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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part 2): Cultivating Authority
My first post in this series on assessment distinguished wicked problems from tame problems, which are characterized by codified rules, recognizable patterns, and clearly defined structures for obtaining and interpreting feedback. The clarity of tame problems makes assessing responses fairly straightforward; we can see whether a response is right or wrong and, if it is… Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part 1)
I have a love-hate relationship with the enterprise of learning assessment. By assessment, I mean both the formative, “checking in to see how someone is doing at a given moment” assessments and the summative, “this is how you did and what that says about what you learned” assessments that get recorded in gradebooks and eventually… Continue reading
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Teaching as Wicked Learning
One of my favorite books of the past 10 years is David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Among many fascinating topics addressed in the book, I want to focus on the distinctions Epstein makes between kind and wicked learning environments and, more specifically, how people learn (or fail to learn) from… Continue reading
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Learning as Play
“It’s better to be wrong than boring.” So believes Andre Geim, the only scientist to win both a Nobel Prize—for isolating the highly versatile material graphene—and an Ig Nobel Prize—for his highly unconventional experiments levitating frogs. Geim is what art historian Sarah Lewis calls a deliberate amateur, someone driven by a restless spirit of exploration,… Continue reading
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Identifying Pedagogical Values
Backward course design is a commonly used practice in which teachers begin course planning by determining their intended learning outcomes, and then they develop learning modules and assignments in correspondence with those outcomes. I like backward design, but I think it overlooks a crucial first step, which is to identify what pedagogical values are guiding… Continue reading
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Student Engagement is Crucial. But Can We Measure It, and Should We Even Try?
I have a colleague who directs our university’s journalism program. She loves attending editorial meetings of the campus newspaper, where the students’ eagerness to find compelling stories and to receive feedback on their writing is palpable. Seeing students this excited to engage the process, to improve their skills, to work toward a collective goal …… Continue reading
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An Opening Statement (of sorts)
It is a commonplace that U.S. higher education faces not just a time of crisis, but layers of crises: The demographic cliff, the deep cuts to funding, the rapidly evolving and unpredictable impacts of artificial intelligence, the ascendant meme that college is no longer vital to career success, the incessant political attacks … The Chronicle… Continue reading
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Teaching Inquiry 