Thinking about Learning: Comments

Comment on "Thinking about "Disaggregation" and Higher Education"

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:08:57 -0500

Hi Kyle,

I definitely think this is the model we must adopt if we are going to remain relevant...and be relevant for the right reasons.

Please count me in. I want to be part of any team whose desire is to make this happen.

Jeff

- Jeff Swain

Comment on "An "Obama Effect" on Educational Testing?"

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:46:51 -0500

Kyle, I listened to a RadioLab Podcast about this the other day and it really rocked me. The guys on the podcast reported this but dug deeper into the issue ... lots of really good examples of how the environment or simply the way we ask questions radically alter performance.

The only way I can answer your question is that I don't think they can. I really don't think you can gain much insight from a test when the conditions under which it is administered are different. I just have this feeling that standardized tests in general do learning a disservice and I would like to explore that a bit more with you.

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Jason Ohler at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo"

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:59:06 -0500

I love this quote ...

"You are not literate until you have command of the media collage."

I think it something we are seeing happen outside of schools ... more and more teens are mastering the media collage and are building rich media examples of the things they care about. All you have to do is spend some time exploring youtube and you can see how far down the path they've come. Where are we?

I'd love to sponsor a project that takes the green screen storytelling activity to the next level. Here at PSU we have facilities called Digital Commons that do digital storytelling workshops and have access to all the equipment one would need to make it happen. I'd really like to see us push this ... one thing I'm curious about is the assessment of the finished product ... it might be interesting to work collaboratively to create a rubric that measures what one is teaching and exploring through the green screen story.

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Mastery Learning at Penn State?"

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:53:43 -0500

I thought it was an excellent presentation that got a lot of people thinking and talking about the idea of eliminating grades in favor of mastery. I like the concept, but I am biased by some prior experiences ... before I went to College I took an Introduction to Psychology course at Bloomsburg University. It was delivered in a mastery style -- each week you showed up and took a quiz from the previous week's readings. If you passed you got a P for the week, if you didn't you could take the test an additional two times to try and master it. If I recall correctly you had to master all the units to get an A, miss two and get a B, miss 4 and get a C, etc.

To me it was a great way to learn. When I got to WVU I saw that many of my friends took the mastery version of Psych 101 and didn't perform well. Looking back I attribute it to the discipline one needed to go each week and pass the quizzes. I think that could be a huge factor in student success -- being ready to take responsibility for your own learning. As James said, there are only 16 weeks in the semester ... once you fall behind it is hard to catch up and master the content.

I think the whole design is something we should talk more about in class.

- Cole W. Camplese