Today, on Facebook, a friend posted the following article from The Globe and Mail, Toronto’s main newspaper:
Got, Got, Got, Got No Time…
Yesterday, I participated in a faculty panel as part of my university’s recruiting day, for high school students, and their parents, interested in attending our school–a panel in which a few of us answered questions about what we wish we knew then that we know now, what our favorite courses were to teach, etc. Message sent? Faculty are approachable. Not a bad one to transmit. Continue reading “Got, Got, Got, Got No Time…”
Assessing Assessment
Does the move toward assessment provide support for the Humanities and Social Sciences or threaten them? Cary Nelson, the final speaker in our series on the Relevance of the Humanities and Social Sciences, published a provocative essay in which he described the move towards assessment as a threat to the “fierce humanities,” which he describes as “teaching that seeks not merely learning, but unlearning, that seeks to unsettle knowledge and assumptions in ways more fundamental than any exam can or should test.” Continue reading “Assessing Assessment”
Assessments: To Embrace or Resist?
In what fields do students learn the most? The traditional liberal arts demonstrate the highest gain in student ability, according to data from the 2007 College Learning Assessment test, with the natural sciences and math scoring slightly higher than the humanities and social sciences. Matthew Yglesias argued in a blog post last month, in the wake of the UVa debacle, that recent attacks on the liberal arts as being of little value are misplaced (reproducing a chart from Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (U of Chicago Press, 2011)). As this assessment data suggests, the humanities and social sciences, along with the natural sciences and mathematics, provide real educational value for students. Continue reading “Assessments: To Embrace or Resist?”