent them away with only a marginal and ever decreasing  successes. Failure is the foundation of greatness, and we need to learn to embrace it.

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