Some Big Questions About Assessment

Assessment (uppercase A) in higher education is an interesting animal. In particular, I am thinking about the evolution and the role of Assessment in the California Community Colleges, where I have spent my career teaching and leading. To be clear, Assessment is the formal act of measuring student performance on Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and reporting them in some kind of formal way.  This is work that is required by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior College, which is the accrediting body for 115 of the 116 public community colleges in California. When I say assessment (lowercase a), I mean the aspect of teaching where, in the most authentic way possible, we ask “Did the student learn the thing that they were supposed to learn?” I’ll go ahead and say the thing that you might be thinking right now - Shouldn’t those be the same thing, or at least have significant overlap? Of course, the answer is yes, and I can tell you that culturally and practically the broad answer seems to be "no".

ChatGPT and the Educational Pump Fake

I love a good pump fake in basketball. It’s one of those moves that when done properly, leaves the victim looking like a helpless child who is trying to play a game with grown-ups. The pump fake is one of those rare classic moves that just seems to improve over time, while at its core really staying the same as it always was. For the uninitiated, the pump fake is a feat of athletic slight of hand, where the ball carrier makes the other player, or the victim, believe that they are about to go in a specific direction, or possibly send the ball in a specific direction.  This misdirection is often done using the head or the ball (other names: head fake, or ball fake).  As humans who are socialized, we are conditioned to expect that where the fake leads, the body will follow, and this is often true… Except in the rare cases where an athlete has specifically learned to move the ball, head or another body part one way without the intent to move anything else in that direction.  Pump fakes are effective, because they play upon our conditioning and our expectations to throw us off balance. The best pump fakes usually end up with the victim flat on the floor, out of the game for that critical moment.

On Failure...

My life is full of failures.

I’ve failed tests.  I’ve failed people — some of whom are very important to me and who were greatly affected by my failures.  I’ve failed several million times to do something just the way I envisioned it in my mind, whether that was drawing a picture, executing a skateboard trick, or remembering to take the trash cans down to the street on trash day.  An entire series of books could be written about my many failures as a parent of seven kids.  Volume one of the series might be titles something like, “All the ways Bill sucks at caring for babies.”  Volume ten, still a work in progress, is tentatively called, “Parenting Adult Children: Discovering the Right Way by Trying All the Wrong Ones First.”  Sometimes it feels like the number of failed ideas I’ve had in my life must outnumber the total number of ideas the average person has in theirs.  One early tragedy in this pile of failed ideas was my great idea to build, manufacture, and sell actual working hoverboards after seeing Back to the Future 2 in theaters.  I’ve failed at work.  I’ve failed at home. I’ve failed in the commute from home to work (do NOT ask my wife whether I am a safe driver).