We aren’t assessing learning

In a presentation yesterday for the Learning Analytics and Knowledge open online class, Gardner Campbell argued that we are engaging in a factory model of student education, rather than one that reflects the complexity inherent in actual learning. In my favorite section, he uses analogies such as a daily pill box and cows feeding at a trough to convey his points.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/S5r6L4bKJrs?rel=0

Campbell went on to discuss the ways in which the tools of learning analytics we use (rubrics, student learning outcomes, objectives) reflect and sustain this industrial model, by establishing pre-set goals and tracking “achievement”. These methods cannot track learning, which is much more complex.

In addition to being, as Gardner is, just wonderful, I think this is good logical ammunition against the belief that we are actually assessing learning with our “learning management systems” and other tools designed to organize, manage and measure. It’s important to understand that our measurement systems reflect a linear, simplified model when we engage in the assessment of student work. It also goes to the heart of measuring our own effectiveness as teachers.

If learning is complex, messy, riddled with failures that lead to successes, then to assess it using methods that are simple, linear, and concrete is rather bizarre.

[Gardner’s full talk as a Collaborate recording is here]