tony cairns

I agree with Peter Rawsthorne

Is it possible to assess emergent learning? In science the testing fixes and creates the product, process and phenomena. So testing actually makes it so. Do testing to see if the circumstances, teaching learning is effective if only to learn how to teach and learn better but it’s a snapshot imperfect tool that excludes more data than it captures. The effect of testing may create the phenomena, will influence the phenomena and may destroy the phenomena rather than reinforce it. it certainly closes out other options.

I think self-assessment, peer assessment and digital tracking without intervention may be valid but testing may not tell you what you think it is telling you.

How do you 'capture' learning that is not expected?

I think all learning, discovery and original science is unexpected - if we expected it - it wouldn’t be unexpected. I think it’s hard to know what students and teachers, know, learn and think. Memories are made up of dream fragments that we assemble on the fly so there is no future or past just a present becoming and making both through making meaningful stories. If there is a past then there is no reason why it isn’t the future and vice versa i.e. they both plot, progress and proceed the same. i think it’s all down to choices we make on a moment by moment basis at a nanoparticle, micro and cellular level - most of these cells are not ours but bacterial or fungal or even viruses. So we are a sort of a multispecies hive or ecology lurching into other ecosystems in both time and space. Capture is the wrong word, track, discover, manifest, measure, assess, 

How do you measure or value it? 

If you measure it then start with self-assessment through reflection, journaling and meta data analysis, move to more interventionist approaches but avoid detection of assessment, videoing simulating and drama. Finally if you must invent a totally artificial paper based time resource support and location limited test based on comprehension, writing, numeracy and scientific literacy skills and inflict that on all students of a certain age based cohort on an annual basis and tie careers, lives and income to such spurious measure at your and their peril. But don’t fool yourselves, students, managers, bosses assessors and professional peers and colleagues that it is anything more than your ability to create a newer swifter more attractive mouse trap – ie mouse dead - cheese safe

Are they the right questions or are they flawed? 

Assessment is more for the teacher’s managers to rank and negate/reward teachers. They interfere with learning and become the purpose of the process. Teachers teach to the test and to the assessment questions – they forgo learning and teaching and replace with cramming, revising, reiterating, repeating, replicating rather than discovering, exploring and learning. Learning is replaced with grading. It is part of but not the reason for education it seeks to measure but there is no transferability, objectivity or point to it apart from ranking students and teachers and making rewards and disincentives easier to administer

The problem with not assessing brain surgery is the dead bodies of those that did not adopt the strategy that resulted in the best outcomes for the patient, family community and professions – both surgeons and patients – but few things are as extreme as this – most are incremental and not mission or survival crucial. Also brain surgeon’s and surgery changes over time from shamans to trepanning, to laser surgery and so should assessments and processes – robotic surgery and assessment simulations are now coming into focus

Hi David

Value is normally attributed to price, scarcity, ease of use and cost in terms of access, time and resource commitment - low price or even worse free price is normally related to something of no or low value, easily accessed or achieved by many in a short period of time.

Students are paying with 3 years of their life minimum - (I spent 14 plus years enrolled at universities in New Zealand) up to $300K (Ten students owed $2.9 million in loans by 2012) Fees are rising and living costs too - universities are placing more restrictions on entry with higher grades needed to enrol and return to higher studies.

If it looks too good to be true (as in OER0 then it probably is or is perceived as worthless. If few or no universities are crediting te courses with real value - how can the students, market and teachers be expected to respond in any other way - if it looks like a goose, if it swims like a goose and honks like a goose maybe it really is a goose and not worth a gander.

I think OERu needs to move away from accreditation, gateway coursing and certification and recognise OERu as a potential  source of positive PR, learning for life and love of learning, and as a free add on for their pre-existing paid for courses.

I note in NZ that when I enrolled in my first degrees in the late Triassic that only 13% of our population enrolled in university degrees - now its touching 50 -  perhaps its those extra 40% who can enrol free in OERu and take the pressure off campus, classroom and lab space at schools and universities.

When I  enrolled there was just one big computer in its own building with men in lab coats servings it needs - feeding it paper tapes with holes punched in it - my first programmes in basic sought the how and why of hostel relations and used all the social science departments annual budget to do crosstab and regression analysis - performed free now on any spread sheet in microseconds -  now my kids flip effortlessly  from android uberdevice to Ipad to laptop to net - where once it took weeks to run a programme successfully - so its all changed and will keep changing faster and faster

Why not stream all your lectures, notes, virtual field trips and labs to free websites and give away all your teaching and learning resources - that may make you a magnet university (tho this may further devalue your products processes and degrees) whether it’s for 10, 100 or 100 students it makes little difference in access and upload costs to service 10,000 100, 000 or 1,000, 0000 people many of whom have already paid for your salaries, chairs and buildings via fees taxes and grants over their own and ancestors lifetimes.

With NZ universities in free-fall in the academic ranking stakes it makes no financial, ethical or moral sense to further impede, impound or inhibit the flow of info from producers to consumers and back again. I think we should let the info flow and stop building our careers on clipping the ticket every time it runs through our minds, fingers and servers. This will be unpleasant in the short and medium term but such a democratization of knowledge will be useful in reordering the future, I think certifcation will be a blind alley in a fully sited world.

Cheers tony

Tony Cairns - tony.cairns@paradise.net.nz - www.nzgdb.co.nz
42 Fortunatus Street, Vogeltown, Wellington, 6021 NEW ZEALAND
Science Teacher at Wellington High School tony.cairns@whs.school.nz
Home phone (644) 934 8669 Work (644) 385 8911 Mobile 022 653 4021

I agree with Rory - above - and i am reminded that the golden horde trvelled far with their tents packed tight. That 1 in 200 still carries its leaders genes (including me)  should not blind us to the power and persusion of more modern day Khans. For it is in ther academies, wiki fields and WINyardsthat my students labour. My students carry 3 devices one the phone connects to youtube, spoify or even itunes to drown out theri teachers voice another the (i)pad, (i)pod or note(book)  plays the videos games and skpes to hide the sight of teachers too and third my students carry cams and coms to link to every other student cohort.

How can teachers let alone OER ever compete and hope to win their attention, time and energy. Students are mainlining data, they are info junkies and they rarely dine on our toxic brews of words and still images form a long forgotten age when we were young.

In musems where i curated for 7 long years and advised for another 7 -  the object, memory and story were king queen and fool. In teaching the experience, experiment and explorations remain our bishop, knight and rook. In OER the wiki, tweet and post become our 1, 2 and 3 but all are gone before the kids arrive

Credentials are nothing to kids, they arrive for credits, swot for exams and pay for degrees. More paper in a digital age is recycled unread, unnoted and undone. Creeping credentialism runs out of wall space. Kids value, time, money and contact as we do not the writings readings and numbers of ages past. Co construction of knowledge only works if you have something to say and someone wants to listen

I think education suffers if we think we have something worth listening to rather than listen to(o)

I think the OERs that work are the ones we try and ban - the ones that offend us the one that shock us

I think wikis are pretty damn dead and buried and before you think I am some troll come to rattle the wooden  bridges of the billy goat gruffs let me explain that yes we used them to no small success in 2009 and maybe 2010 and they were boring teacer led dump heaps even then - students had moved to logs, vlogs and texts

As for lectures videoed and mixed we tried that in the 2010s and 2011s to equally faint acclaim

My thoughts are simple - what we try and ban is what works - what we disdain is current what we reject is modern 

We tried to ban powder keg games that taught bomb making and explosive analysis they keep creeping back in on sticks, drives and emails We tried to ban YouTube but it crept through the walls with hacked networks and repeater stations in basements and lockers. 

We banned phones, pads, games, blogs, YouTube, tumblr, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia - what we did not know and could not understand was that the utility, ubiquity and reward startegies/feedback mechanism made all the above winners in their time and we came late to the party to adopt if not use all of them

What we dislike is liked by our students, what we disdain they respect, when we despair they repair - its a function and product of aging to be on the wrong side of technology, education and history

or in the mortal words of Blam Blam Blam Don't fight it marsha(ls) It's bigger than the both of us

I think Pauls questions are good ie 

What questions should the OERu network be asking to inform its future?

• Who are the target students OERu wants to serve?
• How will OERu recruit, retain and ensure student completion of OERu offerings?
• How can OERu surround OERu offerings with student supports?
• What will be the tangible outcome and benefit students achieve on completion?
• What does success look like in 1 year, 3 years and 5 years?

But I seek to change the time scale to 1 month, 3 mnths and 6 months as technology is speeding up and the time to market (OERs) decreases

I seek to change the word student to content consumer and provider

I think students need to design lead test and use OERs apps, sites and processes

I thik there is no completion its just survival to be noticed in a tide of info that runs quickly out of our safe harbours to meet the tsunami of data crashing on our screens

I think its a contest for time energy and atoms of students minds eyes and brains

Success is being ere next week, month and year, tenured or not, funded or no,t relevant and useful or not

Service is a worthy goal in the contest of memes but i am not sure what currency it holds or carrries in a free contest of ideas

I think students and teachers are using a far deeper and richer stream of information. Students are accessing all available info on all screens 24/7 and teachers are trying to keep up. The world and info is a lot more fluid fast moving and diverse than the streams on offer here. I am thinking of 3D modelling of data, 3D printing of designs and 3D Art music and drama that is occuring just in my school at the moment. I think text and writing is dying and moving image is all - this is a difficult time of transition for those baby boomers like myself or even later generations. The books, texts an essays that we przied and prised from students are as dead in the water as oracles keel. Students are flying on foils and we are in case boats and zodiacs last seen on babylonian tablets. I thought the future was gaming then 3D simulation then altered and augmented reality but that was the last 3 years (2011 - 2013) now its singualrity, travelling towards epsilon and mega data. In short the speed of info is reaching towards an asymptote at exponetial growth - the old power relations and numeric processes fall away and we are left in the dust of our star flung students - we are rounded ere on earth while their minds, technology and processes raom the universe. We need more than a paradigm shift we need new species, ecosystems and ways of being to remain relevant and useful to our offspring in the next 3 months days or hours let alone 3 years.