We talked about using portfolios. 

Fred: new model: badges - good for lifelong learning, skills... but not good for new frosh coming to College for 1st time. Important to have a coupling for assessment and learning. Too many assessments - they are debatable in terms of perfection - same goes for badges. 

Cable: different assessment for liberal arts "goals"... learning to negotiate, persuade, think, write, come to consensus, solve impossiblly complex challenges, etc.... there assessment is performance, writing, putting forth one's ideas in public settings for public critique from peers, instructor, "experts" in the community.

Cable: badges may work great if the goal is getting a job (just one use case for badges) and the national orgs are in line with employers... and those competencies and skills can be put into a badge - and then education opportunities are aligned to the badges.  As someone who hires people, I'd much rather see a resume with badges than some general BS degree from an accredited institution of higher educaiton.


Is assessment inherently bad or have we just attached a stigma to "testing"?
    -It is always helpful to know what you know and know what you don't.  Rather than looking at tests as things we pass or fail.
            If assessment comes at the end, we are too late.  If assessment is iterative (and lacking "finality") are we really tryint to teach?  
            Should our goal be for everyone to score 100%?
                -Be careful of false positives as well... sometimes we promote people through the system and give a false sense of mastery.

Language instruction is also an area where assessment occurs naturally. A friend in an ESL program has students say "I don't want to speak until I've learned the language"...


If education is an experience, should assessment be an observation of that process?
    What can we learn from knighthood?  Dueling.  Heirarchy.  Peer Promotion.

Hierarchy how? Dueling is performative, so its assessment is intrinsic? 

How is it possible to reconcile gaming practices with attempts to judge teacher effectiveness through Value Added measures (VAR) ?

How can we help "Brianna" succeed?  (J. Jarrett, Open Ed 2011)
    What sort of assessment can empower?
            Also, note that people tend to learn best when reviewing material they have just missed on a test: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

it seems that as long as an intellectual coupling exists between education and work force preparartion, we are going to struggle with the tension between learning and credentialing. If employers are the gatekeepers and arbiters, credentials will remain the prevailing evaluation of of an individual's potential to succeed.  Ironically, we earn "badges" in the workplace, where learning is more organic and project oriented.

Is there a recap of the Brianna example? Unfortunately I missed the opening keynote, and want to catch up...

Brianna wanted to be a Veternarian. She had to work 2 jobs to pay for school, was falling asleep in class, failed her classes and dropped out.led her classes and dropped out. There could be an open university-type program for that, but would that work for all?  

I have an example I wanted to get feedback on: I run Student Reporting Labs: high school classes are paired with their local PBS station.  The station sends a public media journalist to be a mentor.  The PBS NewsHour provides CC cleared footage that the students can use.   The topics are big and challenging: The Supreme Court, Climate Change, Immigration, the Economy.  They go out and report, interview experts and craft a 3-5 minute video.  They get feedback on scripts, rough cuts, final videos.  If they are good, they are posted on our national site:
http://studentreportinglabs.com
presentation tomorrow (thursday) at 10:15 -- including 2 kids who were part of the project in Salt Lake.



We have a cultural sense of what a "credential" (from an Ivy League college for example), but what are we labelling or saying with our credential sysetm?


Assessments are far from perfect.  (no one can disagree)
    -Certain types of tests are biased to certain learners.  Multiple choice, oral, essay, creative, analytical, etc.
    
    
True learning, free form learning is difficult to assess with traditional tests.  Assessment should be meaningfully related to the goal for learning.
Assessment needs to tie into intrinsic goals. Assessment also should include both formal and informal incremental feedback - personal and computer (objective).
It is possible that badges - with a cool factor - may provide the intrinsic motivation.



Case studies:

Vocational Tech (Paul, Andrew and Jay)
    The location of learning is always one place: the student's brain.
        Observation is our proxy, because we can't walk inside someone else's brain.  We can use tests, but it's much better to ovserve the student as he/she is actually engaged with a problem and encourage him/her to externalize that thought process.  
                After the fact, coaching is a great means of delivering feedback and encouraging future improvement.  (see this article on coaching: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande)