1) Professors, hate, hate grading. It’s the worst part of our job. High status professors (not me) rarely do their own grading.
2) You learn a lot about what students know when you grade them.
3) You can use grades to motivate students to do things you want such as to show up on time, to not disrupt class, and to do their homework.
4) It’s helpful for students to get frequent and quick feedback, especially on papers. When drafts are not graded students put far less effort into them. Your system would need to involve someone grading drafts of papers.
5) When I want students to learn something that is difficult and probably doesn’t interest them the only tool I have is to say that this will be on the test. It works.
6) Students across colleges and courses greatly differ in ability. Good tests are calibrated to the quality of your students and gives them flow.
7) I teach economics. The vast majority of what I teach will not be directly useful to my students when they graduate, yet employers still care about the grade I give my students. Would employers care as much about the grade students receive on your proposed exams? Perhaps not, as part of the skill employers value is learning to accomplish tasks set by a person the student knows well.
Students being graded by outside bodies would change the student-professor relationship radically (which is a further argument for such a reform, in my view). Today professors are both supposed to help students to learn and to judge their knowledge and their abilities. Under a system like the one I’m sketching, the professors would only have the former role.
Compare with driving school. In driving school me and my instructor worked together to maximize my chances of passing the test. The instructor didn’t need to “grade” me (whatever that would mean in that context) to get me to show up on time, to do my homework, to do stuff I found boring, etc, because I knew it was in my best interest to do all these things if I wanted to pass the test. We co-operated to reach our joint goal. This contrasts starkly with the university educations, where professors and students have conflicting interests (nicely illustrated by some of your points).
Under this system, professors would essentially serve students to reach their goals. Students would presumably be much less subservient if the power of grading was removed from the professors. All this is to be welcomed, in my view.
Funny, I agree, but with completely different connotations.
When I was a high-school teacher, I hated when the students (and parents) made pressure on me to teach less, and then of course to test less at the exams. I mean, the essence of the job is to provide knowledge, and my “customers” were begging me to give them as little knowledge as possible. That was very unpleasant. Yeah, some students liked to learn new things, but many of them gave me negative feedback for trying to explain them anything, because it meant more work for them at the exams.
If the tests were fixed and completely out of my control, then as a teacher, I wouldn’t be the bad guy anymore. Instead, I would be the one that helps (against the external threat).
my “customers” were begging me to give them as little knowledge as possible.
More likely they were begging you to give them less knowledge than you thought made sense. Unless every teacher was getting the same response you were getting, perhaps your idea of the optimum amount was the problem and not the students idea of the optimum amount.
If the tests were fixed and completely out of my control, then as a teacher, I wouldn’t be the bad guy anymore.
You would still be the bad guy if your idea of the amount of background understanding they needed to have to pass the tests was different from theirs. I tutored my daughter in 10th grade (US 16 year olds) chemistry and algebra this year. At a certain point while covering enthalpy of reaction calculations it was clear to me she didn’t really understand charge and electrons and protons, she essentially had not sense of the Bohr atom. It quickly became apparent that 1) she did not agree with me that the best way for her to learn how to do enthalpy problems on the test was for me to take her backwards through the bohr atom and then back up the entire curriculum, and 2) she was right, my approach would have made sense if she was EVER going to use this stuff again, which it was clear she was not.
In New York State our high school classes did have state standardized tests. In my opinion, the dynamic in the classes was not particularly different in the ones with regents exams (standardized test) vs the ones that did not. However, it never struck me that in any of my classes that we particularly wanted the teacher to teach less I may have just been blind to that as I loved school and eventually became a professor, so possibly I was very atypical in high school.
For my students who care a huge amount about grades, if others made up the test students would likely get upset with you for not just teaching to the tests. Deviations on my part would be seen as reducing their chances of getting I-banking jobs.
The logical conclusion then is that it’s absolutely crucial that the tests are designed in such a way that guessing the teacher’s password is impossible and solid background knowledge and genuine understanding of the subject is essential to getting a good grade.
And if that’s not possible, then that implies we’re entirely dependent on the teachers knowing what they’re doing and being able to do their job well and we should focus all our efforts on ensuring that that’s the case.
So you are arguing that professors shouldn’t test their students (the only testing that should exist is external). I vehemently disagree. You’ve assumed that testing is solely about evaluation—separate from learning—when in fact it is about both. Students learn better when tested, and teachers teach better when they understand how students are thinking.
In your driving school example—testing and learning are not separate. The instructor is in the car with you—he is constantly testing you and giving you advice on what to improve. Your system would take this feedback mechanism away from college professors. If you want to leave internal testing in place but also have external testing for actually determining student grades, that would an idea worth fleshing out* - but removing internal testing would be a disaster.
But more importantly, I’m not seeing the problem that you’re trying to solve. You’ve presented some theoretical reasons for why this system is bad, but not much in the way of specific problems the system is causing. You’ve sort of alluded to a general - improving educational standards—idea, but I’m not sure what this means in principle. Is it increasing course loads? Improving the relationships between professors and students? Reducing grade inflation?
*Actually I still dislike this system. In classes based around a constant flow of work—exams, problem sets, projects—your record throughout the class is probably a better indicator of your performance than an external test. Also it doesn’t work for … actually most classes. It works for large lecture classes and that is about it. How would you go about externally testing students on Medieval Chinese poetry? Or Computational linguistics?
4) It’s helpful for students to get frequent and quick feedback, especially on papers. When drafts are not graded students put far less effort into them. Your system would need to involve someone grading drafts of papers.
As a graduate student, I cannot agree more. Frequent but only semi-significant marks are the best learning tool: significant enough that everyone has an incentive to do the work, insignificant enough that the student can get some of it wrong and simply receive correction rather than failing.
The dopamine kick I get from programming and theorem-proving derive directly from the immediate feedback of something either working or not working without impacting my social status or life plans, allowing me to learn how it’s working and optimize it.
I’m a college professor, here are my thoughts:
1) Professors, hate, hate grading. It’s the worst part of our job. High status professors (not me) rarely do their own grading.
2) You learn a lot about what students know when you grade them.
3) You can use grades to motivate students to do things you want such as to show up on time, to not disrupt class, and to do their homework.
4) It’s helpful for students to get frequent and quick feedback, especially on papers. When drafts are not graded students put far less effort into them. Your system would need to involve someone grading drafts of papers.
5) When I want students to learn something that is difficult and probably doesn’t interest them the only tool I have is to say that this will be on the test. It works.
6) Students across colleges and courses greatly differ in ability. Good tests are calibrated to the quality of your students and gives them flow.
7) I teach economics. The vast majority of what I teach will not be directly useful to my students when they graduate, yet employers still care about the grade I give my students. Would employers care as much about the grade students receive on your proposed exams? Perhaps not, as part of the skill employers value is learning to accomplish tasks set by a person the student knows well.
Students being graded by outside bodies would change the student-professor relationship radically (which is a further argument for such a reform, in my view). Today professors are both supposed to help students to learn and to judge their knowledge and their abilities. Under a system like the one I’m sketching, the professors would only have the former role.
Compare with driving school. In driving school me and my instructor worked together to maximize my chances of passing the test. The instructor didn’t need to “grade” me (whatever that would mean in that context) to get me to show up on time, to do my homework, to do stuff I found boring, etc, because I knew it was in my best interest to do all these things if I wanted to pass the test. We co-operated to reach our joint goal. This contrasts starkly with the university educations, where professors and students have conflicting interests (nicely illustrated by some of your points).
Under this system, professors would essentially serve students to reach their goals. Students would presumably be much less subservient if the power of grading was removed from the professors. All this is to be welcomed, in my view.
Funny, I agree, but with completely different connotations.
When I was a high-school teacher, I hated when the students (and parents) made pressure on me to teach less, and then of course to test less at the exams. I mean, the essence of the job is to provide knowledge, and my “customers” were begging me to give them as little knowledge as possible. That was very unpleasant. Yeah, some students liked to learn new things, but many of them gave me negative feedback for trying to explain them anything, because it meant more work for them at the exams.
If the tests were fixed and completely out of my control, then as a teacher, I wouldn’t be the bad guy anymore. Instead, I would be the one that helps (against the external threat).
More likely they were begging you to give them less knowledge than you thought made sense. Unless every teacher was getting the same response you were getting, perhaps your idea of the optimum amount was the problem and not the students idea of the optimum amount.
You would still be the bad guy if your idea of the amount of background understanding they needed to have to pass the tests was different from theirs. I tutored my daughter in 10th grade (US 16 year olds) chemistry and algebra this year. At a certain point while covering enthalpy of reaction calculations it was clear to me she didn’t really understand charge and electrons and protons, she essentially had not sense of the Bohr atom. It quickly became apparent that 1) she did not agree with me that the best way for her to learn how to do enthalpy problems on the test was for me to take her backwards through the bohr atom and then back up the entire curriculum, and 2) she was right, my approach would have made sense if she was EVER going to use this stuff again, which it was clear she was not.
In New York State our high school classes did have state standardized tests. In my opinion, the dynamic in the classes was not particularly different in the ones with regents exams (standardized test) vs the ones that did not. However, it never struck me that in any of my classes that we particularly wanted the teacher to teach less I may have just been blind to that as I loved school and eventually became a professor, so possibly I was very atypical in high school.
For my students who care a huge amount about grades, if others made up the test students would likely get upset with you for not just teaching to the tests. Deviations on my part would be seen as reducing their chances of getting I-banking jobs.
The logical conclusion then is that it’s absolutely crucial that the tests are designed in such a way that guessing the teacher’s password is impossible and solid background knowledge and genuine understanding of the subject is essential to getting a good grade.
And if that’s not possible, then that implies we’re entirely dependent on the teachers knowing what they’re doing and being able to do their job well and we should focus all our efforts on ensuring that that’s the case.
No, I don’t think so. The essence of the job is to provide motivation for students to absorb knowledge—and that’s something quite different.
So you are arguing that professors shouldn’t test their students (the only testing that should exist is external). I vehemently disagree. You’ve assumed that testing is solely about evaluation—separate from learning—when in fact it is about both. Students learn better when tested, and teachers teach better when they understand how students are thinking.
In your driving school example—testing and learning are not separate. The instructor is in the car with you—he is constantly testing you and giving you advice on what to improve. Your system would take this feedback mechanism away from college professors. If you want to leave internal testing in place but also have external testing for actually determining student grades, that would an idea worth fleshing out* - but removing internal testing would be a disaster.
But more importantly, I’m not seeing the problem that you’re trying to solve. You’ve presented some theoretical reasons for why this system is bad, but not much in the way of specific problems the system is causing. You’ve sort of alluded to a general - improving educational standards—idea, but I’m not sure what this means in principle. Is it increasing course loads? Improving the relationships between professors and students? Reducing grade inflation?
*Actually I still dislike this system. In classes based around a constant flow of work—exams, problem sets, projects—your record throughout the class is probably a better indicator of your performance than an external test. Also it doesn’t work for … actually most classes. It works for large lecture classes and that is about it. How would you go about externally testing students on Medieval Chinese poetry? Or Computational linguistics?
As a graduate student, I cannot agree more. Frequent but only semi-significant marks are the best learning tool: significant enough that everyone has an incentive to do the work, insignificant enough that the student can get some of it wrong and simply receive correction rather than failing.
The dopamine kick I get from programming and theorem-proving derive directly from the immediate feedback of something either working or not working without impacting my social status or life plans, allowing me to learn how it’s working and optimize it.