Well, on the issue that caused the firestorm in
the first place - single method of evaluation -
certainly the results, since I've added writing
components, do bear out students' complaint
that an objective test is not necessarily the best
or sole way in which they should be evaluated.
So it did give students another way to
demonstrate their learning.
Besides, I would argue that even though the
grade curve was improved in favor of GPAs,
that rigor was actually increased.
And the rigor, I would argue, was increased
because each of the kinds of writing that I
assigned required a different kind of skill set.
One set of assignments was designed to teach
them to read scholarly literature and extract
the main point.
Along with that went the skill of designing a
research question, indentifying an unidentified
question from research already completed.
Another was constructing an argument around
ethnographic film and doing analysis of
ethnographic data in that genre.
And then there was the community action
project, and then they did some discussion
board work around the “western reads” novel.
So, each of them had a different form, a
different skill, a different purpose and a
different outcome. And I think adding those
four components to the course made it a more
rigorous and a more rich experience for
incoming freshman and their transition to
what college education – university education
– looks like.
When I was designing that I really had
students in mind, but as it turns out those have
great value for me as a teacher as well.
What it does for me, is it gives me an
immediate feedback loop on a week to week
basis about how students are understand the
concepts of the discussion for that week, of
the learning for that week, without having to
wait three weeks or four weeks for an exam to
see that there was widespread
misunderstanding or not understanding of key
points in the material.
One of the things that I have learned from this,
is that it doesn’t have to be burdensome for
me to give them feedback on those kinds of
issues because I can write a blackboard letter
to all of them saying “this week I noticed that
many of you thought…” and you’d fill in
whatever the misconception is and then
straighten it out.
So, it’s not a matter of one-on-one with each
of them but broadcasting it to the wider class.
The other wonderful thing that I’ve found is,
on that issue of being a real person in a
classroom, that by spreading out the good
examples, one of the ways I try to teach them
what I’m looking for, is to pull out the
Sterling examples from every week.
Get permission from the author of those good
examples and then give those to the class as
models for what would have been a very good
assignment and I make sure that I distribute
that voice because there are many students
who do well every week and it allows them to
be acknowledged for their work and it allows
students to see other students succeeding.
When it’s strictly exams, whether you
exchange exam scores and have a feel for how
the class is doing, it happens in the dark and
this way they can see visible success weekly
in the class.