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A butcher to sacred cows
Academic savages some of the oldest norms in education at conference.
If inciting debate on controversial topics was the goal of the recent EduTech conference in Brisbane, then its organisers must have been thrilled with the presentation of MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte. Addressing the conference via a video link, Negroponte hit on a range of taboos, including the detrimental effect he believes private education has on public schools, a call to scrap age segregation in education, and even the concept of nationalism, which he described as a disease.
Negroponte, who established the One Laptop Per Child initiative for students in poor and developing countries, also took aim at traditional teaching modalities, which he said were failing to inspire children to want to learn.
Using the example of children who were being taught computer programming in the early 1980s, Negroponte said those who took part in the classes were found to be better spellers than their peers who were not part of the course.
The reason, he told delegates, was because the central element for success in programming was being able to identify mistakes and solve problems in order to de-bug.
“ I was always a terrible speller, so if I ever got a B or even a C grade in an assessment task I was so happy with the words I had spelled correctly that I didn’ t care about the ones I had got wrong,” he said.“ This is because that is what the system rewards. But debugging is effectively learning about learning. These kids had been learning to discuss their mistakes, to track down where they went wrong and correct their errors.”
Negroponte argued that, unlike television, the educational potential of computers was being effectively mined and the era of globalisation and connectivity that computers were ushering in would continue to rapidly transform the face of learning. The result, he said, would soon demonstrate not only the need to rid the world of national boundaries that hamper the opportunities of children born in certain countries but also to breakdown other traditional elements of teaching, such as the age segregation of students.
“ Connectivity is a human right – because it is the end of isolation,” Negroponte argued.“ It is like the difference between fried eggs and omelettes. Where once we had very clear established boundaries of yolks and egg whites, we now have, and we will continue to see, a lot more blurring and blending. This is a good thing.” n
Damaged assessment
Professor says methods for testing students need an overhaul.
A senior Harvard academic has issued a call to action for educators at all levels of the system, as well as students and their parents. He argues a revolution is long overdue in assessment and examination models.
Speaking at EduTech 2015, Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur said far too many learning modalities were still aimed at assessing only students’ ability to regurgitate knowledge, without transferring and applying skills.
Such approaches, he told delegates, were“ stifling creative thinking and risk taking” by students, while creating often unjust academic rankings that failed to reflect students’ true understanding of the concepts they were learning.
A key example of this, he said, was the exam hall model of assessment, which isolates students while cutting them off from all external sources of information.
“ Can you think of any other situation you have ever encountered in your professional lives where you have been in this situation?” Mazur asked delegates.“ We all have Google and countless other resources at our disposal – we all look things up every day. So why do we still think [ assessing students based on how they perform ] in a situation they will never encounter in their professional lives will give an accurate representation of their potential?”
Mazur argued the case for assessments that allowed students to use true problem-solving skills in collaborative ways that also allowed them to learn from one another. Such methods – which he said fostered resilience and determination through trial, error and refinement – had already been proven to work in the isolating and stressful environment of examinations.
Mazur screened video examples of students taking part in group-style collaborative examinations, which he said clearly demonstrated their skills and learning being discussed, debated and applied in a robust and enjoyable setting.
Unlike open-book exams – which he also advocated – such methods, he said, were already being adopted but were yet to be broadly known about or accepted.
“ We must rethink assessment,” he urged delegates.“ If we don’ t, we will simply continue to educate the followers of yesterday, rather than the leaders of tomorrow.” n
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