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According to Molly Worthen's article in The New York Times, The Misguided Drive to Measure 'Learning Outcomes':
"[...] In 2018, more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little. [...]"
But apparently, there is little to show for tons of money and effort expended to gather data on what students are really learning or adapting curricula to their actual needs.
Mr. Erik Gilbert, a professor of history at Arkansas State University, who has criticized the methods, said to the author: 'Maybe all your students have full-time jobs, but that's something you can't fix, even though that's really the core problem. Instead, you're expected to find some small problem, like students don't understand historical chronology, so you might add a reading to address that. You're supposed to make something up every semester, then write up a narrative.'
As Frank Furedi, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told the author about the situation in Britain: 'It's a bit like the old Soviet Union. You speak two languages. You do a performance for the sake of the auditors, but in reality, you carry on.'
As the author puts it: 'If we describe college courses as mainly delivery mechanisms for skills to please a future employer [...] We end up using the language of the capitalist marketplace and speak to our students as customers rather than fellow thinkers. They deserve better. [...] Producing thoughtful, talented graduates is not a matter of focusing on market-ready skills. It's about giving students an opportunity that most of them will never have again in their lives: the chance for serious exploration of complicated intellectual problems, the gift of time in an institution where curiosity and discovery are the source of meaning.'
A lengthy read, but worthwhile. Are we preparing current students better than in the past or are we simply siphoning money out of them? Yesteryear, a degree was a sure bet to a better life, nowadays, it doesn't mean as much. Are the education methods lacking or is the surplus of graduates to blame for useless degrees?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday March 01 2018, @11:32PM (5 children)
What I see in all of this nonsense is "Kids aren't learning much but we can't say how little because we suck so bad we can't even measure how much we suck so we are going to declare it wrong to even ask questions in the area of how much and what we are sucking. Shut up and give us more money or you hate children."
Burn it down, salt the earth it once stood on. Build anew.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday March 01 2018, @11:38PM (4 children)
I, for one, cannot even begin to measure the depths of jmorris' suck when it comes to education. But that is something that is shared by Dark Matter, Blackholes, and according to Einstein, human ignorance in general. When you gaze into the jmorris, the abyss stares back, but it is just kind of empty, an angry amorphous darkness, an infinite morass of despair and impotence.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 02 2018, @03:46AM (3 children)
Oh, come on, Arisuchus - you know how to measure one hell of a lot of suck! There isn't to much suck in the universe for you to measure!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday March 02 2018, @04:23AM (2 children)
My only point was, off the scale is off the scale. We have no way to know how much off the scale it is, or it would be on the scale! Try to keep up, Runaway! It is only honest organic anti-intellectualism like yours that saves American from the truly perverse Dark Enlightenment, dank meme alt-right anarchism of the jmorrises of the world. Carry on, sailor!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 02 2018, @03:09PM (1 child)
The brainiacs haven't devised a working scale, so how the hell can any of this be "off the scale"? Oh - you're kinda hoping that maybe they'll come up with a scale, and some kind of meaningful measurements to put on the scale? Don't hold your breath.
As old as you are, maybe you can cite a few instance in which a problem was entrusted to politicians, and they actually got it right. Maybe you can cite instances in which they managed to scale anything to real life?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @06:26PM
Fucking hell runaway, it is a metaphor for how off-base and crazy jmorris is. That dude I can only surmise is severe Aspbergers which makes him good at narrow technical fields and pure garbage in everything else. Perhaps he is just another of those self-taught "geniuses" who automatically knows everything about any topic and can speak with "authority" hehe. He is a blight upon these discussions, spreading bad information and even worse ideology.
You are halfway between sane and propagandized conservative, I do hope you divest from creatures such as jmorris and khallow.