Probably comes as no surprise to you, but I enjoyed reading your thoughts here and totally agree about the ideas of focusing on feedback and encouraging students to embrace failure in their pursuit of learning. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Josh! Yeah, I know we both have similar concerns on this topic and I'm sure there are lots of professors out there also worried about the state of modern college education. The best we can do, I think, is to apply these ideas and share our experiences. I love reading your thoughts too :)
Really interesting article! I hear "fail fast" as a maxim a lot in tech not so much on the importance of feedback and reflection.
Do you think the marketisation of universities exacerbates the problems you've outlined here by making quick turnarounds and quantitative results more desirable, or is this just a universal challenge?
That's an interesting question. IMO, it makes sense that economic incentives will have a major impact in, well, basically everything we do, including education. However, I find these issues pervade college education even in traditionally non-market oriented academic cultures, e.g., in the more socialist-leaning countries. So I gotta assume there's something at play here beyond just market forces. But definitely the market plays a role.
Absolutely! Takes a lot of extra effort but most quantitative evaluation today in college is already just an after-the-fact summarization of what is effectively a qualitative evaluation. Professors do give qualitative evaluation, it's the system that asks for quantitative evaluation because otherwise you can't sort students.
Quería hacer cambios en mis clases este semestre, sin lugar a dudas probaré llevar a la práctica está forma de evaluación.
Probably comes as no surprise to you, but I enjoyed reading your thoughts here and totally agree about the ideas of focusing on feedback and encouraging students to embrace failure in their pursuit of learning. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Josh! Yeah, I know we both have similar concerns on this topic and I'm sure there are lots of professors out there also worried about the state of modern college education. The best we can do, I think, is to apply these ideas and share our experiences. I love reading your thoughts too :)
Really interesting article! I hear "fail fast" as a maxim a lot in tech not so much on the importance of feedback and reflection.
Do you think the marketisation of universities exacerbates the problems you've outlined here by making quick turnarounds and quantitative results more desirable, or is this just a universal challenge?
That's an interesting question. IMO, it makes sense that economic incentives will have a major impact in, well, basically everything we do, including education. However, I find these issues pervade college education even in traditionally non-market oriented academic cultures, e.g., in the more socialist-leaning countries. So I gotta assume there's something at play here beyond just market forces. But definitely the market plays a role.
Absolutely! Takes a lot of extra effort but most quantitative evaluation today in college is already just an after-the-fact summarization of what is effectively a qualitative evaluation. Professors do give qualitative evaluation, it's the system that asks for quantitative evaluation because otherwise you can't sort students.